Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:25:28

Excerpt #1, from Europe and elsewhere, by Mark Twain

…when their work is done. TWO MARK TWAIN EDITORIALS (Written 1869 and 1870, for the Buffalo Express, of which Mark Twain became editor and part owner) I “SALUTATORY” Being a stranger, it would be immodest and unbecoming in me to suddenly and violently assume the associate editorship of the Buffalo Express without a single explanatory word of comfort or encouragement to the unoffending patrons of the paper, who are about to be exposed to constant attacks of my wisdom and learning. But this explanatory word shall be as brief as possible. I only wish to assure parties having a friendly interest in the prosperity of the journal, that I am not going to hurt the paper deliberately and intentionally at any time. I am not going to introduce any startling reforms, or in any way attempt to make trouble. I am simply going to do my plain, unpretending duty, when I cannot get out of it; I shall work diligently and honestly and faithfully at all times and upon all occasions, when privation and want shall compel me to do it; in writing, I shall always confine myself strictly to the truth, except when it is attended with inconvenience; I shall witheringly rebuke all forms of crime and misconduct, except when…

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Excerpt #2, from King’s Cutters and Smugglers 1700

…The commanders of the cruisers were also to be on their guard against the practice in vogue among ships that had been to Holland and France with coals, for these craft were especially prone on their return to putting dutiable goods into light craft from London, or on the coast, but chiefly into cobbles or small fishing craft at sea. And even when it should happen that a cruiser had to be detained in port for repairs, the commander was to spare as many officers and seamen as possible and to employ these in keeping a regular watch on the high grounds near the sea, so as to watch what was passing, and, if necessary, despatch a boat and part of the cruiser’s crew. The commanders were reminded that the cruisers were not to wear the colours used in the Royal Navy, but to wear the same ensigns and pendants as provided by the Revenue Board under 24 Geo. III. c. 47, sect. 23. On a previous page we went into the matter of firing at the smuggling craft with shotted or with unshotted guns. Now among the instructions which were issued by the Admiralty on taking over these Revenue cruisers was the clear order that no officer of a cruiser or boat was justified in shooting at a suspected smuggling vessel until the former shall have first hoisted his pendant and ensign, nor unless a gun shall have been first fired as a signal. The date of this, of course,…

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Excerpt #3, from Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall

…billeted upon me for some mysterious purpose of an all-wise Providence, which it was not for a mere mortal like me to fathom. Yes, Bartleby, stay there behind your screen, thought I; I shall persecute you no more; you are harmless and noiseless as any of these old chairs; in short, I never feel so private as when I know you are here. At last I see it, I feel it; I penetrate to the predestinated purpose of my life. I am content. Others may have loftier parts to enact; but my mission in this world, Bartleby, is to furnish you with office-room for such period as you may see fit to remain. I believe that this wise and blessed frame of mind would have continued with me, had it not been for the unsolicited and uncharitable remarks obtruded upon me by my professional friends who visited the rooms. But thus it often is, that the constant friction of illiberal minds wears out at last the best resolves of the more generous. Though to be sure, when I reflected upon it, it was not strange that people entering my office should be struck by the peculiar aspect of the unaccountable Bartleby, and so be tempted to throw out some sinister observations concerning him. Sometimes an attorney having business with me, and calling at my office and finding no one but the scrivener there, would undertake to obtain some sort of precise information from him touching my whereabouts; but without heeding his idle talk, Bartleby would…

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Excerpt #4, from Biology, by Edmund B. Wilson

…Belfast address, where he declared himself driven by an intellectual necessity to cross the boundary line of the experimental evidence and to discern in non-living matter, as he said, the promise and potency of every form and quality of terrestrial life. This intellectual necessity was created by a conviction of the continuity and consistency of natural phenomena, which is almost inseparable from the scientific attitude towards nature. But Tyndall’s words stood after all for a confession of faith, not for a statement of fact; and they soared far above the terra firma of the actual evidence. At the present day we too may find ourselves logically driven to the view that living things first arose as a product of non-living matter. We must fully recognize the extraordinary progress that has been made by the chemist in the artificial synthesis of compounds formerly known only as the direct products of living protoplasm. But it must also be admitted that we are still wholly without evidence of the origin of any living thing, at any period of the earth’s history, save from some other living thing; and after more than two centuries Redi’s aphorism omne vivum e vivo retains to-day its full force. It is my impression therefore that the time has not yet come when hypotheses regarding a different origin of life can be considered as practically useful. If I have the temerity to ask your attention to the fundamental…

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Excerpt #5, from The Sky Detectives; Or, How Jack Ralston Got His Man, by Ambrose Newcomb

