"The Debatable Land": A Novel

Widow Bourn's house stood behind the church, and blue flowers grew contentedly on the sloping green, shy fancies of a maiden spring that never lasted out a summer's experience....

There was given to the Bourns, then, of old, natures sloping to the Northern side, or they had taken that tendency from experience. Thaddeus Bourn, that elder brother of Simon,...

Early frosts in October turned the maples into pillars of fire; followed a long Indian summer, hazy, even-footed, thoughtful days; as if after making ready this ceremonial purpl...

In the early days of Squire Map's seclusion he had not yet made the hermit of himself that Hagar was familiar with later. Men have said that he never went outside the village af...

Hamilton took its name from a little English hamlet. The statesman was a coincidence. It lies in a bend of the Wyantenaug River, which hardly ripples on the piers of its docks,...

One warm, rainy evening in the year '44, and in the great city that is flanked on either side by a river and a strait, Father Andrew plodded along an avenue of small shops, whos...

It was yet early in the afternoon. There was a hint of the sun overhead, a semi-luminous space in the thin mist, though the pavements were still wet. The two opposite currents o...

The fire glowed and snapped, and reflected its varying mood on the andirons and the red-and-white tiles of the fireplace. Mrs. Mavering, garmented in black and dusky red, lay ba...

"We make investments at interest, speculate in futures, examine securities." He paused, seeking precision of phrase. "It is in terms of happiness. One pursues it--happiness. One...

In the open country the seasons are free, and work their will with spacious confidence. There is room between heaven and earth. Spring runs down the back of the mountain forest,...

The Third Regiment went its way. Visibly, it resembled swarms of bees when last seen clinging to the freight cars, or an excited picnic with ornamental bayonets, but to a larger...

A big gun boomed far away in the dark. From nearer came the snip-snap of picket-shooting, which increased to a rattle and settled into volleying. On the hill to the right some o...

If Gard entered the war, as he claimed, in the theory of a spiritual adventure, it must be hinted that he had sometimes lost sight of his theory. Outside events had shown a tend...

The war suited Morgan. It was action in simple terms of purpose and accomplishment. It was sensible and genuine. There no man's complicated trivial tastes and instincts needed t...

The Shenandoah goes by the eastern edge of the wide valley, murmuring its own musical name, "Shenandoah," as if it knew the word's significance in glory, tumult, and pain, but h...

It was chilly at that height. Gard rode all night down the mountain-side, and saw at last the lights of moon and sunrise mingling over the meadows and cornfields of a plantation...

There is said to be a divinity in our discontent, the pull of some large law and onward gravitation such as tends to make vivid rivers, and only where it fails to influence are...

The iron-gray horse--the former property of one "Miss Meely," an existence in rumor, suspected of being quick-tempered--turned into an alley that led past the windows of the res...

There was a steep hill-side, and below it a swift river, on the left the little village of Falmouth huddled in a gully, and beyond the village a higher hill, with a white house...

The mud on the suburban road sucked about the feet of Mavering's horse. So he came again at night to the hospital above the river and to the brick house with the white door and...

A loud wind blew up the river, cold, sombre, insistent. The river seemed to tremble in waves and shiver in wrinkles under the monotonous threatening of the wind, the stars to be...

When Gard returned to the knowledge of the light, he brought with him the impression that Helen was near. It was an irritating shock not to find her. He remembered a number of w...

"It is this way," said Thaddeus, "to speak from a--a--personal standpoint. If Morgan Map goes to the cemetery I shall not wait for my mail, but go and--a--accidentally interrupt...