Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:25:44

Excerpt #1, from Contemporary One

…the animate dream that you are– I must cease. SHE. Manikin! HE. And even were she so beautiful as thou, she couldn’t stay beautiful. SHE. Stay beautiful? HE. Humans change with each going moment. That is a gray-haired platitude. Just as I can see that creature only when she touches my vision, so I could only see her once, were she beautiful– at best, twice or thrice– you’re more precious than when you came! SHE. And you! HE. Human pathos penetrates still deeper when one determines their inner life, as we’ve pondered their outer. Their inner changes far more desperately. SHE. How so, wise Manikin? HE. They have what philosophy terms moods, and moods are more pervious to modulation…

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Excerpt #2, from Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries

…which, facing the rising sun, glittered like silver threads, till lost in the immensity of the distance. At mid-day we descended the valley, and reached a hovel, where an officer and three soldiers were posted to examine passports. One of these men was a thoroughbred Pampas Indian: he was kept much for the same purpose as a bloodhound, to track out any person who might pass by secretly, either on foot or horseback. Some years ago a passenger endeavoured to escape detection by making a long circuit over a neighbouring mountain; but this Indian, having by chance crossed his track, followed it for the whole day over dry and very stony hills, till at last he came on his prey hidden in a gully. We here heard that the silvery clouds, which we had admired from the bright region above, had poured down torrents of rain. The valley from this point gradually opened, and the hills became mere water-worn hillocks compared to the giants behind; it then expanded into a gently sloping plain of shingle, covered with low trees and bushes. This talus, although appearing narrow, must be nearly ten miles wide before it blends into the apparently dead level Pampas. We passed the only house in this neighbourhood, the Estancia of Chaquaio: and at sunset we pulled up in the first snug corner, and there bivouacked. March 25th.—I was reminded of the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, by seeing the disk of the rising sun intersected by an horizon level as that of…

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Excerpt #3, from The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Complete, by Suetonius

…governments, where public affairs were directed more by the will of the sovereign or his ministers, than by refined suggestions of policy. From the character generally given of Claudius before his elevation to the throne, we should not readily imagine that he was endowed with any taste for literary composition; yet he seems to have exclusively enjoyed this distinction during his own reign, in which learning was at a low ebb. Besides history, Suetonius informs us that he wrote a Defence of Cicero against the Charges of Asinius Gallus. This appears to be the only tribute of esteem or approbation paid to the character of Cicero, from the time of Livy the historian, to the extinction of the race of the Caesars. Asinius Gallus was the son of Asinius Pollio, the orator. Marrying Vipsania after she had been divorced by Tiberius, he incurred the displeasure of that emperor, and died of famine, either voluntarily, or by order of the tyrant. He wrote a comparison between his father and Cicero, in which, with more filial partiality than justice, he gave the preference to the former. NERO CLAUDIUS CAESAR. (337) I. Two celebrated families, the Calvini and Aenobarbi, sprung from the race of the Domitii. The Aenobarbi derive both their extraction and their cognomen from one Lucius Domitius, of whom we have this tradition:…

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Excerpt #4, from Winnie the Pooh, by A. A. Milne

…year." “Your birthday?” said Pooh in great surprise. “Of course it is. Can’t you see? Look at all the presents I have had.” He waved a foot from side to side. “Look at the birthday cake. Candles and pink sugar.” Pooh looked–first to the right and then to the left. “Presents?” said Pooh. “Birthday cake?” said Pooh. “Where?” “Can’t you see them?” “No,” said Pooh. “Neither can I,” said Eeyore. “Joke,” he explained. “Ha ha!” Pooh scratched his head, being a little puzzled by all this. “But is it really your birthday?” he asked. “It is.” “Oh! Well, Many happy returns of the day, Eeyore.” “And many happy returns to you, Pooh Bear.” “But it isn’t my birthday.” “No, it’s mine.” “But you said ‘Many happy returns’—-” “Well, why not? You don’t always want to be miserable on my birthday, do you?” “Oh, I see,” said Pooh….

