Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:26:28

Excerpt #1, from Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete, by Ulysses S. Grant

…and Bolivar were yet threatened, but I sent the reinforcements. On the 4th I received direct orders to send Granger’s division also to Louisville, Kentucky. General Buell had left Corinth about the 10th of June to march upon Chattanooga; Bragg, who had superseded Beauregard in command, sent one division from Tupelo on the 27th of June for the same place. This gave Buell about seventeen days’ start. If he had not been required to repair the railroad as he advanced, the march could have been made in eighteen days at the outside, and Chattanooga must have been reached by the National forces before the rebels could have possibly got there. The road between Nashville and Chattanooga could easily have been put in repair by other troops, so that communication with the North would have been opened in a short time after the occupation of the place by the National troops. If Buell had been permitted to move in the first instance, with the whole of the Army of the Ohio and that portion of the Army of the Mississippi afterwards sent to him, he could have thrown four divisions from his own command along the line of road to repair and guard it. Granger’s division was promptly sent on the 4th of September. I was at the station at Corinth when the troops reached that point, and found General P. H. Sheridan with them. I expressed surprise at seeing him…

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Excerpt #2, from Arms and the Man, by Bernard Shaw

…have the skin taken off their backs. SERGIUS. (rising indignantly). I’ll say so. And if one of them is man enough to spit in my face for insulting him, I’ll buy his discharge and give him a pension. (He strides out, his humanity deeply outraged.) BLUNTSCHLI. (confidentially). Just see that he talks to them properly, Major, will you? PETKOFF. (officiously). Quite right, Bluntschli, quite right. I’ll see to it. (He goes to the door importantly, but hesitates on the threshold.) By the bye, Catherine, you may as well come, too. They’ll be far more frightened of you than of me. CATHERINE. (putting down her embroidery). I daresay I had better. You will only splutter at them. (She goes out, Petkoff holding the door for her and following her.) BLUNTSCHLI. What a country! They make cannons out of cherry trees; and the officers send for their wives to keep discipline! (_He begins to fold and docket the papers. Raina, who has risen from the divan, strolls down the room…

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Excerpt #3, from The King in Yellow, by Robert W. Chambers

…Nevertheless she promptly began: “That’s it! Swear and act silly and ruin your brushes! You have been three weeks on that study, and now look! What’s the good of ripping the canvas? What creatures artists are!” I felt about as much ashamed as I usually did after such an outbreak, and I turned the ruined canvas to the wall. Tessie helped me clean my brushes, and then danced away to dress. From the screen she regaled me with bits of advice concerning whole or partial loss of temper, until, thinking, perhaps, I had been tormented sufficiently, she came out to implore me to button her waist where she could not reach it on the shoulder. “Everything went wrong from the time you came back from the window and talked about that horrid-looking man you saw in the churchyard,” she announced. “Yes, he probably bewitched the picture,” I said, yawning. I looked at my watch. “It’s after six, I know,” said Tessie, adjusting her hat before the mirror. “Yes,” I replied, “I didn’t mean to keep you so long.” I leaned out of the window but recoiled with disgust, for the young man with the pasty face stood below in the churchyard. Tessie saw my gesture of disapproval and leaned from the window….

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Excerpt #4, from The Jest Book, by Mark Lemon

…son of Neptune replied that it was “because the rigging cost more than the hull.” MCCVII.–NO SACRIFICE. A LINEN-DRAPER having advertised his stock to be sold under prime cost, a neighbor observed that, “It was impossible, as he had never paid a farthing for it himself.” MCCVIII.–SHARP BOY. A MOTHER admonishing her son (a lad about seven years of age), told him he should never defer till to-morrow what he could do to-day. The little urchin replied, “Then, mother, let’s eat the remainder of the plum-pudding to-night.” MCCIX.–EARLY BIRDS OF PREY. A MERCHANT having been attacked by some thieves at five in the afternoon, said: “Gentlemen, you open shop early to-day.” MCCX.–JUDGMENT. JAMES THE SECOND, when Duke of York, made a visit to Milton the poet, and asked him, amongst other things, if he did not think the loss of his sight a judgment upon him for what he had written against his father, Charles the First. Milton answered, “If your Highness think my loss of sight a judgment upon me, what do you think of your father’s losing his head?”…

