Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:25:45

Excerpt #1, from The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century, by Clarence Henry Haring

…Pirates, as persuading themselves they should find some provisions wherewith to satiate their hunger, which was very great. Being come unto the place, they found nobody in it, the Spaniards who were there not long before being every one fled, and leaving nothing behind unless it were a small number of leather bags, all empty, and a few crumbs of bread scattered upon the ground where they had eaten.[300] Being angry at this misfortune, they pulled down a few little huts which the Spaniards had made, and afterwards fell to eating the leathern bags, as being desirous to afford something to the ferment of their stomachs, which now was grown so sharp that it did gnaw their very bowels, having nothing else to prey upon. Thus they made a huge banquet upon those bags of leather, which doubtless had been more grateful unto them, if divers quarrels had not risen concerning who should have the greatest share. By the circumference of the place they conjectured five hundred Spaniards, more or less, had been there. And these, finding no victuals, they were now infinitely desirous to meet, intending to devour some of them rather than perish. Whom they would certainly in that occasion have roasted or boiled, to satisfy their famine, had they been able to take them. "After they had feasted themselves with those pieces of leather, they quitted the place, and marched farther on, till they came about night to another post called Torna Munni. Here they found another ambuscade, but…

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Excerpt #2, from English Fairy Tales, by Joseph Jacobs

…it was a leg of the sofa that he had put out. So Tommy Grimes ran home, and he never went round the corner again till he was old enough to go alone. WHITTINGTON AND HIS CAT In the reign of the famous King Edward III. there was a little boy called Dick Whittington, whose father and mother died when he was very young. As poor Dick was not old enough to work, he was very badly off; he got but little for his dinner, and sometimes nothing at all for his breakfast; for the people who lived in the village were very poor indeed, and could not spare him much more than the parings of potatoes, and now and then a hard crust of bread. Now Dick had heard a great many very strange things about the great city called London; for the country people at that time thought that folks in London were all fine gentlemen and ladies; and that there was singing and music there all day long; and that the streets were all paved with gold. One day a large waggon and eight horses, all with bells at their heads, drove through the village while Dick was standing by the sign-post. He thought that this waggon must be going to the fine town of London; so he took courage, and asked the waggoner to let him walk with him by the side of the waggon. As soon as the waggoner heard that poor Dick had…

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Excerpt #3, from Short Stories for High Schools, by Rosa Mary Redding Mikels

…his followers, who otherwise might never have heard that treasure had been concealed at all, and, who, busying themselves in vain, because unguided, attempts to regain it, had given first birth, and then universal currency, to the reports which are now so common. Have you ever heard of any important treasure being unearthed along the coast?” “Never.” “But that Kidd’s accumulations were immense is well known. I took it for granted, therefore, that the earth still held them; and you will scarcely be surprised when I tell you that I felt a hope, nearly amounting to certainty, that the parchment so strangely found involved a lost record of the place of deposit.” “But how did you proceed?” “I held the vellum again to the fire, after increasing the heat, but nothing appeared. I now thought it possible that the coating of dirt might have something to do with the failure; so I carefully rinsed the parchment by pouring warm water over it, and, having done this, I placed it in a tin pan, with the skull downwards, and put the pan upon a furnace of lighted charcoal. In a few minutes, the pan having become thoroughly heated, I removed the slip, and, to my inexpressible joy, found it spotted, in several places, with what appeared to be figures arranged in lines. Again I placed it in the pan, and suffered it to…

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Excerpt #4, from The Subterranean World, by G. Hartwig

…age. Thus we read in the Bible that one of the rivers flowing from Paradise ‘compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold, and the gold of that land is good.’ Gold is also mentioned among the riches of Abraham, and when the patriarch’s servant met Rebekah at the fountain of Nahor, he presented the damsel with a ‘golden earring of half a shekel weight, and two bracelets for her hands of ten shekels weight of gold,’ undoubtedly the first trinkets on record. The mythical history of Greece has likewise been thought to point to a very ancient knowledge of gold, and the story of the search for the ‘Golden Fleece’ has by some been explained as an expedition undertaken in quest of the metal; for the use of sheepskins or woollen coverings, to collect and retain the minutest particles of gold during the operation of washing, is common in many auriferous countries. From the great value which the ancient nations attached to its possession, gold was largely used for the decoration of their temples, and many of their idols were made of gold. Such, among others, was the image of Belus, seated on a golden throne in the great temple of Babylon; that of Apollo at Delphi, and the magnificent statue of the Olympian Zeus, composed, by the hand of Phidias, of ivory and gold, and still less remarkable for its costly materials than for the consummate beauty of its workmanship. Pliny relates that a massive golden statue of the goddess Anaitis was…

