Henry Carter Hull

FOR many years it has been the dream of Madame World to have a canal cut through the narrow strip of land between the East and the West, so that folks might visit each other without having to go so far around. Also she thought that one family might have something which another family might use if there were a short way to send it across. And there were other reasons: Families should know each other, and be able to share each other’s joys and sorrows. Madame...

THE wooded banks of Richmond were in all the soft green of early spring, when they were first seen by Leila. A few months had passed; the trees were now half stripped of their leaves, and the autumn tints were fast fading into sombre gray as she a second time caught sight of its wooded heights; but how different were now her feelings, how much more beautiful did the whole scene appear to her with Selina by her side! Selina was spring, summer, sunshine,...

Leading out of one of those close, melancholy alleys in the environs of Liverpool, was a small cottage, possessing little of comfort or beauty in outward appearance, but much in the interior in favour of its inhabitants; cleanliness and neatness were clearly visible, greatly in contradistinction to the neighbouring dwellings. There were no heaps of dirt and half-burnt ashes, no broken or even cracked panes in the brightly shining windows, not a grain...

The story of Ivar the Viking depicts "...the actual life of Norse chiefs who ruled at the period therein described, and also gives the customs, religion, life, and mode of thinking which prevailed among the people. My object in writing this story is to give a view, in a popular way, of the life of these early ancestors of the English-speaking peoples, whose seat of power was on the islands situated in the basin of the Baltic and the countries known...

'Yes, and such a wilderness of game! My word for it, you would like it out there. The fat deer scamper from thicket and opening; foxes and wolves, and bears are plenty; wild turkeys romp and fly in flocks; wild ducks dip and skim like swallows on the lakes; trout and sturgeon, lusty and sweet; Indians good-natured as the yellow sun:—and such hunts as I've had there!—I tell you what, Matthew, they would cure you pretty quick of being homesick;...

'Nat, where have you been?' 'Been fishing,' answered the boy addressed, a sturdy youth of sixteen, with clear blue eyes and sandy hair. 'Fishin'? And who said you could go fishin'?' demanded Abner Balberry, in his high, nervous voice. 'Nobody said I could go,' answered the boy, firmly. 'But I thought you'd all like to have some fish for supper, so I went.'

Zululand is a wild region of mountain ranges, deep valleys and gorges, roaring torrents, rapidly flowing rivers, plains covered with mimosa bushes, meadows where cattle pasture and grow fat, and level plateaux extending for many miles across it, several hundred feet above the level of the ocean; while scattered here and there, in some parts pretty thickly, are to be seen the kraals or villages and the mealy grounds of the natives. Wild as is the country,...

The farms, however, were let before the Christmas of 1818; and Mr. Elsee requested Mr. Driver to inform the gentleman who had taken them, and had entered upon that of Hall, that Mr. Elsee was desirous of letting him have possession of the other, and to sell him any thing upon the premises, whenever it would suit him.

Roberta Marsden, or Lil Missus, as the negroes called her, for the opening of my story dates back several years before the Civil War began, lived on a country place in Kentucky. She was a beautiful child, and despite a few foibles that all flesh is heir to, such a really lovable one that she was fairly worshiped by mother, aunt and uncle, and every one of the negroes, from old Caleb, the testy and ancient coachman, to the veriest pickaninny, who thought...

British author Stanley J. Weyman rose to literary fame with a series of swashbuckling adventure tales. Over time, Weyman bridled against the constraints of that genre and began to explore other settings. The novel Starvecrow Farm is one of a series of domestic dramas that Weyman penned in a mid-career change of direction. Fans of novels about English country life will love this finely wrought rural romance.