Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

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Excerpt #1, from War and Peace, by graf Leo Tolstoy

…intended for you too. Give them to the woman whom you shall honor most of all. This gift will be a pledge of your purity of heart to her whom you select to be your worthy helpmeet in Masonry.” And after a pause, he added: “But beware, dear brother, that these gloves do not deck hands that are unclean.” While the Grand Master said these last words it seemed to Pierre that he grew embarrassed. Pierre himself grew still more confused, blushed like a child till tears came to his eyes, began looking about him uneasily, and an awkward pause followed. This silence was broken by one of the brethren, who led Pierre up to the rug and began reading to him from a manuscript book an explanation of all the figures on it: the sun, the moon, a hammer, a plumb line, a trowel, a rough stone and a squared stone, a pillar, three windows, and so on. Then a place was assigned to Pierre, he was shown the signs of the Lodge, told the password, and at last was permitted to sit down. The Grand Master began reading the statutes. They were very long, and Pierre, from joy, agitation, and embarrassment, was not in a state to understand what was being read. He managed to follow only the last words of the statutes and these remained in his mind. “In our temples we recognize no other distinctions,” read the Grand Master, “but those between virtue and vice. Beware of making any distinctions which may infringe equality. Fly to a brother’s aid…

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Excerpt #2, from With Lawrence in Arabia, by Lowell Thomas

…the columns of which still remain one of the wonders of the world. Still unsatisfied, Allenby’s armored cars and Feisal’s racing camelmen under the dashing Arab general, Nuri Said, swept on north until they had driven the Turks out of Aleppo, one of the most important strategical points in the East, so far as the Great War was concerned. And then, if the Turks had not put down their arms, they would have been driven north into the Golden Horn. When Allenby and Lawrence captured Damascus and Aleppo and then cut the Berlin-to-Bagdad Railway, the dream of the kaiser and the Junkers for a Mitteleuropa reaching from the Baltic to the Persian Gulf vanished into thin air! When Turkey threw in her lot with the kaiser, she asserted that she could mobilize an army of over a million men. But of that million some fifty per cent were of Arab stock, and from the outbreak of the Arabian revolution to the final collapse of Turkey it is estimated that approximately four hundred thousand of them deserted! The phenomenal number of desertions was due mainly to two factors: the Arab Nationalist propaganda which Lawrence and his associates had spread throughout the Near East, and the brilliant success of the Arabian revolution. In fact, the desertions alone more than repaid the Allies for backing the Shereefian cause….

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Excerpt #3, from Principles of politeness, and of knowing the world, by Chesterfield

…men, from a connexion in their pleasures only; a friendship too often attended with bad consequences. This companion of your pleasures, young and unexperienced, will probably, in the heat of convivial mirth, vow a perpetual friendship, and unfold himself to you without the least reserve; but new associations, change of fortune, or change of place, may soon break this ill-timed connexion, and an improper use may be made of it. Be one, if you will, in young companies, and bear your part like others, in all the social festivity of youth; nay, trust them with your innocent frolicks, but keep your serious matters to yourself; and if you must at any time make them known, let it be to some tried friend of great experience; and that nothing may tempt him to become your rival, let that friend be in a different walk of life from yourself. WERE I to hear a man making strong protestations and swearing to the truth of a thing, that is in itself probable and very likely to be, I should doubt his veracity; for when he takes such pains to make me believe it, it cannot be with a good design. THERE is a certain easiness or false modesty in most young people, that either makes them unwilling, or ashamed to refuse any thing that is asked of them. There is also an unguarded openness about them, that makes them the ready prey of the artful and designing. They are easily led away by the feigned friendships of a knave or a fool, and too rashly…

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Excerpt #4, from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

…allude to the occurrences of the preceding night. I walked with a quick pace, and we soon arrived at my college. I then reflected, and the thought made me shiver, that the creature whom I had left in my apartment might still be there, alive, and walking about. I dreaded to behold this monster; but I feared still more that Henry should see him. Entreating him therefore to remain a few minutes at the bottom of the stairs, I darted up towards my own room. My hand was already on the lock of the door before I recollected myself. I then paused; and a cold shivering came over me. I threw the door forcibly open, as children are accustomed to do when they expect a spectre to stand in waiting for them on the other side; but nothing appeared. I stepped fearfully in: the apartment was empty; and my bedroom was also freed from its hideous guest. I could hardly believe that so great a good-fortune could have befallen me; but when I became assured that my enemy had indeed fled, I clapped my hands for joy, and ran down to Clerval. We ascended into my room, and the servant presently brought breakfast; but I was unable to contain myself. It was not joy only that possessed me; I felt my flesh tingle with excess of sensitiveness, and my pulse beat rapidly. I was unable to remain for a single instant in the same place; I jumped over the chairs, clapped my hands, and laughed aloud. Clerval at first attributed my unusual spirits to joy on his arrival;…

