Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:25:11

Excerpt #1, from The Wonders of Life: A Popular Study of Biological Philosophy, by Ernst Haeckel

…is especially conspicuous when it is one-sided, and provokes definite movements in one particular direction (chemotaxis). The movements of unicellular organisms that are provoked by chemical stimuli and are known as chemotropism (more recently as chemotaxis) are particularly interesting because they show the existence of a chemical sensitiveness, somewhat resembling taste or smell, in the lowest organisms, and even in the homogeneous plasm of the monera. Repeated experiments of Wilhelm Engelmann, Max Verworn, and others, have shown that many bacteria, diatomes, infusoria, rhizopods, and other protists, have a similar sense of taste; they move towards certain acids (for instance, a drop of malic acid) or a bubble of oxygen that lies on one side of the drop of water in which the protists are under the microscope. Many pathogenetic bacteria secrete poisonous substances which are very injurious to the human frame. The active white blood-cells, leucocytes, in the human blood have a special “taste” for these bacteria-poisons, and concentrate in large quantities, by means of their amœboid movements, at those parts of the body where they are secreted. If the leucocytes prove the stronger in their struggle with the bacteria, they destroy them, and in this way they act as sanitary officers in keeping poisonous infection out of our organism. But if the bacteria win the battle, they are transported into other…

More: Read or Listen on IA →

Excerpt #2, from Masters of the vortex, by E. E. Smith

…Chapter 13 ▂▂▂▂▂▂GAMES WITHIN GAMES THE METHODS of operation of the Vortex Blaster II had long since been worked out in detail. Approaching any planet Captain Ross, through channels, would ask permission of the various governments to fly in atmosphere, permission to use high explosive, permission to land and be serviced, and permission—after standard precautions—to grant planetary leave to his ship’s personnel. All this asking was not, of course, strictly necessary in his case, since every world having even one loose atomic vortex had been demanding long and insistently that Neal Cloud visit it next, but it was strictly according to protocol. Astrogators had long since plotted the course through planetary atmosphere; not by the demands of the governments concerned and not by any ascending or descending order of violence of the vortices to be extinguished, but by the simple criterion of minimum flight-time ending at the pre-selected point of entry to the planet. Thus neither Joan nor Cloud had anything much to do with planetary affairs until the chief pilot notified Joan that he was relinquishing control to her—which never happened until the vessel lay motionless with respect to the planet’s surface and with the tip of her nose three two zero zero point zero meters distant from the center of activity of…

More: Read or Listen on IA →

Excerpt #3, from The Time Machine, by H. G. Wells

…there in the laboratory we beheld a larger edition of the little mechanism which we had seen vanish from before our eyes. Parts were of nickel, parts of ivory, parts had certainly been filed or sawn out of rock crystal. The thing was generally complete, but the twisted crystalline bars lay unfinished upon the bench beside some sheets of drawings, and I took one up for a better look at it. Quartz it seemed to be. “Look here,” said the Medical Man, “are you perfectly serious? Or is this a trick—like that ghost you showed us last Christmas?” “Upon that machine,” said the Time Traveller, holding the lamp aloft, “I intend to explore time. Is that plain? I was never more serious in my life.” None of us quite knew how to take it. I caught Filby’s eye over the shoulder of the Medical Man, and he winked at me solemnly. III. The Time Traveller Returns I think that at that time none of us quite believed in the Time Machine. The fact is, the Time Traveller was one of those men who are too clever to be believed: you never felt that you saw all round him; you always suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in ambush,…

More: Read or Listen on IA →

Excerpt #4, from In the Sargasso Sea, by Thomas A. Janvier

…jug on the floor at my side. For a while I was almost comfortable. Then the fever came back, and the visions with it–but no longer so painful as those which had been begotten of my thirst. I seemed to be in a region dreamy and unreal. Sometimes I would see far stretches of mountain peaks, and sometimes the crowded streets of cities; but for the most part my visions were of the sea–tall ships sailing, and little boats drifting over calm water in moonlight, and black steamers gliding quickly past me; and still more frequently, but always in a calm sea, the broken hulks of wrecked ships with shattered masts and tangled rigging and with dead men lying about their decks, and sometimes with a dead man hanging across the wheel and moving a little with the hulk’s motion so that in a horrible sort of way he seemed to be half alive. Night came again, bringing me more pain and the burning of a stronger fever; and then another day, in which the fever rose still higher and the visions became almost intolerable–because of their intense reality, and of my conviction all the while that they were unreal and that I must be well on the way toward a raving madness in which I would die. It was at the end of this day–or it may have been at the end of still another day, for I have no clear reckoning of how the time…

