Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:26:21

Excerpt #1, from Anne of the Island, by L. M. Montgomery

…the grave, on which all the main facts of his history are recorded. For the most part no great art or skill was lavished on those old tombstones. The larger number are of roughly chiselled brown or gray native stone, and only in a few cases is there any attempt at ornamentation. Some are adorned with skull and cross-bones, and this grizzly decoration is frequently coupled with a cherub’s head. Many are prostrate and in ruins. Into almost all Time’s tooth has been gnawing, until some inscriptions have been completely effaced, and others can only be deciphered with difficulty. The graveyard is very full and very bowery, for it is surrounded and intersected by rows of elms and willows, beneath whose shade the sleepers must lie very dreamlessly, forever crooned to by the winds and leaves over them, and quite undisturbed by the clamor of traffic just beyond. Anne took the first of many rambles in Old St. John’s the next afternoon. She and Priscilla had gone to Redmond in the forenoon and registered as students, after which there was nothing more to do that day. The girls gladly made their escape, for it was not exhilarating to be surrounded by crowds of strangers, most of whom had a rather alien appearance, as if not quite sure where they belonged. The “freshettes” stood about in detached groups of two or three, looking askance at each other; the “freshies,” wiser in their day and…

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Excerpt #2, from Planet of the Damned, by Harry Harrison

…Dis. Brion threw it aside, along with the clothing. Nude, pierced, bloody, the corpse lay before him. In every external physical detail the man was human. Brion’s theory was becoming more preposterous with each discovery. If the magter weren’t alien, how could he explain their complete lack of emotions? A mutation of some kind? He didn’t see how it was possible. There had to be something alien about the dead man before him. The future of a world rested on this flimsy hope. If Telt’s lead to the bombs proved to be false, there would be no hope left at all. Lea was still unconscious when he looked at her again. There was no way of telling how long the coma would last. He would probably have to waken her out of it, but he didn’t want to do it too early. It took an effort to control his impatience, even though he knew the drug needed time in which to work. He finally decided on at least a minimum of an hour before he should try to disturb her. That would be noon–twelve hours before destruction. One thing he should do was to get in touch with Professor-Commander Krafft. Maybe it was being defeatist, but he had to make sure that they had a way off this planet if the mission failed. Krafft had installed a relay radio that would forward calls from his personal…

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Excerpt #3, from The Principles of Biology, Volume 1 (of 2), by Herbert Spencer

…another’s spheres of existence. Of the ways in which they do this the commonest is invasion of territory. That tendency which we see in the human races, to overrun and occupy one another’s lands, as well as the lands inhabited by inferior creatures, is a tendency exhibited by all classes of organisms in various ways. Among them, as among mankind, there are permanent conquests, temporary occupations, and occasional raids. Every spring an inroad is made into the area which our own birds occupy, by birds from the South; and every winter the fieldfares of the North come to share the hips and haws of our hedges, and thus entail on our native birds some mortality. Besides these regularly-recurring incursions there are irregular ones; as of locusts into countries not usually visited by them, or of certain rodents which from time to time swarm into areas adjacent to their own. Every now and then an incursion ends in permanent settlement–perhaps in conquest over indigenous species. Within these few years an American water-weed has taken possession of our ponds and rivers, and to some extent supplanted native water-weeds. Of animals may be named a small kind of red ant, having habits allied to those of tropical ants, which has of late overrun many houses in London. The rat, which must have taken to infesting ships within these few centuries, furnishes a good illustration of the readiness of animals to occupy new places that are available. And the way in which vessels visiting India are cleared of the European cockroach by…

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Excerpt #4, from The Radio Amateur’s Hand Book, by A. Frederick Collins

…connect the end of the lead with the free terminal of the filament of the second amplifier tube. Next shunt a potentiometer around the A battery and connect the third post, which connects with the sliding contact, to the negative or zinc pole of a B battery, then connect the positive or carbon pole of it to the negative or zinc pole of a second B battery and the positive or carbon pole of the latter with one end of the primary coil of the second audio frequency transformer and the other end of it to the plate of the first amplifying tube. Run the lead on over and connect it to one of the terminals of the second fixed condenser and the other terminal of this with the plate of the second amplifying tube. Then shunt the headphones around the condenser. Finally connect one end of the tickler coil of the tuner with the plate of the detector tube and connect the other end of the tickler to one end of the primary coil of the first audio frequency transformer and the other end of it to the wire that connects the two B batteries together. CHAPTER XI SHORT WAVE REGENERATIVE RECEIVING SETS A short wave receiving set is one that will receive a range of…

