Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:25:38

Excerpt #1, from Dave Dashaway, Air Champion; Or, Wizard Work in the Clouds, by Roy Rockwood

…which his hopes and interest were fixed so intensely, was in peril. He knew it was scorched, from the faint smell of melting varnish. All he thought of was getting the Ariel outside the spreading circle of fire. He could choose no lanes between the numerous stacks, for the smoke now obscured everything. He had to trust to luck. Now he was running the machine along. “The mischief!” uttered Hiram abruptly, and went spinning back half a dozen feet. He had driven the biplane squarely into an unseen stack. The rebound shook him loose. He stumbled and fell. Then his head met some hard solid substance and he closed his eyes with a groan—senseless. It was the echo of the two shots that first aroused Dave Dashaway, who had stood looking after Hiram until he disappeared, and then awaited his return. The farmer had gone back to the porch, but now he ran down into the yard again with the words: “Hello! that was my gun—I’d know its sound anywhere, I think.” “Then something is wrong,” instantly decided Dave, quite stirred up. “I see nothing of the airship—” “No,” shouted the farmer, “but there’s a fire!” The moment he got beyond the barn, Dave also saw the smoke and flames. “My haystacks!” cried the farmer. “The Ariel!” murmured Dave. “And there is the biplane Hiram saw. Mr….

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Excerpt #2, from Symbolic Logic, by Lewis Carroll

…As the process is simply the reverse of that discussed in the previous Chapter, we can avail ourselves of the results there obtained, as far as they go. First, let us suppose that we find a Red Counter placed in the North-West Cell. ·——-·… |(.)| | |—|—| | | | ·——-·… We know that this represents each of the Trio of equivalent Propositions “Some xy exist” = “Some x are y” = “Some y are x”. Similarly we may interpret a Red Counter, when placed in the North-East, or South-West, or South-East Cell. Next, let us suppose that we find a Grey Counter placed in the North-West Cell. ·——-·… |( )| | |—|—| | | | ·——-·…

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Excerpt #3, from The Heroes; Or, Greek Fairy Tales for My Children, by Charles Kingsley

…Then the strange lady smiled again, and said: ‘Not yet; you are too young, and too unskilled; for this is Medusa the Gorgon, the mother of a monstrous brood. Return to your home, and do the work which waits there for you. You must play the man in that before I can think you worthy to go in search of the Gorgon.’ Then Perseus would have spoken, but the strange lady vanished, and he awoke; and behold, it was a dream. But day and night Perseus saw before him the face of that dreadful woman, with the vipers writhing round her head. So he returned home; and when he came to Seriphos, the first thing which he heard was that his mother was a slave in the house of Polydectes. Grinding his teeth with rage, he went out, and away to the king’s palace, and through the men’s rooms, and the women’s rooms, and so through all the house (for no one dared stop him, so terrible and fair was he), till he found his mother sitting on the floor, turning the stone hand-mill, and weeping as she turned it. And he lifted her up, and kissed her, and bade her follow him forth. But before they could pass out of the room Polydectes came in, raging. And when Perseus saw him, he flew upon him as the mastiff flies on the boar. ‘Villain and tyrant!’ he cried; ‘is this your respect for the Gods, and thy mercy to strangers and widows? You shall die!’ And because he had no sword he caught up the stone…

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Excerpt #4, from A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, by John Stuart Mill

…believing, that there is in one human individual, one sex, or one race of mankind over another, an inherent and inexplicable superiority in mental faculties, could only substantiate their proposition by subtracting from the differences of intellect which we in fact see, all that can be traced by known laws either to the ascertained differences of physical organization, or to the differences which have existed in the outward circumstances in which the subjects of the comparison have hitherto been placed. What these causes might fail to account for would constitute a residual phenomenon, which and which alone would be evidence of an ulterior original distinction, and the measure of its amount. But the asserters of such supposed differences have not provided themselves with these necessary logical conditions of the establishment of their doctrine. The spirit of the Method of Residues being, it is hoped, sufficiently intelligible from these examples, and the other three methods having already been so fully exemplified, we may here close our exposition of the four methods, considered as employed in the investigation of the simpler and more elementary order of the combinations of phenomena. § 6. Dr. Whewell has expressed a very unfavorable opinion of the utility of the Four Methods, as well as of the aptness of the examples by which I have attempted to illustrate them. His words are these:(145) “Upon these methods, the obvious thing to remark is, that they take for…

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Excerpt #5, from The History of the 33rd Divisional Artillery, in the War, 1914 to 1918.