More: Read or Listen on IA →

Excerpt #5, from The Iliad, by Homer

…Required his arm, he sorrow’d unredress’d. Large gifts they promise, and their elders send; In vain—he arms not, but permits his friend His arms, his steeds, his forces to employ: He marches, combats, almost conquers Troy: Then slain by Phœbus (Hector had the name) At once resigns his armour, life, and fame. But thou, in pity, by my prayer be won: Grace with immortal arms this short-lived son, And to the field in martial pomp restore, To shine with glory, till he shines no more!” To her the artist-god: “Thy griefs resign, Secure, what Vulcan can, is ever thine. O could I hide him from the Fates, as well, Or with these hands the cruel stroke repel, As I shall forge most envied arms, the gaze Of wondering ages, and the world’s amaze!” Thus having said, the father of the fires To the black labours of his forge retires. Soon as he bade them blow, the bellows turn’d Their iron mouths; and where the furnace burn’d,…

More: Read or Listen on IA →

Excerpt #6, from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete, by Michel de Montaigne

…trades and vocations have we admitted and countenanced amongst us, whose very essence is vicious? And he that, confessing himself to me, voluntarily told me that he had all his lifetime professed and practised a religion, in his opinion damnable and contrary to that he had in his heart, only to preserve his credit and the honour of his employments, how could his courage suffer so infamous a confession? What can men say to the divine justice upon this subject? Their repentance consisting in a visible and manifest reparation, they lose the colour of alleging it both to God and man. Are they so impudent as to sue for remission without satisfaction and without penitence? I look upon these as in the same condition with the first: but the obstinacy is not there so easy to be overcome. This contrariety and volubility of opinion so sudden, so violent, that they feign, are a kind of miracle to me: they present us with the state of an indigestible agony of mind. It seemed to me a fantastic imagination in those who, these late years past, were wont to reproach every man they knew to be of any extraordinary parts, and made profession of the Catholic religion, that it was but outwardly; maintaining, moreover, to do him honour forsooth, that whatever he might pretend to the contrary he could not but in his heart be of their reformed opinion. An untoward disease, that a man…

More: Read or Listen on IA →

Excerpt #7, from Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare

…great chamber. SECOND SERVANT. We cannot be here and there too. Cheerly, boys. Be brisk awhile, and the longer liver take all. [Exeunt.] Enter Capulet, &c. with the Guests and Gentlewomen to the Maskers. CAPULET. Welcome, gentlemen, ladies that have their toes Unplagu’d with corns will have a bout with you. Ah my mistresses, which of you all Will now deny to dance? She that makes dainty, She I’ll swear hath corns. Am I come near ye now? Welcome, gentlemen! I have seen the day That I have worn a visor, and could tell A whispering tale in a fair lady’s ear, Such as would please; ’tis gone, ’tis gone, ’tis gone, You are welcome, gentlemen! Come, musicians, play. A hall, a hall, give room! And foot it, girls. [Music plays, and they dance.] More light, you knaves; and turn the tables up, And quench the fire, the room is grown too hot….

More: Read or Listen on IA →

Excerpt #8, from Thought Forms, by Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater

…vain, and find instead of it a vast conglomeration of thought-forms of that second type which take the shape of material objects. Instead of tokens of devotion, we see floating above the “worshippers” the astral images of hats and bonnets, of jewellery and gorgeous dresses, of horses and of carriages, of whisky-bottles and of Sunday dinners, and sometimes of whole rows of intricate calculations, showing that men and women alike have had during their supposed hours of prayer and praise no thoughts but of business or of pleasure, of the desires or the anxieties of the lower form of mundane existence. Yet sometimes in a humbler fane, in a church belonging to the unfashionable Catholic or Ritualist, or even in a lowly meeting-house where there is but little of learning or of culture, one may watch the deep blue clouds rolling ceaselessly eastward towards the altar, or upwards, testifying at least to the earnestness and the reverence of those who give them birth. Rarely–very rarely–among the clouds of blue will flash like a lance cast by the hand of a giant such a thought-form as is shown in Fig. 15; or such a flower of self-renunciation as we see in Fig. 16 may float before our ravished eyes; but in most cases we must seek elsewhere for these signs of a higher development. Upward Rush of Devotion.–The form in Fig. 15 bears much the same relation to that of Fig. 14 as did the clearly outlined projectile of…