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Excerpt #5, from The Sea

…ARKADINA. Of course I have some money, but I am an actress and my expenses for dress alone are enough to bankrupt me. SORIN. You are a dear, and I am very fond of you, indeed I am. But something is the matter with me again. [He staggers] I feel giddy. [He leans against the table] I feel faint, and all. ARKADINA. [Frightened ] Peter! [She tries to support him] Peter! dearest! [She calls] Help! Help! TREPLIEFF and MEDVIEDENKO come in; TREPLIEFF has a bandage around his head. ARKADINA. He is fainting! SORIN. I am all right. [He smiles and drinks some water] It is all over now. TREPLIEFF. [To his mother] Don’t be frightened, mother, these attacks are not dangerous; my uncle often has them now. [To his uncle] You must go and lie down, Uncle. SORIN. Yes, I think I shall, for a few minutes. I am going to Moscow all the same, but I shall lie down a bit before I start. [He goes out leaning on his cane.] MEDVIEDENKO. [Giving him his arm] Do you know this riddle? On four legs in the morning; on two legs at noon; and on three legs in the evening? SORIN. [Laughing] Yes, exactly, and on one’s back at night. Thank you, I…

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Excerpt #6, from Anticipations, by H. G. Wells

…City of London was half as dense again as that of any district, even of the densest “slum” districts, to-day. [17] Be it noted that the phrase “available area” is used, and various other modifying considerations altogether waived for the present. [18] Their temporary suppression of the specialist is indeed carried to such an extent that one may see even such things as bronze ornaments and personal jewellery listed in Messrs. Omnium’s list, and stored in list designs and pattern; and their assistants will inform you that their brooch, No. 175, is now “very much worn,” without either blush or smile. [19] The present system of charging parcels by the pound, when goods are sold by the pound, and so getting a miserly profit in the packing, is surely one of the absurdest disregards of the obvious it is possible to imagine. III DEVELOPING SOCIAL ELEMENTS The mere differences in thickness of population and facility of movement that have been discussed thus far, will involve consequences remarkable enough, upon the facies of the social body; but there are certain still broader features of the social order of the coming time, less intimately related to transit, that it will be convenient to discuss at this stage. They are essentially outcomes of the enormous development of…

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Excerpt #7, from In the Sargasso Sea, by Thomas A. Janvier

…a humming sound filling the air about me like the murmur of a far-away crowd. Now and then an angry bout would spring up suddenly between two or three of them; and in a moment they would be fighting together, and would keep at it until one of their stern officers was upon them with blows right and left with his fists or with the butt of his pistol or with the pommel of his sword–and so would scatter the rough brutes, scowling, and as it seemed uttering growls such as beasts lashed by their keepers would give forth. And at other times they would seem to be fighting with some enemy–serving at their guns stripped half-naked, with handkerchiefs knotted about their heads, and with the grime of powder-smoke upon their bare flesh and so blackening their faces as to give their gleaming eyes a still more savage look; falling dead or wounded with their blood streaming out upon the deck and making slimy pools in which a man running sometimes would slip and go down headlong–and would get up, with a laugh and a curse, only in another moment to drop for good as a musket-ball struck him or as a round-shot sliced him in two; and all of them with a savage joy in their work, and going at it with a lust for blood that made them delight in it–and take no more thought than any other fighting brutes would take of guarding their own lives….

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Excerpt #8, from Tales from a Rolltop Desk, by Christopher Morley

…“Oh, well, that’s Mr. Bennett, I’m sure,” said Elaine. “I’ll call up the police right away, and see if they can do anything. My nice coffee-urn! Why, it’s the finest thing we had in the whole house.” Before the police arrived, Mrs. Bennett herself took a careful look round the outside of the house. She found nothing unusual except a cigar butt lying on the ground near the broken window. She picked it up gingerly. A section of the gilt band still adhered to the wrapper. She could read the name, Florona. She carried the fragment into the cellar and threw it into the ash-can. Two policemen arrived shortly, examined everything, and asked innumerable questions. Mrs. Bennett gave them a careful description of the coffee-urn. They departed, promising to do everything possible to trace it. They said that a piece of silver so large and unusual would not be hard to locate with the aid of the pawnbrokers. Then Mrs. Bennett went upstairs to think. It seemed very strange that the thieves should take the urn and nothing else, when there were other pieces of silver beside it on the sideboard. She called up Harry, who was horrified to learn of the loss. He had slept right through the night without hearing a sound. He offered to come home if he could do anything to help; but she would not hear of it. That night Mrs. Bennett had a special little dinner waiting for her…

