The peasant and the doctor stood on opposite sides of the bed, beside the old, dying woman. She was calm and resigned and her mind quite clear as she looked at them and listened to their conversation. She was going to die, and she did not rebel at it, for…

Jim Gilmore came to Hortons Bay from Canada. He bought the blacksmith shop from old man Horton. Jim was short and dark with big mustaches and big hands. He was a good horseshoer and did not look much like a blacksmith even with his leather apron on. He lived…

“Y’ARE very snug in here,” piped old Mr. Woodifield, and he peered out of the great, green leather armchair by his friend the boss’s desk as a baby peers out of its pram. His talk was over; it was time for him to be off. But he did not want to go. Since he…

‘I came to you because I want to tell my story,’ the man on Dr Harper’s couch was saying. The man was Lester Billings from Waterbury, Connecticut. According to the history taken from Nurse Vickers, he was twenty-eight, employed by an industrial firm in New…

Of course I shall not pretend to consider it any matter for wonder, that the extraordinary case of M. Valdemar has excited discussion. It would have been a miracle had it not-especially under the circumstances. Through the desire of all parties concerned…

There was not a breath of air stirring; a heavy mist was lying over the river. It was like a layer of cotton placed on the water. The banks themselves were indistinct, hidden behind strange fogs. But day was breaking and the hill was becoming visible. In…

It is a northern country; they have cold weather, they have cold hearts. Cold; tempest; wild beasts in the forest. It is a hard life. Their houses are built of logs, dark and smoky within. There will be a crude icon of the virgin behind a guttering candle…

“ACH,” said the mouse, “the world gets narrower every day. At first it was so wide it was frightening; but I kept running and I was glad when I finally saw some walls far off to the left and right of me, but now those long walls are hurrying towards each…

On arriving in Moscow, I put up furtively at inconspicuous rooms in a side street near the Arbat and led the tiresome life of a recluse – from meeting to meeting with her. During those days she visited me just three times, and each time she came in hurriedly…

WHEN I turned the corner of our avenue that Saturday afternoon, I saw Fido sitting on the lawn in front of the house (instead of galloping forward in his customary way) and looking sorrowfully toward me from behind our hydrangea bush. With a vague feeling…

The marriage of Maitre Simon Lebrument with Mademoiselle Jeanne Cordier was a surprise to no one. Maitre Lebrument had bought out the practice of Maitre Papillon; naturally, he had to have money to pay for it; and Mademoiselle Jeanne Cordier had three hundred…

A rather small young man sat by the window of a pretty seaside cottage trying to persuade himself that he was reading the newspaper. It was about half-past eight in the morning. Outside, the glory roses hung in the morning sunshine like little bowls of fire…

"The table was set for one hundred persons. The magnificence of it exceeded all expectations. The remotest provinces were represented at this feast of the gods by the costliest gifts. The golden sturgeon from Sheksna and the silver pheasant from the Caucasian…

THE members of the Society of Infallible Detectives were just sitting around and being socially infallible, in their rooms in Fakir Street, when President Holmes strode in. He was much saturniner than usual, and the others at once deduced there was something…

The two cottages stood beside each other at the foot of a hill near a little seashore resort. The two peasants labored hard on the unproductive soil to rear their little ones, and each family had four. Before the adjoining doors a whole troop of urchins played…

The incident occurred in February, 1969, in Cambridge, north of Boston. I didn’t write about it then because my foremost objective at the time was to put it out of my mind, so as not to go insane. Now, in 1972, it strikes me that if I do write about what…

It was blazing hot outside and inside the weather-board and iron shanty at Dead Dingo, a place on the “cleared road”, where there was a pub and a police station, and which was sometimes called “Roasted” and other times “Potted” Dingo – nicknames suggested…

Unhappy is he to whom the memories of childhood bring only fear and sadness. Wretched is he who looks back upon lone hours in vast and dismal chambers with brown hangings and maddening rows of antique books, or upon awed watches in twilight groves of grotesque…

“Corporal PRISHIBEEV! You are accused of insulting, on the third of September instant, by word and deed, the village constable Zhigin, the parish elder Alyapov, the local militiaman Efimov, the witnesses Ivanov and Gavrilov, and another six peasants—the first…

I got another barber that comes over from Carterville and helps me out Saturdays, but the rest of the time I can get along all right alone. You can see for yourself that this ain’t no New York City and besides that, the most of the boys works all day and…