More: Read or Listen on IA →

Excerpt #9, from The Iliad of Homer (1873), by Homer

…between the rampart and the sea was enclosed.” Από does not govern πυργου, but is compounded with εεργε. Footnote 272: (return) Cf. Buttm. Lexil. p. 292, sqq. who has, however, been long since anticipated by Paschal. de Coron. i. 4. Footnote 273: (return) Schol. Έρρων, επί φθορ παοαγενόμενος. See Alberti on Hesych, s. v. t. i. p. 1445. So, also, Apollon. p. 364: Έπΐ φθορᾴ πορενόμενος. Thus he said: and the Sire 274 pitied him weeping, and granted to him that the army should be safe, and not perish. And forthwith he sent an eagle, the most perfect 275 of birds, holding a fawn in his talons, the offspring of a swift deer: and near the very beauteous altar of Jove he cast down the fawn, where the Greeks were sacrificing to Panomphæan 276 Jove. When, therefore, they saw that the bird had come from Jove, they rushed the more against the Trojans, and were mindful of battle. Then none of the Greeks, numerous as they were, could have boasted that he had driven his swift steeds before Diomede, and urged them beyond the ditch, and fought against [the enemy]; for far the first he slew a helmeted Trojan hero, Agelaus, son of Phradmon. He, indeed, was turning his horses for flight; but as he was turning, Diomede fixed his spear in his back, between his shoulders, and drove it through his breast. He…

More: Read or Listen on IA →

Excerpt #10, from Latin for Beginners, by Benjamin L. D’Ooge

…pugnātum est Dēnique tamen mulieres terga vertērunt et fugā salūtem petiērunt. Multae autem captae sunt, in quō numerō erat ipsa Hippolytē. Herculēs postquam balteum accēpit, omnibus captīvīs lībertātem dedit. [Footnote 1: A fabled tribe of warlike women living in Asia Minor.] [Footnote 2: «omnīnō», etc., to have consisted entirely of women.] [Footnote 3: «Amāzonibus», §501.14.] [Illustration: HERCULES ET CERBERUS] THE DESCENT TO HADES AND THE DOG CER´BERUS Iamque ūnus modo ē duodecim labōribus relinquēbātur sed inter omnīs hic erat difficillimus. Iussus est enim canem Cerberum[4] ex Orcō in lūcem trahere. Ex Orcō autem nēmō anteā reverterat. Praetereā Cerberus erat mōnstrum maximē horribile et tria capita habēbat. Herculēs postquam imperia Eurystheī accēpit, statim profectus est et in Orcum dēscendit. Ibi vērō nōn sine summō periculō Cerberum manibus rapuit et ingentī cum labōre ex Orcō in lūcem et adurbem Eurystheī trāxit. Sic duodecim laborēs illī[5] intrā duodecim annōs cōnfectī sunt. Dēmum post longam vītam Herculēs ā deīs receptus est et Iuppiter fīliō suō dedit immortālitātem. [Footnote 4: The dog Cerberus guarded the gate of Orcus, the abode of the dead.] [Footnote 5: «illī», those famous.]…

More: Read or Listen on IA →

Excerpt #11, from Great Britain and the American Civil War, by Ephraim Douglass Adams

…extent that he acknowledged “we ought not to move at present without Russia[795]….” Finally, October 22, Palmerston reached a decision for the immediate present, writing to Russell: “Your description of the state of things between the two parties is most comprehensive and just. I am, however, much inclined to agree with Lewis that at present we could take no step nor make any communication of a distinct proposition with any advantage.” * * * * * "All that we could possibly do without injury to our position would be to ask the two Parties not whether they would agree to an armistice but whether they might not turn their thoughts towards an arrangement between themselves. But the answer of each might be written by us beforehand. The Northerners would say that the only condition of arrangement would be the restoration of the Union; the South would say their only condition would be an acknowledgment by the North of Southern Independence–we should not be more advanced and should only have pledged each party more strongly to the object for which they are fighting. I am therefore inclined to change the opinion on which I wrote to you when the…

More: Read or Listen on IA →

Excerpt #12, from Against the Grain, by J.K. Huysmans

…plunged again into his Latin studies, so as to efface the impressions of such recollections. But almost instantly the rushing force of his memories swept him into a second phase, that of his childhood, especially of the years spent at the school of the Fathers. Although more remote, they were more positive and more indelibly stamped on his brain. The leafy park, the long walks, the flower beds, the benches–all the actual details of the monastery rose before him, here in his room. The gardens filled and he heard the ringing cries of the students, mingling with the laughter of the professors as they played tennis, with their cassocks tucked up between their knees, or perhaps chatted under the trees with the youngsters, without any posturing or hauteur, as though they were companions of the same age. He recalled the easy yoke of the monks who declined to administer punishment by inflicting the committment of five hundred or a thousand lines while the others were at play, being satisfied with making those delinquents prepare the lesson that had not been mastered, and most often simply having recourse to a gentle admonition. They surrounded the children with an active but gentle watch, seeking to please them, consenting to whatever expeditions they wished to take on Tuesdays,…

More: Read or Listen on IA →

A production of Friendlyskies.net