Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:25:58

Excerpt #1, from Science in Short Chapters, by W. Mattieu Williams

…the resulting force and direction of national progress. It is the industry and skill of our workmen, the self-denial, the enterprise, and organizing ability of our capitalists, that has brought our coal so precociously to the surface and redirected for human advantage the buried energies of ancient sunbeams, while the fossil fuel of other lands has remained inert. The foreigner who would see a sample of the source of British prosperity must not seek for it in a geological museum or among our subterranean rocks; let him rather stand on the Surrey side of London Bridge from 8 to 10 A.M. and contemplate the march of one of the battalions of our metropolitan industrial army, as it pours forth in an unceasing stream from the railway stations towards the City. An analysis of the moral forces which produce the earnest faces and rapid steps of these rank and file and officers of commerce will reveal the true elements of British greatness, rather than any laboratory dissection of our coal or ironstone. Fuel and steam-power have been urgently required by all mankind. Englishmen supplied these wants. Their urgency was primary and they were first supplied, even though the bowels of the earth had to be penetrated in order to obtain them. In the present exceptional and precocious degree of exhaustion of our coal treasures, we have the…

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Excerpt #2, from Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

…this paper; and both one and the other were so great, that the renegade perceived that the paper had not been found by chance, but had been in reality addressed to someone of us, and he begged us, if what he suspected were the truth, to trust him and tell him all, for he would risk his life for our freedom; and so saying he took out from his breast a metal crucifix, and with many tears swore by the God the image represented, in whom, sinful and wicked as he was, he truly and faithfully believed, to be loyal to us and keep secret whatever we chose to reveal to him; for he thought and almost foresaw that by means of her who had written that paper, he and all of us would obtain our liberty, and he himself obtain the object he so much desired, his restoration to the bosom of the Holy Mother Church, from which by his own sin and ignorance he was now severed like a corrupt limb. The renegade said this with so many tears and such signs of repentance, that with one consent we all agreed to tell him the whole truth of the matter, and so we gave him a full account of all, without hiding anything from him. We pointed out to him the window at which the reed appeared, and he by that means took note of the house, and resolved to ascertain with particular care who lived in it. We agreed also that it would be advisable to answer the Moorish lady’s letter, and the renegade without a moment’s delay took down the words I dictated to…

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Excerpt #3, from The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, by Robert Louis Stevenson

…mansion, framed in carven oak, and covered by a low-pitched roof of thatch. To the back there stretched a garden, full of fruit-trees, alleys, and thick arbours, and overlooked from the far end by the tower of the abbey church. The house might contain, upon a pinch, the retinue of a greater person than Sir Daniel; but even now it was filled with hubbub. The court rang with arms and horseshoe-iron; the kitchens roared with cookery like a bees’-hive; minstrels, and the players of instruments, and the cries of tumblers, sounded from the hall. Sir Daniel, in his profusion, in the gaiety and gallantry of his establishment, rivalled with Lord Shoreby, and eclipsed Lord Risingham. All guests were made welcome. Minstrels, tumblers, players of chess, the sellers of relics, medicines, perfumes, and enchantments, and along with these every sort of priest, friar, or pilgrim, were made welcome to the lower table, and slept together in the ample lofts, or on the bare boards of the long dining-hall. On the afternoon following the wreck of the Good Hope, the buttery, the kitchens, the stables, the covered cartshed that surrounded two sides of the court, were all crowded by idle people, partly belonging to Sir Daniel’s establishment, and attired in his livery of murrey and blue, partly nondescript strangers attracted to the town by greed, and received…

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Excerpt #4, from History of biology, by L. C. Miall

