Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:25:42

Excerpt #1, from The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway

…“He was telling me about the bulls coming in to-night.” “Let’s find the gang and go down.” “All right. They’ll probably be at the café.” “Have you got tickets?” “Yes. I got them for all the unloadings.” “What’s it like?” He was pulling his cheek before the glass, looking to see if there were unshaved patches under the line of the jaw. “It’s pretty good,” I said. “They let the bulls out of the cages one at a time, and they have steers in the corral to receive them and keep them from fighting, and the bulls tear in at the steers and the steers run around like old maids trying to quiet them down.” “Do they ever gore the steers?” “Sure. Sometimes they go right after them and kill them.” “Can’t the steers do anything?” “No. They’re trying to make friends.” “What do they have them in for?” “To quiet down the bulls and keep them from breaking horns against the stone walls, or goring each other.” “Must be swell being a steer.” We went down the stairs and out of the door and walked across the square toward the Café Iruña. There were two lonely looking ticket-houses…

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Excerpt #2, from Uncle Wiggily’s Travels, by Howard Roger Garis

…What it was I’ll tell you soon, when, in case the boys who go in swimming don’t duck my typewriter under water and make it catch the measles, I’ll tell you about Uncle Wiggily and the toadstool. STORY XXIII UNCLE WIGGILY AND THE TOADSTOOL “Were you much frightened when you were in the bear’s den?” asked the prickly porcupine as he and Uncle Wiggily went along the road next day. They had slept that night in a hole where an old fox used to live, but just then he was away on his summer vacation at Asbury Park, and so he wasn’t home. “Was I frightened?” repeated the old gentleman rabbit, as he looked to see if there was any mud on his crutch, “why I was so scared that my heart almost stopped beating. But I’m glad you happened to come along, and that you stuck your stickery-ickery quills into the bear’s nose. It was very lucky that you chanced to come past the den.” “Oh, I did it on purpose,” said the porcupine. “After you got me out of the trap, and I scurried away, I happened to think that you might go past the bear’s house, so I hurried after you, and–well, I’m glad that I did.” [Illustration] “So am I,” said the rabbit. “Will you have a bit of my carrot sandwich?”…

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Excerpt #3, from The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

…afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motorboats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On weekends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before. Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York—every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler’s thumb. At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough coloured lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby’s enormous garden. On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors-d’oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold. In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and…

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Excerpt #4, 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 #5, from Astounding Stories, May, 1931, by Various

…grew dimly bluish-green around the edge. It ceased to grow. Their ship, Harkness knew, was speeding beside it some hundreds of miles away. But they were within its gravitational pull, and were falling toward it. And he aimed his ship bow-on to make the forward blast a check upon their falling speed. The circle broadened; became a sphere; and then they were plunging through clouds more tenuous than any vapors of Earth–thick layers of gas that reflected no rays from the distant sun. Beside them a sinuous form showed where a serpent of space was trying to match their speed. Harkness saw it twisting convulsively in the stratum of gas; it was falling, lifeless, beside them as they sped on and away. Here was something the beasts could not combat. He made a mental note of the fact, but his thoughts flashed again to what lay ahead. Every eye was held close to the lookouts that faced forward. The three were breathless, wordless; the hand of Harkness that held the tiny ball was all that moved. Ahead of them was their goal, the Dark Moon! And they were prepared for Stygian darkness and a land of perpetual night. The almost invisible gas-clouds thinned; there was a glow ahead that grew brilliant as they watched; and then, with a blinding suddenness that…

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Excerpt #6, from A Parody Outline of History, by Donald Ogden Stewart

…large cities; a small town named Gopher Prairie. She made known her desire to the manager; she said goodby to a small group of friends who had gathered to see her off; she heard the sound of the eternal harp playing and hymn singing grow gradually fainter and fainter; she closed her eyes. When she opened them again she found herself on Main Street in Gopher Prairie. X From the “Heavenly Harp and Trumpet”: Mrs. Priscilla Kennicott, one of our most popular angels, left these parts last Tuesday for an extended visit to the Earth. Mrs. K. confided to Ye Editor that she would probably take up her residence in Gopher Prairie, Minn., under the name of Carol Kennicott. The “Harp and Trumpet” felicitates the citizens of Gopher Prairie on their acquisition of a charming and up-to-date young matron whose absence will be keenly regretted by her many friends in the heavenly younger married set. Good luck, Priscilla! XI Heaven. Five years later. The monthly meeting of the Celestial Browning Club….