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Excerpt #9, from The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe

…first came on shore, without necessaries of life, or necessaries to supply and procure them? “Particularly,” said I, aloud (though to myself), “what should I have done without a gun, without ammunition, without any tools to make anything, or to work with, without clothes, bedding, a tent, or any manner of covering?” and that now I had all these to sufficient quantity, and was in a fair way to provide myself in such a manner as to live without my gun, when my ammunition was spent: so that I had a tolerable view of subsisting, without any want, as long as I lived; for I considered from the beginning how I would provide for the accidents that might happen, and for the time that was to come, even not only after my ammunition should be spent, but even after my health and strength should decay. I confess I had not entertained any notion of my ammunition being destroyed at one blast—I mean my powder being blown up by lightning; and this made the thoughts of it so surprising to me, when it lightened and thundered, as I observed just now. And now being about to enter into a melancholy relation of a scene of silent life, such, perhaps, as was never heard of in the world before, I shall take it from its beginning, and continue it in its order. It was by my account the 30th of September, when, in the manner as above said, I first set foot upon this horrid island; when the sun, being to…

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Excerpt #10, from The War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells

…some many feet across. I did not know what these were—there was no time for scrutiny—and I put a more horrible interpretation on them than they deserved. Here again on the Surrey side were black dust that had once been smoke, and dead bodies—a heap near the approach to the station; but we had no glimpse of the Martians until we were some way towards Barnes. We saw in the blackened distance a group of three people running down a side street towards the river, but otherwise it seemed deserted. Up the hill Richmond town was burning briskly; outside the town of Richmond there was no trace of the Black Smoke. Then suddenly, as we approached Kew, came a number of people running, and the upperworks of a Martian fighting-machine loomed in sight over the housetops, not a hundred yards away from us. We stood aghast at our danger, and had the Martian looked down we must immediately have perished. We were so terrified that we dared not go on, but turned aside and hid in a shed in a garden. There the curate crouched, weeping silently, and refusing to stir again. But my fixed idea of reaching Leatherhead would not let me rest, and in the twilight I ventured out again. I went through a shrubbery, and along a passage beside a big house standing in its own grounds, and so emerged upon the road towards Kew. The curate I left in the shed, but…

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Excerpt #11, from Caesar and Cleopatra, by Bernard Shaw

…Thrust your knife into the dog’s throat, Apollodorus. (The chivalrous Apollodorus laughingly shakes his head; breaks ground away from the sentinel towards the palace; and lowers his point.) SENTINEL (struggling vainly). Curse on you! Let me go. Help ho! FTATATEETA (lifting him from the ground). Stab the little Roman reptile. Spit him on your sword. A couple of Roman soldiers, with a centurion, come running along the edge of the quay from the north end. They rescue their comrade, and throw off Ftatateeta, who is sent reeling away on the left hand of the sentinel. CENTURION (an unattractive man of fifty, short in his speech and manners, with a vine wood cudgel in his hand). How now? What is all this? FTATATEETA (to Apollodorus). Why did you not stab him? There was time! APOLLODORUS. Centurion: I am here by order of the Queen to—- CENTURION (interrupting him). The Queen! Yes, yes: (to the sentinel) pass him in. Pass all these bazaar people in to the Queen, with their goods. But mind you pass no one out that you have not passed in–not even the Queen herself. SENTINEL. This old woman is dangerous: she is as strong as three men….

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Excerpt #12, from You no longer count, by René Boylesve

…who knew my husband?" What was it that kept her from uttering it? She could not have told how it was, but she had not so much as pronounced her husband’s name. A weight had seemed to be crushing her during the whole time. She had felt overwhelmed by the new horror. The worst was that when at last she reached home she felt ashamed to weep for her own sorrow. The fact also that all that human flesh had been ravaged for the same cause; that of those unhappy ones who were groaning, not one thought of blaming the cause; and that other fact that one part of humanity, upright and able, was bending with help over the other, gasping part, forced her to gather up her disordered thoughts and in the midst of her confusion to exclaim: “Something is changed!” That evening, at six o’clock, instead of wandering about the streets in heavy sadness, she went, as Mme. de Calouas had begged her to do, to evening prayer at the Chapel of the Orphanage, in which the Red Cross was now installed. It was a convent chapel, reserved for nuns, the public being admitted only behind a sort of screen of carved wood, through which could be seen the orderly rows of Sisters and orphans, the altar and the lights. She found herself in the midst of valid soldiers; that is to say, such as by one means or another could move from place to…

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