On a Saturday morning in early August in 1969, a series of bizarre and inexplicable events occurred aboard the fifty-five-thousand-ton luxury liner S.S. Bretagne as it was preparing to sail from the Port of New York to Le Havre. Claude Dessard, chief purser of the Bretagne, a capable and meticulous man, ran, as he was fond of saying, a "tight ship". In the fifteen years Dessard had served aboard the Bretagne, he had never encountered a situation he had not been able to deal with efficiently and discreetly. Considering that the S.S. Bretagne was a French ship, this was high tribute, indeed. However, on this particular summer day it was as though a thousand devils were conspiring against him　

A Ward of the Golden Gateby Bret HartePROLOGUE.In San Francisco the "rainy season" had been making itself areality to the wondering Eastern immigrant. There were short daysof drifting clouds and flying sunshine, and long succeeding nightsof incessant downpour, when the rain rattled on the thin shinglesor drummed on the resounding zinc of pioneer roofs. The shiftingsand-dunes on the outskirts were beaten motionless and sodden bythe onslaught of consecutive storms; the southeast trades broughtthe saline breath of the outlying Pacific even to the busy hauntsof Commercial and Kearney streets; the low-lying Mission road was aquagmire; along the City Front, despite of piles and pier and...　

SHERLOCK HOLMESTHE ADVENTURE OF WISTERIA LODGEby Sir Arthur Conan Doyle1. The Singular Experience of Mr. John Scott EcclesI find it recorded in my notebook that it was a bleak and windy day,towards the end of March in the year 1892. Holmes had received atelegram while we sat at our lunch, and he had scribbled a reply. Hemade no remark, but the matter remained in his thoughts, for hestood in front of the fire afterwards with a thoughtful face,smoking his pipe, and casting an occasional glance at the message.Suddenly he turned upon me with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes....　

Susy, A Story of the Plainsby Bret HarteCHAPTER I.Where the San Leandro turnpike stretches its dusty, hot, andinterminable length along the valley, at a point where the heat anddust have become intolerable, the monotonous expanse of wild oats oneither side illimitable, and the distant horizon apparently remoterthan ever, it suddenly slips between a stunted thicket or hedge of"scrub oaks," which until that moment had been undistinguishableabove the long, misty, quivering level of the grain. The thicketrising gradually in height, but with a regular slope whose gradienthad been determined by centuries of western trade winds, presently...　

Beacon Lights of HistoryVolume III Part 2by John LordVolume III.Part IIRenaissance and Reformation.CONTENTS.DANTE.RISE OF MODERN POETRY.The antiquity of PoetryThe greatness of PoetsTheir influence on CivilizationThe true poet one of the rarest of menThe pre-eminence of Homer, Dante, Shakspeare, and GoetheCharacteristics of DanteHis precocityHis moral wisdom and great attainmentsHis terrible scorn and his isolationState of society when Dante was bornHis banishmentGuelphs and GhibellinesDante stimulated to his great task by an absorbing sentimentBeatrice...　

White Liesby Charles ReadeCHAPTER I.Towards the close of the last century the Baron de Beaurepaire lived in the chateau of that name in Brittany. His family was of prodigious antiquity; seven successive barons had already flourished on this spot when a younger son of the house accompanied his neighbor the Duke of Normandy in his descent on England, and was rewarded by a grant of English land, on which he dug a mote and built a chateau, and called it Beaurepaire (the worthy Saxons turned this into Borreper without delay). Since that day more than twenty gentlemen of the same lineage had held in turn the original chateau and lands, and handed them down to their present lord....　

For the Term of His Natural Lifeby Marcus ClarkeDEDICATIONTOSIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFYMy Dear Sir Charles, I take leave to dedicate this work to you, not merely because your nineteen years of political and literary life in Australia render it very fitting that any work written by a resident in the colonies, and having to do with the history of past colonial days, should bear your name upon its dedicatory page; but because the publication of my book is due to your advice and encouragement.The convict of fiction has been hitherto shown only at the beginning or at the end of his career. Either his exile has been the mysterious end to his misdeeds, or he has appeared upon the scene to claim inte　

The Wife and Other Storiesby Anton ChekhovTranslated by CONSTANCE GARNETTCONTENTSThe WifeDifficult PeopleThe GrasshopperA Dreary StoryThe Privy CouncillorThe Man in CaseGooseberriesAbout LoveThe Lottery TicketTHE WIFEII 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 have come back. Here, of course, they have nothing now; everything belongs to other people. They have 　

Little Travels and Roadside Sketchesby William Makepeace ThackerayI. FROM RICHMOND IN SURREY TO BRUSSELS IN BELGIUMII. GHENTBRUGES:Ghent (1840)BrugesIII. WATERLOOLITTLE TRAVELS AND ROADSIDE SKETCHESI.FROM RICHMOND IN SURREY TO BRUSSELS IN BELGIUM. . . I quitted the "Rose Cottage Hotel" at Richmond, one of thecomfortablest, quietest, cheapest, neatest little inns in England,and a thousand times preferable, in my opinion, to the "Star andGarter," whither, if you go alone, a sneering waiter, with his haircurled, frightens you off the premises; and where, if you are bold...　

Old Christmasby Washington IrvingBut is old, old, good old Christmas gone? Nothing but the hair ofhis good, gray, old head and beard left? Well, I will have that,seeing that I cannot have more of him.Hue and Cry after Christmas.CONTENTSCHRISTMASTHE STAGE-COACHCHRISTMAS EVECHRISTMAS DAYTHE CHRISTMAS DINNERA man might then beholdAt Christmas, in each hallGood fires to curb the cold,And meat for great and small.The neighbours were friendly bidden,And all had welcome true,The poor from the gates were not chidden,When this old cap was new.Old SongChristmasThere is nothing in England that exercises a more delightful spell over my imagination than the lingerings of the holiday customs and rural 　

East Lynneby Mrs. Henry WoodCHAPTER I.THE LADY ISABEL.In an easy-chair of the spacious and handsome library of his town- house, sat William, Earl of Mount Severn. His hair was gray, the smoothness of his expansive brow was defaced by premature wrinkles, and his once attractive face bore the pale, unmistakable look of dissipation. One of his feet was cased in folds of linen, as it rested on the soft velvet ottoman, speaking of gout as plainly as any foot ever spoke yet. It would seemto look at the man as he sat there that he had grown old before his time. And so he had. His years were barely nine and forty, yet in all save years, he was an aged man.A noted character had been the Earl of Moun　

　　Through the curtained windows of the furnished apartment which Mrs. Horace Hignett had rented for her stay in New York rays of golden sunlight peeped in like the foremost spies of some advancing army. It was a fine summer morning. The hands of the Dutch clock in the hall pointed to thirteen minutes past nine; those of the ormolu clock in the sitting-room to eleven minutes past ten; those of the carriage clock on the bookshelf to fourteen minutes to six. In other words, it was exactly eight; and Mrs. Hignett acknowledged the fact by moving her head on the pillow, opening her eyes, and sitting up in bed. She always woke at eight precisely.　Was this Mrs. Hignett the Mrs. Hignett, the world