Short Stories (single author) Books

A DIFFERENCE IN HEARTS "I DON' know as I cal'lated to be the makin' of any child," Miranda had said as she folded Aurelia's letter and laid it in the light-stand drawer. "I s'posed of course Aurelia would send us the one we asked for, but it's just like her to palm off that wild young one on somebody else." "You remember we said that Rebecca, or even... 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...

LOB LIE-BY-THE-FIRE INTRODUCTORY. Lob Lie-By-The-Fire—the Lubber-fiend, as Milton calls him—is a rough kind of Brownie or House Elf, supposed to haunt some north-country homesteads, where he does the work of the farm labourers, for no grander wages than "------to earn his cream bowl duly set." Not that he is insensible of the pleasures of rest, for "—When, in one night, ere glimpse of... more...

Jim's father died at Gettysburg; up against the Stone Fence; went to heaven in a chariot of fire on that fateful day when the issue between the two parts of the country was decided: when the slaughter on the Confe'd-erate side was such that after the battle a lieutenant was in charge of a regiment, and a major commanded a brigade. This fact was much to Jim, though no one knew it: it tempered... 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 Crew pulsed with contentment, and its communal singing brought a pleasant kind of glow that throbbed gently in the control room. "'Has anybody here seen Kelly ... K-E-double-L-Y?'" "Shut up and dig my thought!" Kelly's stubborn will insisted. "I'm going on out for a while!" The delicate loom of the Crew's light pattern increased its frequency a... 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...

THE SISTERS THERE was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke. Night after night I had passed the house (it was vacation time) and studied the lighted square of window: and night after night I had found it lighted in the same way, faintly and evenly. If he was dead, I thought, I would see the reflection of candles on the darkened blind for I knew that two candles must be set at the head of a... more...

Now and then in my various prowlings I have met a man with a personality; one with mental equipment, heart endowment, self-forgetfulness, and charm—the kind of charm that makes you glad when he comes and sorry when he goes. One was a big-chested, straight-backed, clear-eyed, clean-souled sea-dog, with arms of hickory, fingers of steel, and a brain in instant touch with a button marked "Experience... more...