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Excerpt #5, from Cliff Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe, by S. Baring

…the villagers were wont to gather to elect their magistrates without interference from the Bastard of Albret. Within is a bench cut in the rock, and the roof is encrusted with stalactite formations like cauliflowers. Immediately above the village is a much larger cavern 72 feet high and 36 feet deep. It is vaulted like a dome, and tendrils of ivy and vine hang down draping the entrance. Violets grow in purple masses at the opening, and maiden-hair fern luxuriates within. At the extreme end, high up, to be reached only by a ladder of forty rungs, is another opening into a cave that runs far into the bowels of the Causse, to where the water falls in a cascade that now flows forth beneath the outer cave and supplies the village with drinking water and a place for washing linen. Hard by the great entrance is another cave situated high up, and called the Citadel, much smaller, access to which is obtained by a narrow track in the face of the rock, with notches cut in the limestone to receive the beams and struts that supported a wooden gallery which once provided easy access to the cave. I did not myself climb up and investigate the citadel, not having a steady head on the edge of a precipice, and what information I give was received from the curé, who seemed very much amused at my shirking the scramble, and thought that the Englishman of to-day must be very different from the Englishman of the fourteenth century who crawled about these cliffs…

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Excerpt #6, from Bushido, the Soul of Japan, by Inazo Nitobe

…shrines are conspicuously devoid of objects and instruments of worship, and that a plain mirror hung in the sanctuary forms the essential part of its furnishing. The presence of this article, is easy to explain: it typifies the human heart, which, when perfectly placid and clear, reflects the very image of the Deity. When you stand, therefore, in front of the shrine to worship, you see your own image reflected on its shining surface, and the act of worship is tantamount to the old Delphic injunction, “Know Thyself.” But self-knowledge does not imply, either in the Greek or Japanese teaching, knowledge of the physical part of man, not his anatomy or his psycho-physics; knowledge was to be of a moral kind, the introspection of our moral nature. Mommsen, comparing the Greek and the Roman, says that when the former worshiped he raised his eyes to heaven, for his prayer was contemplation, while the latter veiled his head, for his was reflection. Essentially like the Roman conception of religion, our reflection brought into prominence not so much the moral as the national consciousness of the individual. Its nature-worship endeared the country to our inmost souls, while its ancestor-worship, tracing from lineage to lineage, made the Imperial family the fountain-head of the whole nation. To us the country is more than land and soil from which to mine gold or to reap grain–it is the sacred abode of the gods, the spirits of our forefathers: to us the…

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Excerpt #7, from The Iliad of Homer (1873), by Homer

…and brandishing his sharp spear, went in all directions through the army, exhorting the battle; and he stirred up a grievous conflict. The Trojans rallied and stood against the Greeks; but the Greeks stood in close array, withstood them, nor fled. And as the wind scatters the chaff about the threshing-floors, when men are winnowing [it], and yellow Ceres is separating both the grain and the chaff, the winds rush along; and the chaff-heaps 215 grow white beneath; thus then the Greeks became white with the chaff from above, which indeed through them, as they again mingled in the combat, the feet of the steeds struck up [the ground] to the brazen heaven; for the charioteers turning back. But they directed the strength of theirs straight forward; and fierce Mars spread a vapour over the battle, aiding the Trojans, going about everywhere, echoing the commands of golden-sworded Phœbus Apollo and ordered him to excite the courage of the Trojans, whenever he should see Pallas Minerva departing; for she was an ally of the Greeks. But he sent forth Æneas from his very rich shrine and infused strength into the breast of the shepherd of the people. Footnote 215: (return) But cf. Schol. οἱ τόποι εἰς οὓς τὰ ἄχυρα ἐκπίπτει. Then Æneas placed himself amidst his companions and they rejoiced when…

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Excerpt #8, from An Outcast of the Islands, by Joseph Conrad

