Juvenile Fiction Books

CHAPTER I. I BEGIN LIFE. I was just nineteen years of age when I began my career as articled pupil with the Miss Bagshots of Albury Lodge, Fendale, Yorkshire. My father was a country curate, with a delicate wife and four children, of whom I was the eldest; and I had known from my childhood that the day must come in which I should have to get my own living in almost the only vocation open to a poor... more...

AUNT MARY. In one of those very pretty suburban villas which are to be seen in the neighbourhood of all our large towns, Aunt Mary lived, at the time when my tale commences. Indeed she had lived there the greater part of her life, for her father, Mr. Livesay, who had been a highly respected merchant in London for a great many years, had, unlike the generality of this prosperous class, retired from... more...

CHAPTER I. It is a delightful employment to discover and trace the operations of Divine grace, as they are manifested in the dispositions and lives of God’s real children.  It is peculiarly gratifying to observe how frequently, among the poorer classes of mankind, the sunshine of mercy beams upon the heart, and bears witness to the image of Christ which the Spirit of God has impressed thereupon. ... more...

There were ripples of sunshine all tangled in the glowing scarlet of the geranium bed and dancing blithely over the grass. A world of melody in quivering bursts of happy song came from the spreading canopy of leaves overhead, and as an accompaniment, the wind laughed and whispered and kept the air in one continual smile with a kiss on its lips, born of supreme contentment in the summer loveliness. In... more...

ON THE "EOLUS." T was on one of the cool, brilliant days which early June brings to the Narragansett country, that the steamer "Eolus" pushed out from Wickford Pier on her afternoon trip to Newport. The sky was of a beautiful translucent blue; the sunshine had a silvery rather than a golden radiance. A sea-wind blew up the Western Passage, so cool as to make the passengers on the upper... more...

THE SCHEME "Why, we could start a circus jest as easy as a wink, Toby, 'cause you know all about one an' all you'd have to do would be to tell us fellers what to do, an' we'd 'tend to the rest." "Yes; but you see we hain't got a tent, or bosses, or wagons, or nothin', an' I don't see how you could get a circus up that way;" and the... more...

THE WAIL OF THE WE ARE SEVENS Blue Bonnet raised the blind of the car window, which had been drawn all the afternoon to shut out the blazing sun, and took a view of the flying landscape. Then she consulted the tiny watch at her wrist and sat up with a start. "Grandmother!" she said excitedly, "we'll soon be in Woodford; that is, in just an hour. We're on time, you know.... more...

Scenes In Switzerland. Time flies swiftly when we are sightseeing; and it was late in the autumn of 18— when I reached Lindau. Lake Constance lay before me, a pale, green sheet of water, hemmed in on the south by bold mountain ranges, filling the interim between the Rhine valley and the long undulating ridges of the Canton Thurgau. These heights, cleft at intervals by green smiling valleys and deep... more...

How Spring was Coming. “Hallo, old Yellowbill! what’s brought you out so early?” said a fine fat thrush, one bright spring morning, stopping for a moment to look at his companion, and leaving the great broken-shelled snail he had rooted out of the ivy bush curling about upon the gravel path. “Hallo, old Yellowbill! what’s brought you out so early?” “What’s that to you, old... more...

CHAPTER I. Elizabeth Adair was stooping to prop a rose-tree in a viranda, when she hastily turned to her sister, and exclaimed, “it is useless attending either to plants or flowers now: I must give up all my favourite pursuits.” “But you will have others to engage your attention,” returned Jane. “And will they afford me pleasure? You may as well say that I shall listen with joy to the foolish... more...