Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:26:31

Excerpt #1, from David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens

…taken up. The result is destruction. The bolt is impending, and the tree must fall. ‘Let the wretched man who now addresses you, my dear Copperfield, be a beacon to you through life. He writes with that intention, and in that hope. If he could think himself of so much use, one gleam of day might, by possibility, penetrate into the cheerless dungeon of his remaining existence–though his longevity is, at present (to say the least of it), extremely problematical. ‘This is the last communication, my dear Copperfield, you will ever receive ‘From ‘The ‘Beggared Outcast, ‘WILKINS MICAWBER.’ I was so shocked by the contents of this heart-rending letter, that I ran off directly towards the little hotel with the intention of taking it on my way to Doctor Strong’s, and trying to soothe Mr. Micawber with a word of comfort. But, half-way there, I met the London coach with Mr. and Mrs. Micawber up behind; Mr. Micawber, the very picture of tranquil enjoyment, smiling at Mrs. Micawber’s conversation, eating walnuts out of a paper bag, with a bottle sticking out of his breast pocket. As they…

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Excerpt #2, from My Adventures During the Late War, by Donat Henchy O’Brien

…“English dogs,” and told us that we ought to be glad to get anything, and that the officers and public authorities were to blame for not placing us in a stable, or in some other place better appropriated to such brutes than an inn. If he had his will, he added, he would very soon treat us as such dogs deserved. In this strain he continued–a strain much less to our annoyance than his bad supper and extravagant charges. This specimen of the national feeling of France, at this period of excitement, shows that the French thought well of English bulldogs, at least with respect to their digesting a long bill of fare. The river Vilaine runs through Vitré, and the town seems supplied abundantly with fish. At daylight, on the 3rd of March, we quitted our polite and hospitable host, and were marched towards Laval, a tolerably large town on the Mayenne, renowned for its linen manufactories. We arrived about five in the evening, and were kept some time in the market-place, as a spectacle for the inhabitants, before we were shown to our respective places for the night. Some of the people who could speak English came to inform us that our gracious sovereign, George the Third, had been dead several days and that the result would be a general peace. We spurned at their intelligence, and, much to their annoyance, assured them that we did not give them the smallest credit….

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Excerpt #3, from The World’s Greatest Books — Volume 15 — Science, by J. A. Hammerton and Arthur Mee

…It is to Sir William Herschel that we owe the most complete analysis of the great variety of those objects which are generally classed as nebulæ. The great power of his telescopes disclosed the existence of an immense number of these objects before unknown, and showed them to be distributed over the heavens not by any means uniformly, but with a marked preference to a certain district extending over the northern pole of the galactic circle. In this region, occupying about one-eighth of the surface of the sphere, one-third of the entire nebulous contents of the heavens are situated. The resolvable nebulæ can, of course, only be considered as clusters either too remote, or consisting of stars intrinsically too faint, to affect us by their individual light, unless where two or three happen to be close enough to make a joint impression and give the idea of a point brighter than the rest. They are almost universally round or oval, their loose appendages and irregularities of form being, as it were, extinguished by the distance, and only the general figure of the condensed parts being discernible. It is under the appearance of objects of this character that all the greater globular clusters exhibit themselves in telescopes of insufficient optical power to show them well. The first impression which Halley and other early discoverers of…

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Excerpt #4, from Word Portraits of Famous Writers, by Mabel E. Wotton

…or pencase. The expression of the countenance is intelligent, but the fire of the eye seems quenched, and evident marks of advanced age appear on the countenance. This is incomparably the best portrait of Chaucer yet discovered.” [Sidenote: Nicholas’s Life of Chaucer. *] “There is a third portrait in a copy of the Canterbury Tales made about the reign of King Henry the Fifth, being within twenty years of the poet’s death, in the Lansdowne MS. 851. The figure, which is a small full-length, is placed in the initial letter of the volume. He is dressed in a long gray gown, with red stockings, and black shoes fastened with black sandals round the ankles. His head is bare, and the hair closely cut. In his right hand he holds an open book; and a knife or pencase, as in the other portraits, is attached to his vest.” Tradition asserts that Chaucer merged his own personality in that of the Poet in his Canterbury Tales. [Sidenote: Prologue to The Rime of Sire Thopas.] “… Our Hoste to japen he began, And than at erst he loked upon me, And saide thus; ‘What man art thou?’ quod he; ‘Thou lokest, as thou woldest finde an hare, For ever upon the ground I see thee stare….