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Excerpt #5, from History for ready reference, Volume 3 (of 6), Greece to Nibelungen, by J. N. Larned

…volume 2, page 200._ COMMON LAW: A. D. 1499 (circa). Copyright. "From about the period of the introduction of printing into this country, that is to say, towards the end of the fifteenth century, English authors had, in accordance with the opinion of the best legal authorities, a right to the Copyright in their works, according to the Common Law of the Realm, or a right to their ‘copy’ as it was anciently called, but there is no direct evidence of the right until 1558. The Charter of the Stationers’ Company, which to this day is charged with the Registration of Copyright, was granted by Philip and Mary in 1556. The avowed object of this corporation was to prevent the spread of the Reformation. Then there followed the despotic jurisdiction of the Star Chamber over the publication of books, and the Ordinances and the Licensing Act of Charles II. At the commencement of the 18th century there was no statutory protection of Copyright. Unrestricted piracy was rife. The existing remedies of a bill in equity and an action at law were too cumbrous and expensive to protect the authors’ Common Law rights, and authors petitioned Parliament for speedier and…

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Excerpt #6, from Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson

…of the day, chilled me through my jacket. The HISPANIOLA still lay where she had anchored; but, sure enough, there was the Jolly Roger–the black flag of piracy–flying from her peak. Even as I looked, there came another red flash and another report that sent the echoes clattering, and one more round-shot whistled through the air. It was the last of the cannonade. I lay for some time watching the bustle which succeeded the attack. Men were demolishing something with axes on the beach near the stockade–the poor jolly-boat, I afterwards discovered. Away, near the mouth of the river, a great fire was glowing among the trees, and between that point and the ship one of the gigs kept coming and going, the men, whom I had seen so gloomy, shouting at the oars like children. But there was a sound in their voices which suggested rum. At length I thought I might return towards the stockade. I was pretty far down on the low, sandy spit that encloses the anchorage to the east, and is joined at half-water to Skeleton Island; and now, as I rose to my feet, I saw, some distance further down the spit and rising from among low bushes, an isolated rock, pretty high, and peculiarly white in colour. It occurred to me that this might be the white rock of which Ben Gunn had spoken and that some day or other a boat might be wanted and I should know where to look for one….

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Excerpt #7, from The Man with Two Left Feet, and Other Stories, by P. G. Wodehouse

…The statement that it meant everything to him insinuated itself so frequently into his conversation that it weighed on Elizabeth’s mind like a burden, and by degrees she found herself giving the play place of honour in her thoughts over and above her own little ventures. With this stupendous thing hanging in the balance, it seemed almost wicked of her to devote a moment to wondering whether the editor of an evening paper, who had half promised to give her the entrancing post of Adviser to the Lovelorn on his journal, would fulfil that half-promise. At an early stage in their friendship the young man had told her the plot of the piece; and if he had not unfortunately forgotten several important episodes and had to leap back to them across a gulf of one or two acts, and if he had referred to his characters by name instead of by such descriptions as ‘the fellow who’s in love with the girl–not what’s-his-name but the other chap’–she would no doubt have got that mental half-Nelson on it which is such a help towards the proper understanding of a four-act comedy. As it was, his precis had left her a little vague; but she said it was perfectly splendid, and he said did she really think so. And she said yes, she did, and they were both happy. Rehearsals seemed to prey on his spirits a good deal. He attended them with the pathetic regularity of the young dramatist, but they appeared…

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Excerpt #8, from The Time Machine, by H. G. Wells

…animals—and how few they are—gradually by selective breeding; now a new and better peach, now a seedless grape, now a sweeter and larger flower, now a more convenient breed of cattle. We improve them gradually, because our ideals are vague and tentative, and our knowledge is very limited; because Nature, too, is shy and slow in our clumsy hands. Some day all this will be better organised, and still better. That is the drift of the current in spite of the eddies. The whole world will be intelligent, educated, and co-operating; things will move faster and faster towards the subjugation of Nature. In the end, wisely and carefully we shall readjust the balance of animal and vegetable life to suit our human needs. “This adjustment, I say, must have been done, and done well; done indeed for all Time, in the space of Time across which my machine had leapt. The air was free from gnats, the earth from weeds or fungi; everywhere were fruits and sweet and delightful flowers; brilliant butterflies flew hither and thither. The ideal of preventive medicine was attained. Diseases had been stamped out. I saw no evidence of any contagious diseases during all my stay. And I shall have to tell you later that even the processes of putrefaction and decay had been profoundly affected by these changes. “Social triumphs, too, had been effected. I saw mankind housed in…

