Juvenile Fiction Books

PREFACE These lectures have been given perhaps half a dozen times, in England, in Switzerland and in Germany. On allowing them to appear in print I should perhaps apologize to my readers for the somewhat free and familiar style in which parts of them are written; but even if I had the time to recast them into a more serious form I should be unwilling to do so, for there is surely enough ponderous... more...

CHAPTER I ELOQUENT "Father, what d'you think we'd better call him?" Mrs Gallup asked, when the baby was a week old; "have you thought of a name?" "I've fixed on a name," her husband replied, triumphantly. "The child shall be called Eloquent." "Eloquent," Mrs Gallup repeated, dubiously. "That's a queer name, isn't it? 'Tisn't... more...

CHAPTER I A PERILOUS PASSAGE "Well, good-bye, boys! You won't go far from camp before we return, will you?" The speaker was one of two men seated in an Indian canoe. He gripped the forward paddle, while his companion at the stern added cheerfully— "The backwoods is not the City of London. There are no policemen to appeal to if you lose your way. Besides, we hope to find dinner... more...

Preface. The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic’s is a story of public-school life, and was written for the Boy’s Own Paper, in the Fourth Volume of which it appeared. The numbers containing it are now either entirely out of print or difficult to obtain; and many and urgent have been the requests—from boys themselves, as well as from parents, head masters, and others—for its re-issue as a book. Of the... more...

CHAPTER I RUTH VARS COMES OUT I SPEND my afternoons walking alone in the country. It is sweet and clean out-of-doors, and I need purifying. My wanderings disturb Lucy. She is always on the lookout for me, in the hall or living-room or on the porch, especially if I do not come back until after dark. She needn't worry. I am simply trying to fit together again the puzzle-picture of my life, dumped... more...

THEday before Christmas, in the year of our Lord 722. Broad snow-meadows glistening white along the banks of the river Moselle; pallid hill-sides blooming with mystic roses where the glow of the setting sun still lingered upon them; an arch of clearest, faintest azure bending overhead; in the center of the aerial landscape of the massive walls of the cloister of Pfalzel, gray to the east, purple to the... more...

THE FLAG CHAPTER I Snow everywhere; freshly fallen, white and beautiful. It lay unsullied on the village roofs, and, trampled but not yet soiled, in the village streets. The spruce trees on the lawn at Bannerhall were weighted with it, and on the lawn itself it rested, like an ermine blanket, soft and satisfying. Down the steps of the porch that stretched across the front of the mansion, a boy ran,... more...

A Chase. In mid-ocean—the Pacific. Two ships within sight of one another, less than a league apart. Both sailing before the wind, running dead down it with full canvas spread—not side by side, but one in the wake of the other. Is it a chase? To all appearance, yes; a probability strengthened by the relative size and character of the vessels. One is a barque, polacca-masted, her masts raking back... more...

CHAPTER I RÉNÉ DE VEAUX On a dreary winter's day, early in the year 1564, young Réné de Veaux, who had just passed his sixteenth birthday, left the dear old chateau where he had spent his happy and careless boyhood, and started for Paris. Less than a month before both his noble father and his gentle mother had been taken from him by a terrible fever that had swept over the country, and Réné... more...

That sunny afternoon in May, How stealthily we crept away, We three—(Good things are done in threes: That is, good things in threes are done When you make two and I make one.)— To hatch our small conspiracies! Between the blossomy apple-trees (You recollect?) we sped, and then Safe in the green heart of the wood We breathed again. The purple flood the bluebells made Washed round about us where we... more...