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Excerpt #5, from Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries

…noise, they know that the two are together. They were at this time (October) laying their eggs. The female, where the soil is sandy, deposits them together, and covers them up with sand; but where the ground is rocky she drops them indiscriminately in any hole: Mr. Bynoe found seven placed in a fissure. The egg is white and spherical; one which I measured was seven inches and three-eighths in circumference, and therefore larger than a hen’s egg. The young tortoises, as soon as they are hatched, fall a prey in great numbers to the carrion-feeding buzzard. The old ones seem generally to die from accidents, as from falling down precipices: at least, several of the inhabitants told me that they never found one dead without some evident cause. The inhabitants believe that these animals are absolutely deaf; certainly they do not overhear a person walking close behind them. I was always amused when overtaking one of these great monsters, as it was quietly pacing along, to see how suddenly, the instant I passed, it would draw in its head and legs, and uttering a deep hiss fall to the ground with a heavy sound, as if struck dead. I frequently got on their backs, and then giving a few raps on the hinder part of their shells, they would rise up and walk away;—but I found it very difficult to keep my balance. The flesh of this animal is largely employed, both fresh…

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Excerpt #6, from Superstition in Medicine, by Hugo Magnus

…eye of the wolf, and, similarly, the left eye with the left eye of the wolf.” In photophobia (fear of light) “Wear as an amulet an eye which was taken from a live crab.”—Quintus Serenus Samonicus. Magnus, “Ophthalmology of the Ancients,” page 595. With pains of the eye the patient must, with a copper needle, put out the eyes of a green lizard caught on a Jupiter day, during a moon that is on the wane, in the month of September. The eyes must be worn in a golden capsule, as an amulet around the neck (Marcellus Empiricus. Magnus, “Ophthalmology of the Ancients,” page 602.) The above illustrations are surely sufficient to give the reader an idea of the medicine of the magicians. At the same time they show the great similarity which exists between these ancient magic cures and the sympathetic cures of our people at the present day. § 4. =Ancient Medicine and Magic.=—But how is it possible that the ancient physicians, and even the most enlightened minds among them, should not only have tolerated such a crass medical superstition as the above examples have shown us, but should even have incorporated them in their works? Incomprehensible, however, as this fact may appear to the modern practitioner, it becomes conceivable if the condition of antique medicine and of the medical profession of ancient times is considered….

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Excerpt #7, from Science and the modern world: Lowell Lectures 1925, by Alfred North Whitehead

…modal character of space, that the prehensive unity of A is the prehension into unity of the aspects of all other volumes from the standpoint of A. The shape of a volume is the formula from which the totality of its aspects can be derived. Thus the shape of a volume is more abstract than its aspects. It is evident that I can use Leibniz’s language, and say that every volume mirrors in itself every other volume in space. Exactly analogous considerations hold with respect to durations in time. An instant of time, without duration, is an imaginative logical construction. Also each duration of time mirrors in itself all temporal durations. But in two ways I have introduced a false simplicity. In the first place, I should have conjoined space and time, and conducted my explanation in respect to four-dimensional regions of space-time. I have nothing to add in the way of explanation. In your minds, substitute such four-dimensional regions for the spatial volumes of the previous explanations. Secondly, my explanation has involved itself in a vicious circle. For I have made the prehensive unity of the region A to consist of the prehensive unification of the modal presences in A of other regions. This difficulty arises because space-time cannot in reality be…

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Excerpt #8, from Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata, by H. G. Wells

…Section 71. In the very young rabbit, the limb bones, vertebral column, and many of the skull bones are simply plates and bars of cartilage; the future membrane bones, however are planned out in connective tissue. The development of the latter is simple, the connective tissue corpuscles functioning by a simple change of product as osteoblast. The development of the cartilage bones, however, is more complicated. Figure XVII., represents, in a diagrammatic way, the stages in the conversion of a cartilaginous bar to bone. To begin with, the previously sporadically-arranged (scattered anyhow) corpuscles (u.c.c.) are gathered into groups in single file, or in other words, into “columnar” groups (as at c.c.). The matrix becomes clouded with inorganic salts of lime, and it is then said to be calcified. This calcified cartilage then undergoes absorption– it must not be imagined for a moment that bone is calcified cartilage. Simultaneous with the formation of the cavities (s.) due to this absorption, connective tissue (p.c.i.) from the surrounding perichondrium (p.c.) grows into the ossifying* bar. It is from this connective tissue that the osteoblasts (o.b.) arise, and bone is built up. Throughout life a bone is continually being absorbed and reformed by the activity of the osteoblasts. An osteoblast engaged in the absorption instead of the formation of bone is called an osteoclast….