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Excerpt #5, from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by William Shakespeare

…And I have found Demetrius like a jewel, Mine own, and not mine own. DEMETRIUS. Are you sure That we are awake? It seems to me That yet we sleep, we dream. Do not you think The Duke was here, and bid us follow him? HERMIA. Yea, and my father. HELENA. And Hippolyta. LYSANDER. And he did bid us follow to the temple. DEMETRIUS. Why, then, we are awake: let’s follow him, And by the way let us recount our dreams. [Exeunt.] BOTTOM. [Waking.] When my cue comes, call me, and I will answer. My next is ‘Most fair Pyramus.’ Heigh-ho! Peter Quince! Flute, the bellows-mender! Snout, the tinker! Starveling! God’s my life! Stol’n hence, and left me…

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Excerpt #6, from Mr. Munchausen , by John Kendrick Bangs

…the Baron in accidents of many sorts. They conjured up visions of him lying wounded beneath the ruins of an apartment house, or something else equally heavy that might have fallen upon him on his way from his rooms to the station, but that he was more than wounded they did not believe, for they knew that the Baron was not the sort of man to be killed by anything killing under the sun. “I wonder where he can be?” said Angelica, uneasily to her brother, who was waiting with equal anxiety for their common friend. “Oh, he’s all right!” said Diavolo, with a confidence he did not really feel. “He’ll turn up all right, and even if he’s two hours late he’ll be here on time according to his own watch. Just you wait and see.” And they did wait and they did see. They waited for ten minutes, when the Baron drove up, smiling as ever, but apparently a little out of breath. I should not dare to say that he was really out of breath, but he certainly did seem to be so, for he panted visibly, and for two or three minutes after his arrival was quite unable to ask the Imps the usual question as to their very good health. Finally, however, the customary courtesies of the greeting were exchanged, and the decks were cleared for action. “What kept you, Uncle Munch?” asked the Twins, as they took up their…

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Excerpt #7, from The Coral Island: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean, by R. M. Ballantyne

…charming, pelucid, and inviting than ever, and Jack and I plunged into its depth, and gambolled among its radiant coral groves; while Peterkin wallowed at the surface, and tried occasionally to kick us as we passed below. Having dressed, I then hastened to the tank; but what was my surprise and grief to find nearly all the animals dead, and the water in a putrid condition! I was greatly distressed at this, and wondered what could be the cause of it. “Why, you precious humbug,” said Peterkin, coming up to me, “how could you expect it to be otherwise? When fishes are accustomed to live in the Pacific Ocean, how can you expect them to exist in a hole like that?” “Indeed, Peterkin,” I replied, “there seems to be truth in what you say. Nevertheless, now I think of it, there must be some error in your reasoning; for, if I put in but a few very small animals, they will bear the same proportion to this pond that the millions of fish bear to the ocean.” “I say, Jack,” cried Peterkin, waving his hand, “come here, like a good fellow. Ralph is actually talking philosophy. Do come to our assistance, for he’s out o’ sight beyond me already!” “What’s the matter?” inquired Jack, coming up, while he endeavoured to scrub his long hair dry with a towel of cocoa-nut cloth. I repeated my thoughts to Jack, who, I was happy to find, quite agreed…

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Excerpt #8, from Rocks and Their Origins, by Grenville A. J. Cole

…quartzite owes its characters to metamorphism. Microscopic examination sometimes reveals the effects of earth-pressures in the crushed and powdered condition of the larger grains; and no rocks exhibit the power of such pressures in producing structural modifications more strikingly than the coarse quartz-grits that are sometimes involved in regions of dynamic metamorphism. Pebbles and grains are alike deformed, pressed out along planes of fracture, and finally reduced to bands of powdered quartz. When felspathic pebbles occur in these grits, the resulting schistose mass has almost the appearance of a banded igneous rock, and streaky white mica may arise from the alteration of potassium felspar. Some sandstones contain sufficient felspar or calcium carbonate to form a flux when they are subjected to thermal metamorphism. At times a glass thus arises between the grains, and reacts upon the original quartz. When the igneous magma has melted up a sandstone or a quartzite, blocks of the sediment may remain surrounded by a mixed and recrystallised product from both rocks. Wright and Bailey[102] have studied an example in Colonsay, where a hornblende rock has partly dissolved a quartzite, the residual blocks being surrounded by “halos” of interaction, composed of quartz and alkali felspar. GNEISSES Gneisses may be broadly defined as banded crystalline rocks in which…

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Excerpt #9, from Round the Red Lamp: Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life, by Arthur Conan Doyle