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Excerpt #5, from The Last Stroke: A Detective Story, by Lawrence L. Lynch

…“I hope one of you has got a pistol,” she said, nervously, as they approached the stairs. “There’s no one up there, Mrs. Fry,” replied Ferrars. “Never fear.” But Mrs. Fry was not so positive. She closed the sitting-room door, all but the merest crack, and stood ready to clap it entirely shut at the first sound of attack and defence from the room above. Meantime Robert Brierly, who had led the way upstairs, placed a firm hand upon the key, turned it and softly opened the door. Then, for a moment, all three stood still at the threshold, gazing within. It was Francis Ferrars who spoke the first word, with his hand upon Robert Brierly’s shoulder, and his voice little more than a whisper. “Go inside, Brierly, quickly and quietly.” He gave the shoulder under his hand a quick, light, forward pressure, and instinctively, as it seemed, Brierly stepped across the threshold with the other two close at his heels, and, the moment they were inside the room, Ferrars turned and silently withdrew the key from the outer side, closed the door cautiously, and relocked it from within. “We will do well to dispense with Mrs. Fry, at least for the present,” he said, coolly. “It’s plain enough there has been mischief here. Mr. Brierly, you saw this room last night, for a moment.” Robert Brierly, who had dropped weakly upon a chair, stopped him with a…

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Excerpt #6, from Curiosities of the Sky, by Garrett Putman Serviss

…It is probable that the tracks of the sun and the others stars are also irregular, and possibly spiral, although, as far as can be at present determined, they appear to be practically straight. Every star, wherever it may be situated, is attracted by its fellow-stars from many sides at once, and although the force is minimized by distance, yet in the course of many ages its effects must become manifest. Looked at from another side, is there not something immensely stimulating and pleasing to the imagination in the idea of so stupendous a journey, which makes all of us the greatest of travelers? In the course of a long life a man is transported through space thirty thousand million miles; Halley’s Comet does not travel one-quarter as far in making one of its immense circuits. And there are adventures on this voyage of which we are just beginning to learn to take account. Space is full of strange things, and the earth must encounter some of them as it advances through the unknown. Many singular speculations have been indulged in by astronomers concerning the possible effects upon the earth of the varying state of the space that it traverses. Even the alternation of hot and glacial periods has sometimes been ascribed to this source. When tropical life flourished around the poles, as the remains in the rocks assure us, the needed high…

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Excerpt #7, from Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685

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Excerpt #8, from Old Greek Stories, by James Baldwin

…“No wonder that the maiden boasted of her skill,” said the people. And Jupiter himself nodded. Then Athena began to weave. And she took of the sunbeams that gilded the mountain top, and of the snowy fleece of the summer clouds, and of the blue ether of the summer sky, and of the bright green of the summer fields, and of the royal purple of the autumn woods,–and what do you suppose she wove? The web which she wove in the sky was full of enchanting pictures of flowers and gardens, and of castles and towers, and of mountain heights, and of men and beasts, and of giants and dwarfs, and of the mighty beings who dwell in the clouds with Jupiter. And those who looked upon it were so filled with wonder and delight, that they forgot all about the beautiful web which Arachne had woven. And Arachne herself was ashamed and afraid when she saw it; and she hid her face in her hands and wept. “Oh, how can I live,” she cried, “now that I must never again use loom or spindle or distaff?” And she kept on, weeping and weeping and weeping, and saying, “How can I live?” Then, when Athena saw that the poor maiden would never have any joy unless she were allowed to spin and weave, she took pity on her and…

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Excerpt #9, from A Week at Waterloo in 1815, by Lady Magdalene De Lancey

