Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:25:59

Excerpt #1, from Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott

…words. His very clothes seemed to partake of the hospitable nature of the wearer. They looked as if they were at ease, and liked to make him comfortable. His capacious waistcoat was suggestive of a large heart underneath. His rusty coat had a social air, and the baggy pockets plainly proved that little hands often went in empty and came out full. His very boots were benevolent, and his collars never stiff and raspy like other people’s. “That’s it!” said Jo to herself, when she at length discovered that genuine good will toward one’s fellow men could beautify and dignify even a stout German teacher, who shoveled in his dinner, darned his own socks, and was burdened with the name of Bhaer. Jo valued goodness highly, but she also possessed a most feminine respect for intellect, and a little discovery which she made about the Professor added much to her regard for him. He never spoke of himself, and no one ever knew that in his native city he had been a man much honored and esteemed for learning and integrity, till a countryman came to see him. He never spoke of himself, and in a conversation with Miss Norton divulged the pleasing fact. From her Jo learned it, and liked it all the better because Mr. Bhaer had never told it. She felt proud to know that he was an honored Professor in Berlin, though only a poor…

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Excerpt #2, from The Student’s Elements of Geology, by Sir Charles Lyell

…teeth (which, as in all the old-World apes, exactly agree in number with those in man) it differed from the Gorilla and Chimpanzee, and corresponded with the human species. Upper Miocene Beds of Œningen, in Switzerland.—The faluns of the Loire first served, as already stated (p. 211), as the type of the Miocene formations in Europe. They yielded a plentiful harvest of marine fossil shells and corals, but were entirely barren of plants and insects. In Switzerland, on the other hand, deposits of the same age have been discovered, remarkable for their botanical and entomological treasures. We are indebted to Professor Heer, of Zurich, for the description, restoration, and classification of several hundred species and varieties of these fossil plants, the whole of which he has illustrated by excellent figures in his “Flora Tertiaria Helvetiæ.” This great work, and those of Adolphe Brongniart, Unger, Goppert and others, show that this class of fossils is beginning to play the same important part in the classification of the tertiary strata containing lignite or brown coal as an older flora has long played in enabling us to understand the ancient coal or carboniferous formation. No small skepticism has always prevailed among botanists as to whether the leaves alone and the wood of plants could ever afford sufficient data for determining even genera and families in the vegetable kingdom. In…

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Excerpt #3, from The Last Stroke: A Detective Story, by Lawrence L. Lynch

…men, he averred. And at last, hesitating much, and full of fears, Peter was finally persuaded, yielding at last to Doran’s offer to let him sit in front “and drive one of the horses.” As they reached the lower end of the Indian Mound, the boy’s lips began to quiver and one arm went up before his face, while he extended the other toward the thickest of brushwood before described by Ferrars. “That’s where,” he whimpered. “It comed up out there.” “From among the bushes?” “Ye-us.” “Did it have any feet?” “Oh-oh! Only head and arms–ugh!” “Turn around, Doran,” said Ferrars sharply, and then in a lower tone to Hilda, “I shall go to the city to-night.” When Hilda reached her room, at the close of the school, she found this letter awaiting her, “left,” Mrs. Marcy said, “by her cousin”: “DEAR COUSIN,–Even if you had been disengaged, I could have told you nothing except that what I have learned to-day impels me to look a little more closely to the other end of my line. For there is another end.”Now that I shall have the two men on duty in the south end of the county, and with the doctor and Doran alert in G—-, not to…

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Excerpt #4, from Short Story Writing: An Art or a Trade?, by N. Bryllion Fagin

…We know that the end of a story marks an emphatic place which leaves the greatest impression upon the reader’s mind; it is, rhetorically, a strategic point, and therefore we concentrate all our surprises, our jugglery, our uplift message and our disposition upon this point. We want the reader to go away smiling, or pleasantly startled, or, if we write for the conventionally unconventional publication, unpleasantly satisfied. The fact that a writer after having set his characters in motion and allowing them to act and react upon the various forces of the plot, to mold and be molded, has no power over the ending other than that of guiding the threads of his story–characters, motives and circumstances–to the end they are logically bound for, is as yet obscure among us. We are associating the ending with its impressions upon the reader, with its gallery value–rather than with the soul of the story. As Mr. Carl Van Doren, former literary editor of The Nation and now of The Century has expressed it: “According to all the codes of the more serious kinds of fiction, the unwillingness–or the inability–to conduct a plot to its legitimate ending implies some weakness in the artistic character.”[26] This weakness that Mr. Van Doren refers to in reality arises from our very conception of the function of fiction and the motives that govern its birth. In a majority of cases the prime motive for writing…