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Excerpt #9, from Just So Stories, by Rudyard Kipling

…when you find a Hedgehog you must drop him into the water and then he will uncoil, and when you catch a Tortoise you must scoop him out of his shell with your paw.’ And so that was all right, Best Beloved. One beautiful night on the banks of the turbid Amazon, Painted Jaguar found Stickly-Prickly Hedgehog and Slow-Solid Tortoise sitting under the trunk of a fallen tree. They could not run away, and so Stickly-Prickly curled himself up into a ball, because he was a Hedgehog, and Slow-Solid Tortoise drew in his head and feet into his shell as far as they would go, because he was a Tortoise; and so that was all right, Best Beloved. Do you see? ‘Now attend to me,’ said Painted Jaguar, ‘because this is very important. My mother said that when I meet a Hedgehog I am to drop him into the water and then he will uncoil, and when I meet a Tortoise I am to scoop him out of his shell with my paw. Now which of you is Hedgehog and which is Tortoise? because, to save my spots, I can’t tell.’ ‘Are you sure of what your Mummy told you?’ said Stickly-Prickly Hedgehog. ‘Are you quite sure? Perhaps she said that when you uncoil a Tortoise you must shell him out the water with a scoop, and when you paw a Hedgehog you must drop him on the shell.’ ‘Are you sure of what your Mummy told you?’ said Slow-and-Solid Tortoise. ‘Are you quite sure? Perhaps she said that when you water a…

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Excerpt #10, from The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe

…this, I must leave it just there where I found it, and not be able to launch it into the water? One would have thought I could not have had the least reflection upon my mind of my circumstances while I was making this boat, but I should have immediately thought how I should get it into the sea; but my thoughts were so intent upon my voyage over the sea in it, that I never once considered how I should get it off the land: and it was really, in its own nature, more easy for me to guide it over forty-five miles of sea than about forty-five fathoms of land, where it lay, to set it afloat in the water. I went to work upon this boat the most like a fool that ever man did who had any of his senses awake. I pleased myself with the design, without determining whether I was ever able to undertake it; not but that the difficulty of launching my boat came often into my head; but I put a stop to my inquiries into it by this foolish answer which I gave myself—“Let me first make it; I warrant I will find some way or other to get it along when it is done.” This was a most preposterous method; but the eagerness of my fancy prevailed, and to work I went. I felled a cedar-tree, and I question much whether Solomon ever had such a one for the building of the Temple of Jerusalem; it was five feet ten inches diameter at the lower part…

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Excerpt #11, from Hard Times, by Charles Dickens

…than I can tell. He was angry only one night, and that was not to me, but Merrylegs. Merrylegs;’ she whispered the awful fact; ‘is his performing dog.’ ‘Why was he angry with the dog?’ Louisa demanded. ‘Father, soon after they came home from performing, told Merrylegs to jump up on the backs of the two chairs and stand across them—which is one of his tricks. He looked at father, and didn’t do it at once. Everything of father’s had gone wrong that night, and he hadn’t pleased the public at all. He cried out that the very dog knew he was failing, and had no compassion on him. Then he beat the dog, and I was frightened, and said, “Father, father! Pray don’t hurt the creature who is so fond of you! O Heaven forgive you, father, stop!” And he stopped, and the dog was bloody, and father lay down crying on the floor with the dog in his arms, and the dog licked his face.’ Louisa saw that she was sobbing; and going to her, kissed her, took her hand, and sat down beside her. ‘Finish by telling me how your father left you, Sissy. Now that I have asked you so much, tell me the end. The blame, if there is any blame, is mine, not yours.’ ‘Dear Miss Louisa,’ said Sissy, covering her eyes, and sobbing yet; ‘I came home from the school that afternoon, and found poor father just come…

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Excerpt #12, from In the Sargasso Sea, by Thomas A. Janvier

…that it’s dancin’ a jig every time she pitches, and everything at rags an’ tatters of loose ends." “But the doctor?” I asked. “He says himself, sir, that he’s not dangerous, and I s’pose he ought to know. Th’ captain an’ th’ purser together, he orderin’ ‘em, have set his leg for him; and his head, he says, ’ll take care of itself, bein’ both thick an’ hard. But he’s worryin’ painful because he can’t look after you, sir, an’ th’ four or five others that got hurt in th’ storm. And I can tell you, sir,” the man went on, “that all th’ ship’s company, an’ th’ passengers on top of ‘em, are sick with sorrow that this has happened to him; for there’s not a soul ever comes near th’ doctor but loves him for his goodness, and we’d all be glad to break our own legs this minute if by that we could be mendin’ his!” The steward spoke very feelingly and earnestly, and with what he said I was in thorough sympathy; for the doctor’s care of me and his friendliness had won my heart to him, just as it had won to him the hearts of all on board. But there was comfort in knowing that he had got off with only a broken leg and a broken head from a peril that so easily might have been the death of him, and of that consolation I made the most–while the steward, who was a handy fellow and pretty well trained as a surgeon’s assistant, freshly bandaged my head for me…

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