…Some naturalists had conjectured that the living animals of the cochlites still exist at great depths in the sea, but Lister evidently thought otherwise. In the eighteenth century the belief that fossils are the remains of actual animals and plants more and more prevailed, the death and sealing up of the organisms being generally attributed to Noah’s flood. The occurrence of fossils on high mountains seemed so strong a confirmation of the Biblical narrative that Voltaire was driven to invent puerile explanations in order to dispel an inference so unwelcome to him. By the end of the century most naturalists accepted the doctrine that the great majority of fossils are the remains of organisms now extinct—a doctrine which was enforced by the remarkable discoveries of Cuvier (see p. 93). Nearly at the same time William Smith established the important truth that almost every fossil marks with considerable precision a particular stage in the earth’s history. Comparative Anatomy: the Study of Biological Types. Between 1660 and 1740 the scope of natural history became sensibly enlarged. System had been hitherto predominant, but the systems had been partial, treating the vertebrate animals and the flowering plants with as much detail as the state of knowledge allowed, but almost ignoring the invertebrates and the cryptogams. System was now studied…

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Excerpt #5, from The Prose Tales of Alexander Pushkin, by Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

…“Interesting!” said Troekouroff: “she knows him already. He taught her music for three whole weeks, and thank God, took nothing for his lessons.” Then Kirila Petrovitch began to relate the story of the pretended French tutor. Maria Kirilovna felt as if she were sitting upon needles. Vereisky, listening with deep attention, found it all very strange, and changed the subject of conversation. On returning from the drive, he ordered his carriage to be brought, and in spite of the earnest requests of Kirila Petrovitch to stay for the night, he took his departure immediately after tea. Before setting out, however, he invited Kirila Petrovitch to pay him a visit and to bring Maria Kirilovna with him, and the proud Troekouroff promised to do so’; for taking into consideration his princely dignity, his two stars, and the three thousand serfs belonging to his estate, he regarded Prince Vereisky in some degree as his equal. CHAPTER XIV. Two days after this visit, Kirila Petrovitch set out with his daughter for the abode of Prince Vereisky. On approaching Arbatova, he could not sufficiently admire the clean and cheerful-looking huts of the peasants, and the stone manor-house built in the style of an English castle. In front of the house stretched a close green lawn, upon which…

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Excerpt #6, 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 #7, from Poems, by Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete, by Emily Dickinson

…As if it tarried always; And yet its whole career Is shorter than a snake’s delay, And fleeter than a tare. ’T is vegetation’s juggler, The germ of alibi; Doth like a bubble antedate, And like a bubble hie. I feel as if the grass were pleased To have it intermit; The surreptitious scion Of summer’s circumspect. Had nature any outcast face, Could she a son contemn, Had nature an Iscariot, That mushroom, – it is him. XXVI. THE STORM. There came a wind like a bugle; It quivered through the grass, And a green chill upon the heat…

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Excerpt #8, from The Critique of Pure Reason, by Immanuel Kant

…admit the existence of a necessary being, and consider that there exists a necessity for a definite and final answer to these questions. In such a case, we cannot make a better choice, or rather we have no choice at all, but feel ourselves obliged to declare in favour of the absolute unity of complete reality, as the highest source of the possibility of things. But if there exists no motive for coming to a definite conclusion, and we may leave the question unanswered till we have fully weighed both sides—in other words, when we are merely called upon to decide how much we happen to know about the question, and how much we merely flatter ourselves that we know—the above conclusion does not appear to be so great advantage, but, on the contrary, seems defective in the grounds upon which it is supported. For, admitting the truth of all that has been said, that, namely, the inference from a given existence (my own, for example) to the existence of an unconditioned and necessary being is valid and unassailable; that, in the second place, we must consider a being which contains all reality, and consequently all the conditions of other things, to be absolutely unconditioned; and admitting too, that we have thus discovered the conception of a thing to which may be attributed, without inconsistency, absolute necessity—it does not follow from all this that the conception of a limited being, in which the supreme…

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Excerpt #9, from Japanese Literature, by Epiphanius Wilson