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Excerpt #9, from Santa Fé’s Partner, by Thomas A. Janvier

…in her own funny way–telling him she did just dote on stage-drivers, and if he really wanted to please her he’d take Hill’s job regular; and leading the boys up to him and introducing him, lady-like, as “the hold-up hero”; and asking him to please to tell her all about that fourteen-foot road-agent he’d killed; and just rubbing the whole thing in on him every way she knowed how. Before the Hen got done with him he was about the sickest man, Hart’s nephew was, you ever seen! But I guess it learned him quite a little about how when he talked to ladies he’d better be polite. Fun wasn’t no name that night for that Hen! She kept on wearing her Mexican clothes, and she did look real down cute in ’em; and she’d got a God-forsaken old rusty pepper-box six-shooter from somewheres, and went flourishing it about saying it was what she’d held up the coach with; and in between times, when she wasn’t deviling Hart’s nephew, she’d go round the room drawing beads on the boys with her pepper-box, and making out she was dangerous by putting her big black beard on, and standing up in attitudes so the boys might see, she said, how road-agenty she looked and bad and bold! Why, the Hen did act so comical that night all hands pretty near died with their laugh! IV SANTA FÉ CHARLEY’S KINDERGARTEN…

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Excerpt #10, from Seven Short Plays, by Lady Gregory

…as to strength, his muscles are as hard as that board (slaps barrel). Sergeant: Is he as bad as that? Man: He is then. Sergeant: Do you tell me so? Man: There was a poor man in our place, a sergeant from Ballyvaughan.—It was with a lump of stone he did it. Sergeant: I never heard of that. Man: And you wouldn’t, sergeant. It’s not everything that happens gets into the papers. And there was a policeman in plain clothes, too…. It is in Limerick he was…. It was after the time of the attack on the police barrack at Kilmallock…. Moonlight … just like this … waterside…. Nothing was known for certain. Sergeant: Do you say so? It’s a terrible county to belong to. Man: That’s so, indeed! You might be standing there, looking out that way, thinking you saw him coming up this side of the quay (points), and he might be coming up this other side (points), and he’d be on you before you knew where you were. Sergeant: It’s a whole troop of police they ought to put here to stop a man like that. Man: But if you’d like me to stop with you, I could be looking down…

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Excerpt #11, from The call of Cthulhu, by H. P. Lovecraft

…Voodoo orgies multiply in Haiti, and African outposts report ominous mutterings. American officers in the Philippines find certain tribes bothersome about this time, and New York policemen are mobbed by hysterical Levantines on the night of March 22-23. The west of Ireland, too, is full of wild rumor and legendry, and a fantastic painter named Ardois-Bonnot hangs a blasphemous Dream Landscape in the Paris spring salon of 1926. And so numerous are the recorded troubles in insane asylums that only a miracle can have stopped the medical fraternity from noting strange parallelisms and drawing mystified conclusions. A weird bunch of cuttings, all told; and I can at this date scarcely envisage the callous rationalism with which I set them aside. But I was then convinced that young Wilcox had known of the older matters mentioned by the professor. 2. The Tale of Inspector Legrasse. The older matters which had made the sculptor’s dream and bas-relief so significant to my uncle formed the subject of the second half of his long manuscript. Once before, it appears, Professor Angell had seen the hellish outlines of the nameless monstrosity, puzzled over the unknown hieroglyphics, and heard the ominous syllables which can be rendered only as “Cthulhu”; and all this in so stirring and horrible a connection that it is small wonder he pursued young Wilcox with queries…

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Excerpt #12, from The Grenadier Guards in the Great War of 1914 to 1918, Vol. 3 of 3, by Ponsonby

…24513 Swinbourne, S. J. 30379 Swinfen, H. 15572 Swinscoe, A. 11617 Symonds, G. H. 23273 Symonds, F. C. 20169 Talbot, F. 10944 Talbot, J. 25104 Tall, W. H. 26005 Tallon, T. 19702 Talner, A. 21738 Tandy, F. 20409 Tanner, F. 20452 Tansley, F. 25473 Tarbard, V. 18903 Targitt, W. G. 23100 Tasker. J. T. 25128 Tattersall, W. 10935 Taylor, A. 13392 Taylor, A. 16155 Taylor, A. 24489 Taylor, A….

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