William Henry Giles Kingston: 160 books

A young girl dressed in a cloak and hat, and looking sad and somewhat timid, stood in the middle of the large hall of a fine old country house. The floor was of oak, and the walls were covered with dark oak wainscoting, from which hung down several full-length portraits of grim old knights and gentlemen...

Digby was Mr Heathcote’s eldest son and heir. He had just attained the mature age of nine years, and had hitherto in many respects been considerably spoilt. Mr Heathcote had not succeeded to his property till rather late in life, and he had not till then married. A son had long been wished-for, and...

The speaker was a strongly built man, dressed in a thick pea-coat buttoned closely over his breast, the collar turned up to protect his neck. A white, low-crowned, weather-beaten, broadish-brimmed hat covered his head, and he held in his hand a thick stick, which he pressed firmly on the ground as he...

“Peter,” said my father, with a stern look, though the tone of his voice had more of sorrow in it than anger, “this conduct, if you persist in it, will bring ruin on you, and grief and shame on my head and to your mother’s heart. Look there, boy, and answer me: Are not those presumptive evidences...

Not far from the broad and slow-flowing river Meuse stands the town of Brill. Flanders, in which it is found, formed at the period to which we refer a province of the dominions belonging to Philip of Spain. It was ruled with no very paternal hand by the Duke of Alva, who resided chiefly at Brussels....

Our school was breaking up for the midsummer holidays—north, south, east, and west we sped to our different destinations, thinking with glee of the pleasures we believed to be in store for us. I was bound for Liverpool, where my father, a West India merchant, now resided. He had for most of his...

“I say, didn’t you hear a cry?” exclaimed Charley Fielding, starting up from the camp fire at which we were seated discussing our evening meal of venison, the result of our day’s hunting. He leaned forward in the attitude of listening. “I’m sure I heard it! There it is again, but whether...

“Are you better, mother, to-day?” asked little Peter, as he went up to the bed on which Widow Gray lay, in a small chamber of their humble abode. “I trust so, my boy,” she answered, in a doubtful tone, as she gazed fondly on the ruddy, broad, honest face of her only child, and put aside the mass...

The blue waters of the British Channel sparkled brightly in the rays of the sun, shining forth from a cloudless sky, as a light breeze from the northward filled the sails of a small yacht which glided smoothly along the southern coast of England. At the helm of the little vessel stood her owner, Captain...

We had come home from school much earlier than usual, on account of illness having broken out there; but as none of the boys were dangerously ill, and those in the infirmary were very comfortable, we were not excessively unhappy. I suspect that some of us wished that fever or some other sickness would...

The glorious sun rose in undimmed splendour on a morning in the early part of the fourth century over everlasting Rome, his rays glancing on countless temples, statues, columns, and towers, on long lines of aqueducts and other public edifices, and on the proud mansions of the patricians which covered...

Among the large party of family friends collected at Major Shafto’s house on that Christmas Day not many years ago, was Lieutenant Dicey, a friend and neighbour of the Major’s, who had served with him in the same regiment for many years. The Lieutenant had lost a leg, and, unable to purchase his...

“Well, Thudicumb, I hope by noon we may at last get a glimpse of the sun,” said Captain Davenport to his first officer, as they walked the deck of the Bussorah Merchant, homeward bound from the East Indies, and at that time rolling on over the long heaving seas of the Atlantic. The sky was overcast,...

“Hillo, Roger! glad to find you at last. I have been hunting up and down along the cliffs for the last hour or more, till I began to fear that you must have been carried off by a Barbary corsair, or spirited away on the end of Mother Shipton’s broomstick.” The speaker was a fine-looking lad of...