I. THE FATHER, by William Dean Howells As soon as we heard the pleasant news—I suppose the news of an engagement ought always to be called pleasant—it was decided that I ought to speak first about it, and speak to the father. We had not been a great while in the neighborhood, and it would look less like a bid for the familiar acquaintance of people living on a larger scale than ourselves, and less... more...

CHAPTER ONECATHERINE’S INSPIRATION “Alma Mater, Dexter darling, do re mi–O dear! It’s much harder to write than I supposed. I wonder why! When your heart is full of love, why should it be hard to express it?” Catherine Smith, sitting on the top step of the porch of her home, Three Gables, bent her red-gold head over the pad of paper on her knee and wrote painfully, her forehead puckered... more...

CHAPTER I. Breaking the News. "Mamma, what was that I heard papa saying to you this morning about his lawsuit?" "I cannot tell you just now. Ellen, pick up that shawl and spread it over me." "Mamma! are you cold in this warm room?" "A little, there, that will do. Now, my daughter, let me be quiet a while don't disturb me." There was no one else in the room. Driven... more...

The Widow."WHAT would you say," asked the widow, tucking her skirts cautiously about her patent leather toes and leaning back luxuriously against the variegated pillows, "if I should tell you that I have found the very girl who would make you a model wife?"The bachelor glanced up indifferently and dipped the paddle lazily into the water. "What model?" he asked, suspiciously.... more...

CHAPTER I. On Thursday, the 6th of March, 1862, two days after Shrove Tuesday, five women belonging to the village of La Jonchere presented themselves at the police station at Bougival. They stated that for two days past no one had seen the Widow Lerouge, one of their neighbours, who lived by herself in an isolated cottage. They had several times knocked at the door, but all in vain. The... more...

CHAPTER I When Mr. O'Callaghan died, after a long, severe, and expensive sickness, he left to his widow a state of unlimited poverty and seven boys. "Sure, an' sivin's the parfect number," she said through her tears as she looked round on her flock; "and Tim was the bist man as iver lived, may the saints presarve him an' rist him from his dreadful pains!" Thus did... more...

One of the most beautiful spots in the north of Hampshire—a part of the country which, from its winding green lanes, with the trees meeting over head-like a cradle, its winding roads between coppices, with wide turfy margents on either side, as if left on purpose for the picturesque and frequent gipsy camp, its abundance of hedgerow timber, and its extensive tracts of woodland, seems as if the fields... more...

§1 The motor-car entered a little white gate, came to a porch under a thick wig of jasmine, and stopped. The chauffeur indicated by a movement of the head that this at last was it. A tall young woman with a big soft mouth, great masses of blue-black hair on either side of a broad, low forehead, and eyes of so dark a brown you might have thought them black, drooped forward and surveyed the house with a... more...

THE WIFE I I RECEIVED the following letter: "DEAR SIR, PAVEL ANDREITCH! "Not far from you—that is to say, in the village of Pestrovo—very distressing incidents are taking place, concerning which I feel it my duty to write to you. All the peasants of that village sold their cottages and all their belongings, and set off for the province of Tomsk, but did not succeed in getting there, and... more...

CHAPTER ON BOARD THE "CORMORANT" SLOOP Midway in that period of Ireland's history during which, according to historians, the distressful country had none—to be more precise, on a spring morning early in the eighteenth century, and the reign of George the First, a sloop of about seventy tons burthen was beating up Dingle Bay, in the teeth of a stiff easterly breeze. The sun was two hours... more...