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Excerpt #5, from The Merchant of Venice, by William Shakespeare

…Yes, here I tender it for him in the court, Yea, twice the sum, if that will not suffice, I will be bound to pay it ten times o’er On forfeit of my hands, my head, my heart. If this will not suffice, it must appear That malice bears down truth. And I beseech you, Wrest once the law to your authority. To do a great right, do a little wrong, And curb this cruel devil of his will. PORTIA. It must not be, there is no power in Venice Can alter a decree established; ’Twill be recorded for a precedent, And many an error by the same example Will rush into the state. It cannot be. SHYLOCK…. A Daniel come to judgment! Yea, a Daniel! O wise young judge, how I do honour thee! PORTIA. I pray you let me look upon the bond. SHYLOCK….

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Excerpt #6, from Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson

…and had scarce a wave upon it; so that I must put the water to my lips before I could believe it to be truly salt. The mountains on either side were high, rough and barren, very black and gloomy in the shadow of the clouds, but all silver-laced with little watercourses where the sun shone upon them. It seemed a hard country, this of Appin, for people to care as much about as Alan did. There was but one thing to mention. A little after we had started, the sun shone upon a little moving clump of scarlet close in along the water-side to the north. It was much of the same red as soldiers’ coats; every now and then, too, there came little sparks and lightnings, as though the sun had struck upon bright steel. I asked my boatman what it should be, and he answered he supposed it was some of the red soldiers coming from Fort William into Appin, against the poor tenantry of the country. Well, it was a sad sight to me; and whether it was because of my thoughts of Alan, or from something prophetic in my bosom, although this was but the second time I had seen King George’s troops, I had no good will to them. At last we came so near the point of land at the entering in of Loch Leven that I begged to be set on shore. My boatman (who was an honest fellow and mindful of his promise to the catechist) would fain have carried me on to Balachulish; but as this was to take me farther from my…

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Excerpt #7, 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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Excerpt #8, from Lakeland Words, by Bryham Kirkby

…and gills), and to give a penny away spoiled a set. HACK—A pick axe. HACK-UP—To tear up with a pick axe. HACKT—Chipt, crackt. Mi hands is o’ hackt wi’ t’ frost wind. HAGSTOCK—A block to chop wood on. HAILE or HAYLE—The handle of a plough. HARDHEEDS—A flower resembling that of a thistle. HARDLINS—Scarcely. HACK-AN’-HEW—A bit o’ craft wi’ a scythe, rivin ’t up bi t’ riuts. HACK-AN’-HASSLE—T’ siam wi’ a razor. Is ta shaven, er thoo’s skinnen mi? That’s hack an’ hassle. HACK-DYKES—Ta mow aback o’ t’ dykes, whar t’ machine cart git tul. Lads mainly git t’ job o’ hackin dykes, an’ doesn’t it mak men o’ them when they stan up ta whet? HACKER—Stutter. HALE—Whole; healthy; sound. It’s a riut grown ’un is this. Hoo’s thi faddur? Hale an’ hearty. HALLAN—A partition; a place walled off. HANTEL—Supply; quantity. Tak a hantel o’ hay wi’ tha fer t’ hoggs. HAPSHA-RAPSHA—How-scrow; ham-sam; hap-hazard. HAVEY-SCAVEY—All in a mess. Throw them in havey-scavey….