…Laut, and I have fled before your people many times. Servant of this one–protected of another; I have given my counsel here and there for a handful of rice. What am I, to be angry with a white man? What is anger without the power to strike? But you whites have taken all: the land, the sea, and the power to strike! And there is nothing left for us in the islands but your white men’s justice; your great justice that knows not anger.” He got up and stood for a moment in the doorway, sniffing the hot air of the courtyard, then turned back and leaned against the stay of the ridge pole, facing Lingard who kept his seat on the chest. The torch, consumed nearly to the end, burned noisily. Small explosions took place in the heart of the flame, driving through its smoky blaze strings of hard, round puffs of white smoke, no bigger than peas, which rolled out of doors in the faint draught that came from invisible cracks of the bamboo walls. The pungent taint of unclean things below and about the hut grew heavier, weighing down Lingard’s resolution and his thoughts in an irresistible numbness of the brain. He thought drowsily of himself and of that man who wanted to see him–who waited to see him. Who waited! Night and day. Waited. . . . A spiteful but vaporous idea floated through his brain that such waiting could not be very pleasant to the fellow. Well, let him wait. He would see him soon enough. And for how…

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Excerpt #9, from The Poetics of Aristotle, by Aristotle

…Achilles is portrayed by Agathon and Homer. These then are rules the poet should observe. Nor should he neglect those appeals to the senses, which, though not among the essentials, are the concomitants of poetry; for here too there is much room for error. But of this enough has been said in our published treatises. XVI What Recognition is has been already explained. We will now enumerate its kinds. First, the least artistic form, which, from poverty of wit, is most commonly employed recognition by signs. Of these some are congenital,–such as ‘the spear which the earth-born race bear on their bodies,’ or the stars introduced by Carcinus in his Thyestes. Others are acquired after birth; and of these some are bodily marks, as scars; some external tokens, as necklaces, or the little ark in the Tyro by which the discovery is effected. Even these admit of more or less skilful treatment. Thus in the recognition of Odysseus by his scar, the discovery is made in one way by the nurse, in another by the swineherds. The use of tokens for the express purpose of proof–and, indeed, any formal proof with or without tokens–is a less artistic mode of recognition. A better kind is that which comes about by a turn of incident, as in the Bath Scene in the Odyssey….

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Excerpt #10, from The Myths and Fables of To Day, by Samuel Adams Drake

…An old woman, skilled in such matters, declares that when vagrant cats begin to collect around the back-yards, “it’s a sure sign the winter’s broken.” Whistling to keep one’s courage up, or for a wind, are rather in the nature of an invocation to some occult power than a sign. Sailors, it is well known, have a superstitious fear of whistling at sea, believing it will bring on a storm. Yawning is said to be catching. Well, if it is not catching, it comes so near to being so, that most persons accept it as a fact; and laugh as we may, daily experience goes to confirm it as such, and must continue to do so until some more satisfactory explanation is found than we yet know of. [Illustration] V CHARMS TO GOOD LUCK “The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm.” Of the things closely associated in the popular mind with good or bad luck, what in short one may or may not do to obtain the favors or turn aside the frowns of fortune, the list is a long one. We say “God bless me!” when we sneeze, as an invocation to good luck. Then, for instance,…

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Excerpt #11, from Robot nemesis, by E. E. Smith

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Excerpt #12, from Recollections and impressions of James A. McNeill Whistler, by Arthur Jerome Eddy

…* * * * The wave of impressionism which submerged all Paris in the very midst of his career left him unaffected,–for his art was an older and truer impressionism, an impressionism that did not depend upon the size of brushes or the consistency of pigments. A visitor once said to him: “Mr. Whistler, it seems to me you do not use some of those very expensive and brilliant colors which are in vogue nowadays.” “No.” And he diligently worked away at his palette. “I can’t afford to,–they are so apt to spoil the picture.” “But they are effective.” “For how long? A year, or a score of years, perhaps; but who can tell what they will be a century or five centuries hence. The old masters used simple pigments which they ground themselves. I try to use what they used. After all, it is not so much what one uses as the way it is used.” … * * * * Much of the foregoing argument concerning the Americanism of Whistler and his art may seem to be contradicted by his own express utterances. For did he not say in his “Ten o’Clock”? “Listen! There never was an artistic period.”…

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