…Atlanta, where some other lads we helped to pinch are doin’ time.” “Well, if you keep on as you’ve started, Perk, we’ll flatten the whole gang like pancakes—they’ve stacked up against a new sort of revenue dog when they started a shooter of your calibre on the trail. First you smashed their searchlight, and then sent a chuck of lead into the gas tank that broke up the game. That’s the kind of a pinch hitter you are, partner; and right now I want to congratulate you on such dandy marksmanship.” “Lay off that stuff, Jack—nothin’ but great luck fetched the bacon home for this lad. But me, I’m shakin’ hands with myself ’cause I had that hunch a bear gun mightn’t be such a bad thing to tote along on a trip that’s goin’ to carry us across the border, an’ into Old Mex, like as not; where the greasers are sometimes tough nuts an’ hard to handle they tell me. ’Spose we’ll run across them two hill billies again, partner?” “Wouldn’t surprise me a bit if we did,” replied the pilot, leveling off at a three thousand foot ceiling, and still heading due southwest. “Like as not they’ve got plenty of ready cash along; and after having been so cleverly upset in their calculations, due to your beating them silly with a barrage of hot lead, they’ll be hot to wipe out their disgrace. Oh! yes, we’re going to run up against that foxey pair again before the book is closed for keeps.”…

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Excerpt #6, from The Heroes; Or, Greek Fairy Tales for My Children, by Charles Kingsley

…of mine that I cannot. The old songs end it sadly, and I believe that they are right and wise; for though the heroes were purified at Malea, yet sacrifices cannot make bad hearts good, and Jason had taken a wicked wife, and he had to bear his burden to the last. And first she laid a cunning plot to punish that poor old Pelias, instead of letting him die in peace. For she told his daughters, ‘I can make old things young again; I will show you how easy it is to do.’ So she took an old ram and killed him, and put him in a cauldron with magic herbs; and whispered her spells over him, and he leapt out again a young lamb. So that ‘Medeia’s cauldron’ is a proverb still, by which we mean times of war and change, when the world has become old and feeble, and grows young again through bitter pains. Then she said to Pelias’ daughters, ‘Do to your father as I did to this ram, and he will grow young and strong again.’ But she only told them half the spell; so they failed, while Medeia mocked them; and poor old Pelias died, and his daughters came to misery. But the songs say she cured Æson, Jason’s father, and he became young, and strong again. But Jason could not love her, after all her cruel deeds. So he was ungrateful to her, and wronged her; and she revenged herself on him. And a terrible revenge she took—too terrible to speak of here. But you will hear of it yourselves when you grow up, for it has been sung in noble…

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Excerpt #7, from Tales from a Rolltop Desk, by Christopher Morley

…different ages, doing her gymnastic exercises, beginning as a little plump Venus and ending as a stunning profile in tights. We tried to maintain an attitude of merely scientific detachment toward those pictures, admiring them only as connoisseurs of physical culture; but we ended by begging him for copies, insisting that they would be a useful guide to us in our own private exercising. But Larsen said he was keeping them to illustrate a new enlarged edition of his physical-culture book. We told him that it would sell a million copies, and I think we all volunteered to act as selling-agents for the book. Annette Kellermann and Susanna Cocroft, we cried, were scarecrows compared to Gloria. “To all this banter Gloria would listen calmly and unembarrassed, for she had a magnificent unconsciousness of her own superb allure. We would each try to get a moment alone with her to describe the exercises we were taking, and to ask her advice about our muscular development. I remember that Blackmore, after secret practice that we had not suspected, took the wind out of our sails one evening when some of us were bragging of our accomplishment in bending and touching the floor while standing on tiptoe. He jumped up and caught hold of the lintel of the doorway, and chinned himself on it a dozen times or so. We were all crestfallen by this feat until Gloria came forward–all the other…

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Excerpt #8, from The Murder on the Links, by Agatha Christie

…magistrate might say, but I reassured myself by the reflection that no harm could possibly be done. We repaired first to the spot where the body had been discovered. A man was on guard there, who saluted respectfully, knowing me by sight, and raised no question as to my companion. Presumably he regarded her as vouched for by me. I explained to Cinderella just how the discovery had been made, and she listened attentively, sometimes putting an intelligent question. Then we turned our steps in the direction of the Villa. I proceeded rather cautiously, for, truth to tell, I was not at all anxious to meet any one. I took the girl through the shrubbery round to the back of the house where the small shed was. I recollected that yesterday evening, after relocking the door, M. Bex had left the key with the sergent de ville__ Marchaud, “in case M. Giraud should require it while we are upstairs.” I thought it quite likely that the Sûreté detective, after using it, had returned it to Marchaud again. Leaving the girl out of sight in the shrubbery, I entered the house. Marchaud was on duty outside the door of the salon__. From within came the murmur of voices. “Monsieur desires Hautet? He is within. He is again interrogating Françoise.” “No,” I said hastily, “I don’t want him. But I should very much like…