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Excerpt #9, from Popular Tales from the Norse, by Asbjørnsen, Moe, and Dasent

…the door; and when she had got so far, no one gave any more heed to her. As the night wore on, the men found it rather cold work to sit so still and quiet on horseback. “Hutetu! it is so devilish cold”, said one, and beat his arms crosswise. “That it is”, said another; “I freeze so, that my teeth chatter.” “If one only had a quid to chew”, said a third. Well! there was one who had an ounce or two; so they shared it between them, though it wasn’t much, after all, that each got; and so they chewed and spat, and spat and chewed. This helped them somewhat; but in a little while they were just as bad as ever. “Hutetu!” said one, and shivered and shook. “Hutetu!” said the old woman, and shivered so, that every tooth in her head chattered. Then she pulled out the flask with brandy in it, and her hand shook so that the spirit splashed about in the flask, and then she took such a gulp, that it went “bop” in her throat. “What’s that you’ve got in your flask, old girl?” said one of the grooms. “Oh! it’s only a drop of brandy, old man”, said she. “Brandy! Well, I never! Do let me have a drop”, screamed the whole…

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Excerpt #10, from The Poetics of Aristotle, by Aristotle

…Episode, Exode, Choric song; this last being divided into Parode and Stasimon. These are common to all plays: peculiar to some are the songs of actors from the stage and the Commoi. The Prologue is that entire part of a tragedy which precedes the Parode of the Chorus. The Episode is that entire part of a tragedy which is between complete choric songs. The Exode is that entire part of a tragedy which has no choric song after it. Of the Choric part the Parode is the first undivided utterance of the Chorus: the Stasimon is a Choric ode without anapaests or trochaic tetrameters: the Commos is a joint lamentation of Chorus and actors. The parts of Tragedy which must be treated as elements of the whole have been already mentioned. The quantitative parts the separate parts into which it is divided–are here enumerated.] XIII As the sequel to what has already been said, we must proceed to consider what the poet should aim at, and what he should avoid, in constructing his plots; and by what means the specific effect of Tragedy will be produced. A perfect tragedy should, as we have seen, be arranged not on the simple but on the complex plan. It should, moreover, imitate actions which excite pity and fear, this being the distinctive mark of tragic…

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Excerpt #11, from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

…discovered them. Felix soon learned that the treacherous Turk, for whom he and his family endured such unheard-of oppression, on discovering that his deliverer was thus reduced to poverty and impotence, became a traitor to good feeling and honour, and had quitted Italy with his daughter, insultingly sending Felix a pittance of money to aid him, as he said, in some plan of future maintenance. “Such were the events that preyed on the heart of Felix, and rendered him, when I first saw him, the most miserable of his family. He could have endured poverty, and when this distress had been the meed of his virtue, he would have gloried in it: but the ingratitude of the Turk, and the loss of his beloved Safie, were misfortunes more bitter and irreparable. The arrival of the Arabian now infused new life into his soul. “When the news reached Leghorn, that Felix was deprived of his wealth and rank, the merchant commanded his daughter to think no more of her lover, but to prepare to return with him to her native country. The generous nature of Safie was outraged by this command; she attempted to expostulate with her father, but he left her angrily, reiterating his tyrannical mandate. “A few days after, the Turk entered his daughter’s apartment, and told her hastily, that he had reason to believe that his residence at Leghorn…

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Excerpt #12, from Across Asia on a Bicycle, by Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

…Our morning ablutions were usually made à la Turk: by having water poured upon the hands from a spouted vessel. Cleanliness is, with the Turk, perhaps, more than ourselves, the next thing to godliness. But his ideas are based upon a very different theory. Although he uses no soap for washing either his person or his clothes, yet he considers himself much cleaner than the giaour, for the reason that he uses running water exclusively, never allowing the same particles to touch him the second time. A Turk believes that all water is purified after running six feet. As a test of his faith we have often seen him lading up drinking-water from a stream where the women were washing clothes just a few yards above. [Illustration: SCENE AT A GREEK INN.] As all cooking and eating had stopped at the sound of the morning cannon, we found great difficulty in gathering together even a cold breakfast of ekmek, yaourt, and raisins. Ekmek is a cooked bran-flour paste, which has the thinness, consistency, and almost the taste of blotting-paper. This is the Turkish peasant’s staff of life. He carries it with him everywhere; so did we. As it was made in huge circular sheets, we would often punch a hole in the middle, and slip it up over our arms. This we found the handiest and most serviceable mode of transportation, being handy to eat without removing our hands from the handle-bars, and also answering the purpose of sails in case of a favoring wind. Yaourt, another…

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