…The same thought had crossed the surgeon’s mind. He grasped the wounded lip with his forceps, and with two swift cuts he took out a broad V-shaped piece. The woman sprang up on the couch with a dreadful gurgling scream. Her covering was torn from her face. It was a face that he knew. In spite of that protruding upper lip and that slobber of blood, it was a face that he knew. She kept on putting her hand up to the gap and screaming. Douglas Stone sat down at the foot of the couch with his knife and his forceps. The room was whirling round, and he had felt something go like a ripping seam behind his ear. A bystander would have said that his face was the more ghastly of the two. As in a dream, or as if he had been looking at something at the play, he was conscious that the Turk’s hair and beard lay upon the table, and that Lord Sannox was leaning against the wall with his hand to his side, laughing silently. The screams had died away now, and the dreadful head had dropped back again upon the pillow, but Douglas Stone still sat motionless, and Lord Sannox still chuckled quietly to himself. “It was really very necessary for Marion, this operation,” said he, “not physically, but morally, you know, morally.” Douglas Stone stooped forwards and began to play with the fringe of the coverlet. His knife tinkled down upon the ground, but he still held the forceps and something more….

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Excerpt #10, from Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, by Benjamin Franklin

…not likely to succeed, I am obliged to send word to the general in fourteen days; and I suppose Sir John St. Clair, the hussar, with a body of soldiers, will immediately enter the province for the purpose, which I shall be sorry to hear, because I am very sincerely and truly your friend and well-wisher, “B. Franklin.” I received of the general about eight hundred pounds, to be disbursed in advance-money to the waggon owners, etc.; but that sum being insufficient, I advanc’d upward of two hundred pounds more, and in two weeks the one hundred and fifty waggons, with two hundred and fifty-nine carrying horses, were on their march for the camp. The advertisement promised payment according to the valuation, in case any waggon or horse should be lost. The owners, however, alleging they did not know General Braddock, or what dependence might be had on his promise, insisted on my bond for the performance, which I accordingly gave them. While I was at the camp, supping one evening with the officers of Colonel Dunbar’s regiment, he represented to me his concern for the subalterns, who, he said, were generally not in affluence, and could ill afford, in this dear country, to lay in the stores that might be necessary in so long a march, thro’ a wilderness, where nothing was to…

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Excerpt #11, from The Story of the Barbary Corsairs, by J. D. Jerrold Kelley and Stanley Lane

…remained he enhanced his already unrivalled renown. His first exploit after Prevesa was the recapture of Castelnuovo, which the allied fleets had seized in October, as some compensation on land for their humiliation at sea. The Turkish armies had failed to recover the fortress in January, 1539; but in July Barbarossa went to the front as usual, with a fleet of two hundred galleys, large and small, and all his best captains; and, after some very pretty fighting in the Gulf of Cattaro, landed eighty-four of his heaviest guns and bombarded Castelnuovo, from three well-placed batteries. On August 7th, a sanguinary assault secured the first line of the defences; three days later the governor, Don Francisco Sarmiento, and his handful of Spaniards, surrendered to a final assault, and were surprised to find themselves chivalrously respected as honourable foes. Three thousand Spaniards had fallen, and eight thousand Turks, in the course of the siege. One more campaign and Barbarossa’s feats are over. Great events were happening on the Algerine coasts, where we must return after too long an absence in the Levant and Adriatic: but first the order of years must be neglected that we may see the last of the most famous of all the Corsairs. To make amends for the coldness of Henry VIII., Francis I. was allied with the other great maritime power, Turkey, against the…

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Excerpt #12, from The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James

…My hand was on my friend’s arm, but she failed for the moment, confronted with such an account of the matter, to respond to my pressure. She communed, on the contrary, on the spot, with her uneasiness. “And where’s Master Miles?” “Oh, he’s with Quint. They’re in the schoolroom.” “Lord, miss!” My view, I was myself aware—and therefore I suppose my tone—had never yet reached so calm an assurance. “The trick’s played,” I went on; “they’ve successfully worked their plan. He found the most divine little way to keep me quiet while she went off.” “‘Divine’?” Mrs. Grose bewilderedly echoed. “Infernal, then!” I almost cheerfully rejoined. “He has provided for himself as well. But come!” She had helplessly gloomed at the upper regions. “You leave him—?” “So long with Quint? Yes—I don’t mind that now.” She always ended, at these moments, by getting possession of my hand, and in this manner she could at present still stay me. But after gasping an instant at my sudden resignation, “Because of your letter?” she eagerly brought out. I quickly, by way of answer, felt for my letter, drew it forth, held it up, and then, freeing myself, went and laid it on the great hall table….

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