…I thought of coming to have a talk with you, but you see my health has been very bad of late, and I seldom appear at Court, having resigned my office. It would be impolitic to give cause to be talked about, and for it to be said that I stretch my old bones when private matters please me. Of course, I have no particular reason to fear the world; still, if there is anything dreadful, it is the demagogical world. When I see what unpleasant things are happening to you, which were no more probable than that the heavens should fall, I really feel that everything in the world is irksome to me." “Yes, what you say is indeed true,” replied Genji. "However, all things in the world–this or that–are the outcome of what we have done in our previous existence. Hence if we dive to the bottom we shall see that every misfortune is only the result of our own negligence. Examples of men’s losing the pleasures of the Court are, indeed, not wanting. Some of these cases may not go so far as a deprivation of titles and honors, as is mine;[106] still, if one thus banished from the pleasures of Court, behaves himself as unconcernedly as those to whom no such misfortune has happened, this would not be becoming. So, at least, it is considered in a foreign country. Repentance is what one ought to expect in such circumstances, and banishment to a far-off locality is a measure generally adopted for…

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Excerpt #10, from Classic French Course in English, by William Cleaver Wilkinson

…man, if we regard the course of his mortal life; but every thing is of value, every thing is important, if we contemplate the goal where it ends, and the account of it which he must render. Let us, therefore, meditate to-day, in presence of this altar and of this tomb, the first and the last utterance of the Preacher; of which the one shows the nothingness of man, the other establishes his greatness. Let this tomb convince us of our nothingness, provided that this altar, where is daily offered for us a Victim of price so great, teach us at the same time our dignity. The princess whom we weep shall be a faithful witness, both of the one and of the other. Let us survey that which a sudden death has taken away from her; let us survey that which a holy death has bestowed upon her. Thus shall we learn to despise that which she quitted without regret, in order to attach all our regard to that which she embraced with so much ardor,–when her soul, purified from all earthly sentiments, full of the heaven on whose border she touched, saw the light completely revealed. Such are the truths which I have to treat, and which I have deemed worthy to be proposed to so great a prince, and to the most illustrious assembly in the world. It will be felt how removed is the foregoing from any thing like an effort, on the preacher’s part, to startle his audience with the…

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Excerpt #11, from Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight, by Richard Morris

…Double felde, as hit falle3, & fele kyn fische3; [F] Summe baken in bred, summe brad on þe glede3, 892 [G] Summe soþen, summe in sewe, sauered with spyces, & ay sawes[3] so sle3e3, þat þe segge lyked. Þe freke calde hit a fest ful frely & ofte, [H] Ful hendely, quen alle þe haþeles re-hayted hym at one3 896 as hende; “Þis penaunce now 3e take, & eft hit schal amende;” [I] Þat mon much merþe con make. 900 For wyn in his hed þat wende. [Sidenote A: A chair is placed for Sir Gawayne before the fireplace.] [Sidenote B: A mantle of fine linen, richly embroidered, is thrown over him.] [Sidenote C: A table is soon raised,] [Sidenote D: and the knight, having washed, proceeded to meat.] [Sidenote E: He is served with numerous dishes;] [Sidenote F: with fish baked and broiled,] [Sidenote G: or boiled and seasoned with spices.] [Sidenote H: He calls it a full noble feast,] [Sidenote I: and much mirth he makes, for the wine is in his head.]…

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Excerpt #12, from The Railway Children, by E. Nesbit

…pockets. “He did, of course,” said Phyllis, in haste; “directly we heard she was ill we got the roses ready and waited by the gate. It was when you were making the brekker-toast. And when he’d said ‘Thank you’ for the roses so many times–much more than he need have–he pulled out the line and gave it to Peter. It wasn’t exchange. It was the grateful heart.” “Oh, I BEG your pardon, Peter,” said Bobbie, “I AM so sorry.” “Don’t mention it,” said Peter, grandly, “I knew you would be.” So then they all went up to the Canal bridge. The idea was to fish from the bridge, but the line was not quite long enough. “Never mind,” said Bobbie. “Let’s just stay here and look at things. Everything’s so beautiful.” It was. The sun was setting in red splendour over the grey and purple hills, and the canal lay smooth and shiny in the shadow–no ripple broke its surface. It was like a grey satin ribbon between the dusky green silk of the meadows that were on each side of its banks. “It’s all right,” said Peter, “but somehow I can always see how pretty things are much better when I’ve something to do. Let’s get down on to the towpath and fish from there.” Phyllis and Bobbie remembered how the boys on the canal-boats had thrown coal at them, and they said so….

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