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Excerpt #7, from The Knights of the Round Table: Stories of King Arthur and the Holy Grail, by Frost

…came to the shore and stopped, and before him Lancelot saw the gate of a castle. He left the ship and went toward the gate, and there he saw two great lions guarding it. He drew his sword and kept on toward them, and when he was near the gate something struck his sword out of his hand. Yet he felt, he could not tell why, that there was no danger from the lions, and he went on through the gate. The lions sprang at him as he passed, but they did not touch him, and he went into the castle. He saw no people, but he went on from room to room, through open doors, till at last he came to one that was shut. He tried to open the door, but he could not, and then he heard music on the other side of it. It was like the singing of a great choir, and the singing or something else seemed to tell Lancelot that the Holy Grail was in that room where he could not go, and he knelt down before the door and waited. Then the door opened of itself and a great light shone out and he could hear the music more clearly. He looked into the chamber and in the middle of it he saw a table of gold and silver, inlaid in beautiful shapes, and on the table was the Holy Grail, still with that white covering of silk. Yet it seemed to Lancelot that the rosy glow from the Holy Grail that shone through the silk was brighter and clearer than it had been when he had seen it in the hall at Camelot,…

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Excerpt #8, from The Collected Works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 10 (of 12), by William Hazlitt

…justice, taking the rights of all under its protection, and frowning on the least wrong, however largely it may serve ourselves. This moral nature especially delights in, and enjoins a universal charity, and makes the heart thrill with exulting joy, at the sight or hearing of magnanimous deeds, of perils fronted, or death endured in the cause of humanity. Now, these various principles, and especially the last, are as truly ourselves as self-love. When a man thinks of himself, these ought to occur to him as his chief attributes. He can hardly injure himself more than by excluding these from his conception of himself, and by making self-love the great constituent of his nature. ‘We have urged these remarks on the narrow sense often given to the word self, because we are persuaded that it leads to degrading ideas of human nature, and to the pernicious notion that we practise a virtuous self-sacrifice in holding it in contempt. We would have it understood, that high faculties form this despised self, as truly as low desires; and we would add, that when these are faithfully unfolded, this self takes rank among the noblest beings in the universe. To illustrate this thought, we ask the reader’s attention to an important, but much-neglected, view of virtue and religion. These are commonly spoken of in an abstract manner, as if they were distinct from ourselves—as if they were foreign existences, which enter the human mind, and dwell…

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Excerpt #9, from A Short History of the World, by H. G. Wells

…known as the wave of Brythonic Celts. From them the Welsh derive their language. THE MOUND OF NIPPUR THE MOUND OF NIPPUR The site of a city which recent excavations have proved to date from at least as early as 5000 B.C., and probably 1000 years earlier Photo: Underwood & Underwood Kindred Celtic peoples were pressing southward into Spain and coming into contact not only with the heliolithic Basque people who still occupied the country but with the Semitic Phœnician colonies of the sea coast. A closely allied series of tribes, the Italians, were making their way down the still wild and wooded Italian peninsula. They did not always conquer. In the eighth century B.C. Rome appears in history, a trading town on the Tiber, inhabited by Aryan Latins but under the rule of Etruscan nobles and kings. At the other extremity of the Aryan range there was a similar progress southward of similar tribes. Aryan peoples, speaking Sanskrit, had come down through the western passes into North India long before 1000 B.C. There they came into contact with a primordial brunette civilization, the Dravidian civilization, and learnt much from it. Other Aryan tribes seem to have spread over the mountain masses of…

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Excerpt #10, from Astounding Stories of Super

…I murmured to Anita, “We must get out of here.” Yet how did I dare take Anita from these concealing shadows? Miko could reach us so easily as we bounded away, in plain view in the Earthlight of the open summit! We were caught, at bay in this little bowl. The camp from here was not visible. But out through the broken gully, beyond the staircase top, a white beam of light suddenly came up from below. “Haljan.” It spelled the signal. “Haljan.” It was coming from the Grantline instrument room, I knew. I could answer it with my helmet-light, but I did not dare. I hesitated. “Try it,” urged Anita. * * * * * We crouched where we thought we might be safe from Miko’s fire. My little light-beam shot up from the bowl. It was undoubtedly visible to the camp. “Yes? I am Haljan.” And I added:…

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Excerpt #11, from Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases, by Grenville Kleiser

…Like a cold wind his words went through their flesh Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue Like a damp-handed auctioneer Like a deaf and dumb man wondering what it was all about Like a dew-drop, ill-fitted to sustain unkindly shocks Like a dipping swallow the stout ship dashed through the storm Like a distant star glimmering steadily in the darkness Like a dream she vanished Like a festooned girdle encircling the waist of a bride Like a flower her red lips parted Like a game in which the important part is to keep from laughing Like a glow-worm golden Like a golden-shielded army Like a great express train, roaring, flashing, dashing head-long Like a great fragment of the dawn it lay Like a great ring of pure and endless light Like a great tune to which the planets roll Like a high and radiant ocean Like a high-born maiden Like a jewel every cottage casement showed Like a joyless eye that finds no object worth its constancy…

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Excerpt #12, from A Humorous History of England, by Charles Harrison

…They coalesced in eight-two-seven. [Illustration: IRON JELLOIDS The Great Tonic] Alfred Of good King Alfred we’ve all heard 872-901 How when hiding he incurred A lady’s anger for not taking Care of Cakes which she was baking. (Most probably she left the King While she went out a-gossiping.) Before he died in nine-nought-one, Old England’s Navy had begun. He laid a tax on every town To aid his fleet to gain renown. He was the best of Saxon Kings And did a lot of useful things; Built Oxford with its noble spires And mapped out England into Shires. Danes In seven-eight-three first came the Danes 783 Who caused the Saxons aches and pains. They sailed right up our rivers broad, Putting the natives to the sword. “Danegeld” For centuries our sadly fated…

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