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Excerpt #9, from Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil, by W. E. B. Du Bois

…light,–a triumph of possible good in evil so strange that the workers hardly believed it. Slowly they saw the gates of Ellis Island closing, slowly the footsteps of the yearly million men became fainter and fainter, until the stream of immigrants overseas was stopped by the shadow of death at the very time when new murder opened new markets over all the world to American industry; and the giants with the thunderbolts stamped and raged and peered out across the world and called for men and evermore,–men! The Unwise Men laughed and squeezed reluctant dollars out of the fists of the mighty and saw in their dream the vision of a day when labor, as they knew it, should come into its own; saw this day and saw it with justice and with right, save for one thing, and that was the sound of the moan of the Disinherited, who still lay without the walls. When they heard this moan and saw that it came not across the seas, they were at first amazed and said it was not true; and then they were mad and said it should not be. Quickly they turned and looked into the red blackness of the South and in their hearts were fear and hate! What did they see? They saw something at which they had been taught to laugh and make sport; they saw that which the heading of every newspaper column, the lie of every cub reporter, the exaggeration of every press dispatch, and the distortion of every speech and book had taught them…

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Excerpt #10, from History of the war in the Peninsula and in the south of France from the year

…the Guadalquivir. A demonstration by the allies in the Isla de Leon arrested the march of these French troops for a moment, but on the 14th eight thousand men under generals Godinot and Semélé advanced upon St. Roque and Algeziras. The inhabitants of those places immediately fled to the green island, and Ballesteros took refuge under Gibraltar, where his flanks were covered by the gun-boats of the place. The garrison was too weak to assist him with men, and thus cooped up, he lived upon the resources of the place, while efforts were therefore made to draw off the French by harassing their flanks. The naval means were not sufficient to remove his whole army to another quarter, but seven hundred were transported to Manilba, where the Serranos and some Partidas had assembled on the left of the French, and at the same time twelve hundred British troops with four guns, under colonel Skerrett, and two thousand Spaniards, under Copons, sailed from Cadiz to Tarifa to act upon the French right. Copons was driven back by a gale of wind, but Skerrett arrived the 17th. The next day Godinot sent a detachment against him, but the sea-road by which it marched was so swept with the guns of the Tuscan frigate, aided by the boats of the Stately, that the French after losing some men returned. Then Godinot and Semélé being in dispute, and without provisions, retreated; they were followed by Ballesteros’…

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Excerpt #11, from The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Arthur Conan Doyle

…“I don’t say now that he isn’t a crazy man,” said Sir Henry; “I can’t forget the look in his eyes when he ran at me this morning, but I must allow that no man could make a more handsome apology than he has done.” “Did he give any explanation of his conduct?” “His sister is everything in his life, he says. That is natural enough, and I am glad that he should understand her value. They have always been together, and according to his account he has been a very lonely man with only her as a companion, so that the thought of losing her was really terrible to him. He had not understood, he said, that I was becoming attached to her, but when he saw with his own eyes that it was really so, and that she might be taken away from him, it gave him such a shock that for a time he was not responsible for what he said or did. He was very sorry for all that had passed, and he recognized how foolish and how selfish it was that he should imagine that he could hold a beautiful woman like his sister to himself for her whole life. If she had to leave him he had rather it was to a neighbour like myself than to anyone else. But in any case it was a blow to him and it would take him some time before he could prepare himself to meet it. He would withdraw all opposition upon his part if I…

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Excerpt #12, from Ox Team Days on the Oregon Trail, by Howard R. Driggs and Ezra Meeker

…Tears could not be restrained as the loading progressed and the realization faced the parents of both that the young people were about to leave them. “Why, mother, we are only going to Iowa, you know, where we can get a home that shall be our own. It’s not so far away–only about five hundred miles.” [Illustration: A Dutch oven.] “Yes, I know, but suppose you get sick in that uninhabited country; who will take care of you?” Notwithstanding this motherly solicitude, the young people could not fail to know that there was a secret feeling of approval in the good woman’s breast. After a few miles’ travel the reluctant final parting came. We could not then know that this loved parent would lay down her life a few years later in a heroic attempt to follow the wanderers to Oregon. She rests in an unknown and unmarked grave in the Platte valley. What shall I say of that October drive from the home near Indianapolis to Eddyville, Iowa, in the delightful atmosphere of Indian summer? It was an atmosphere of hope and content. We had the wide world before us; we had good health; and above all we had each other. At this time but one railroad entered Indianapolis–it would be called a tramway now–from Madison on the Ohio River. When we cut loose from that…

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