…“Our next care was to afford our tired warriors the much-required comforts of a razor and clean linen. We divided the party amongst us; and I was so much taken with one of these officers, that I urged him to accept such accommodation as my cabin and wardrobe afforded. He had come to us without one stitch of clothes beyond what he then wore, and these, to say the truth, were not in the best condition, at the elbows and other angular points of his frame. Let that pass–he was as fine a fellow as ever stepped; and I had much pride and pleasure in taking care of him during the passage.”We soon became great friends; but on reaching England we parted, and I never saw him more. Of course he soon lost sight of me, but his fame rose high, and, as I often read his name in the Gazettes during the subsequent campaigns in the Peninsula, I looked forward with a gradually increasing anxiety to the renewal of an acquaintance begun so auspiciously. At last I was gratified by a bright flash of hope in this matter, which went out, alas, as speedily as it came. Not quite six years after these events, I came home from India, in command of a sloop of war. Before entering the Channel, we fell in with a ship which gave us the first news of the battle of Waterloo, and spared us a precious copy of the Duke of Wellington’s despatch; and within five minutes after landing at Portsmouth, I met a near relation of my own….

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Excerpt #10, from David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens

…and–and in short you are for ever floored. As I am!’ To make his example the more impressive, Mr. Micawber drank a glass of punch with an air of great enjoyment and satisfaction, and whistled the College Hornpipe. I did not fail to assure him that I would store these precepts in my mind, though indeed I had no need to do so, for, at the time, they affected me visibly. Next morning I met the whole family at the coach office, and saw them, with a desolate heart, take their places outside, at the back. ‘Master Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘God bless you! I never can forget all that, you know, and I never would if I could.’ ‘Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘farewell! Every happiness and prosperity! If, in the progress of revolving years, I could persuade myself that my blighted destiny had been a warning to you, I should feel that I had not occupied another man’s place in existence altogether in vain. In case of anything turning up (of which I am rather confident), I shall be extremely happy if it should be in my power to improve your prospects.’ I think, as Mrs. Micawber sat at the back of the coach, with the children, and I stood in the road looking wistfully at them, a mist cleared from her eyes, and she saw what a little creature I really was….

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Excerpt #11, from The Blue Raider: A Tale of Adventure in the Southern Seas, by Herbert Strang

…a few more, and we took ’em by surprise, d’ ye see? Things will be different if all them Germans come up together; the odds ain’t even, Ephraim.’ ’True. I can bear ye out in that, Mr. Grinson. I don’t hold with fighting–not with guns.’ ’No more do I, ’cos I never shot a gun in my life. But this ’ere truncheon of old ugly mug’s is as good as a gun, if it gets a chance; which I mean to say firing off guns ain’t fighting at all, to my way of thinking. Darbies or sticks–that ’s all right; the best man wins; but with guns–why, any little mean feller as would give you best if you looked at him may do you in from a distance, hiding behind a haystack, p’r’aps, or up a tree. No, Ephraim, that ain’t fighting, not by a long chalk.’ ’And have you made your own will, Mr. Grinson?’ ’No, I ain’t, and I ’m sorry for you, me lad, for I meant to leave you my old parrot as sits on his perch in Mother Perkins’s parlour. You remember Mother Perkins, what said she ’d be glad to mind the bird, ’cos his language was so beautiful and reminded her of me?’ ’Ah! I wish I could speak like you, Mr. Grinson, but there–I never could do it, not if I tried ever so. But you don’t think you ’re going to be killed?’…

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Excerpt #12, from The King in Yellow, by Robert W. Chambers

…I thought this nonsense had gone far enough, so I brought the conversation back to Mr. Wilde; but he was scanning my face again in a manner highly offensive to me. “Mr. Wilde,” he repeated, “do you know what he did this afternoon? He came downstairs and nailed a sign over the hall door next to mine; it read:”MR. WILDE, REPAIRER OF REPUTATIONS. Third Bell. “Do you know what a Repairer of Reputations can be?” “I do,” I replied, suppressing the rage within. “Oh,” he said again. Louis and Constance came strolling by and stopped to ask if we would join them. Hawberk looked at his watch. At the same moment a puff of smoke shot from the casemates of Castle William, and the boom of the sunset gun rolled across the water and was re-echoed from the Highlands opposite. The flag came running down from the flag-pole, the bugles sounded on the white decks of the warships, and the first electric light sparkled out from the Jersey shore. As I turned into the city with Hawberk I heard Constance murmur something to Louis which I did not understand; but Louis whispered “My darling,” in…

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