Short Stories (single author) Books

THE LEGEND OF MONTE DEL DIABLO. The cautious reader will detect a lack of authenticity in the following pages. I am not a cautious reader myself, yet I confess with some concern to the absence of much documentary evidence in support of the singular incident I am about to relate. Disjointed memoranda, the proceedings of ayuntamientos and early departmental juntas, with other records of a primitive and... more...

It is characteristic of this buoyant people that they pursue no man beyond the grave. "Let God be his judge!"—Even with the hundred thousand unfound, though greatly coveted, the hue and cry went no further than that. To the stranger or the guest the people of Coralio will relate the story of the tragic end of their former president; how he strove to escape from the country with the public... more...

AN OLD MATE OF YOUR FATHER'S You remember when we hurried home from the old bush school how we were sometimes startled by a bearded apparition, who smiled kindly down on us, and whom our mother introduced, as we raked off our hats, as "An old mate of your father's on the diggings, Johnny." And he would pat our heads and say we were fine boys, or girls—as the case may have been—and... more...

Iceland is a little country far north in the cold sea. Men found it and went there to live more than a thousand years ago. During the warm season they used to fish and make fish-oil and hunt sea-birds and gather feathers and tend their sheep and make hay. But the winters were long and dark and cold. Men and women and children stayed in the house and carded and spun and wove and knit. A whole family sat... more...

We are accustomed to speak with a certain light irony of the tendency which women have to gossip, as if the sin itself, if it is a sin, were of the gentler sex, and could by no chance be a masculine peccadillo. So far as my observation goes, men are as much given to small talk as women, and it is undeniable that we have produced the highest type of gossiper extant. Where will you find, in or out of... more...

INTRODUCTION My publisher wants me to apologize for—"introduce" was the kindly word he used—this collection of articles and verses from Punch. I do so with pleasure. Among the many interests of a long and varied career— No, I don't think I shall begin like that. It was early in 1871— Nor like that. Really it is very difficult, you know. I wrote these things for a number of years,... more...

In one of the villages in the neighbourhood of the metropolis, lived little Adolphus, who had the misfortune to lose his mother before he had reached his eighth year. Notwithstanding his early age, this loss made a strong impression on his mind, and evidently affected the natural gaiety of his disposition. His aunt, the good Mrs. Clarkson, soon took him home to her house, in order to remove him from... more...

I. THE OLD TAVERN AT BAYLEY'S FOUR CORNERS. You will not find Greenton, or Bayley's Four-Corners, as it is more usually designated, on any map of New England that I know of. It is not a town; it is not even a village; it is merely an absurd hotel. The almost indescribable place called Greenton is at the intersection of four roads, in the heart of New Hampshire, twenty miles from the nearest... more...

THE Hermit lived in a cave in the hollow of a hill. Below him was a glen, with a stream in a coppice of oaks and alders, and on the farther side of the valley, half a day's journey distant, another hill, steep and bristling, which raised aloft a little walled town with Ghibelline swallow-tails notched against the sky. When the Hermit was a lad, and lived in the town, the crenellations of the walls... more...

THE RED ROSES OF TONIA A trestle burned down on the International Railroad. The south-bound from San Antonio was cut off for the next forty-eight hours. On that train was Tonia Weaver's Easter hat. Espirition, the Mexican, who had been sent forty miles in a buckboard from the Espinosa Ranch to fetch it, returned with a shrugging shoulder and hands empty except for a cigarette. At the small... more...