…every battery commander was busying himself in learning from his “opposite number” the zone to be covered and the general characteristics of the battery position itself. Thus the programme had been adhered to, and by the evening of the 3rd a portion of the relief was carried out; just forty-eight hours after the receipt of the warning order, and thirty-six hours since the beginning of the march from a training area so far distant as to be within ten miles of Boulogne, two guns per battery of both brigades were in action once more. While all this had been going on at the gun line, the remainder of the brigades had marched to the wagon-lines which they were to occupy during such time as the batteries were in action—the 156th Brigade taking over an area 1,200 yards south-east of Vlamertinghe, where permanent huts and stables were being built on either side of the road, while to the 162nd Brigade had been allotted an open area half a mile west of Ypres, between Goldfish Château and Belgian Battery Corner. These lines were reached late on the evening of the 3rd and were extremely difficult to get into, in the case of the 162nd Brigade, owing to the fact that the approaches from the road were rendered quite impassable by mud. A most uncomfortable night was spent on the side of the road, and not until daylight came was there any chance of getting horses and men into their permanent “billets”—mud lines and tents in the month of December! Longer…

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Excerpt #6, from 13 Days: The Chronicle of an Escape from a German Prison, by John Alan Lyde Caunter

…eventually became a large affair with a librarian and a room to itself. Some prisoners managed to continue playing cards from their first days in prison until I left, and I suppose will continue to do so without ceasing until the day of their release. Personally, after the first year I spent in captivity I hated the sight of a card and played very seldom. The orchestra, from modest beginnings, grew into a really excellent institution. Most of the instruments were hired from the town of Crefeld. By dint of asking repeatedly, we persuaded the Germans to allow us to run a theatre, which also developed from an extremely crude state into what was really quite a respectable affair. The main difficulty with which our theatrical manager had to contend, was the lack of material for “girls” in the caste. However, practise and hard training turned out some passable ones in time. The French were more fortunate in this respect than the English. They are all born actors it seems, and they found two or three really excellent male “actresses.” The Russians also produced theatrical displays, but were not so persevering in that respect as the French and British. Periodically the camp used to be visited by German officers on leave…

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Excerpt #7, from The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins

…subject of the inquiry I am conducting here. You detected the turn that inquiry was really taking, yesterday. Naturally enough, in your position, you are shocked and distressed. Naturally enough, also, you visit your own angry sense of your own family scandal upon Me.” “What do you want?” Mr. Franklin broke in, sharply enough. “I want to remind you, sir, that I have at any rate, thus far, not been proved to be wrong. Bearing that in mind, be pleased to remember, at the same time, that I am an officer of the law acting here under the sanction of the mistress of the house. Under these circumstances, is it, or is it not, your duty as a good citizen, to assist me with any special information which you may happen to possess?” “I possess no special information,” says Mr. Franklin. Sergeant Cuff put that answer by him, as if no answer had been made. “You may save my time, sir, from being wasted on an inquiry at a distance,” he went on, “if you choose to understand me and speak out.” “I don’t understand you,” answered Mr. Franklin; “and I have nothing to say.” “One of the female servants (I won’t mention names) spoke to you privately, sir, last night.” Once more Mr. Franklin cut him short; once more Mr. Franklin answered, “I have nothing to say.”…

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Excerpt #8, from Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, by John Wesley Powell

…portion of Minnesota in which the investigations were made; a few of them, also, were not identified by the preceptors, as they were out of season. It is interesting to note in this list the number of infusions and decoctions which are, from a medical and scientific standpoint, specific remedies for the complaints for which they are recommended. It is probable that the long continued intercourse between the Ojibwa and the Catholic Fathers, who were tolerably well versed in the ruder forms of medication, had much to do with improving an older and purely aboriginal form of practicing medical magic. In some of the remedies mentioned below there may appear to be philosophic reasons for their administration, but upon closer investigation it has been learned that the cure is not attributed to a regulation or restoration of functional derangement, but to the removal or even expulsion of malevolent beings–commonly designated as bad Man´idōs–supposed to have taken possession of that part of the body in which such derangement appears most conspicuous. Further reference to the mythic properties of some of the plants employed will be made at the proper time. Although the word Mashki kiwa´buⁿ–medicine broth–signifies liquid medical preparations, the term is usually employed in a general sense to pertain to the entire materia medica; and in addition to the alleged…

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Excerpt #9, from The Blue Raider: A Tale of Adventure in the Southern Seas, by Herbert Strang

…completely outlined. ’By gum, it’s a man!’ murmured Hoole. ’And a white man!’ added Trentham. ’I was afraid so.’ CHAPTER III THE CHIMNEY Noiselessly the two spectators slipped away through the bushes. Startled by the discovery of a white man, whose very stillness declared him a prisoner in bonds among these dancing savages, they felt the need of talking freely, unrestrained by precautions against being overheard. They hurried along at the base of the cliffs until they were out of earshot, then sat on a low rock where they could still see all that went on around the fire. ’Can it be that planter fellow on the Berenisa? What was his name?’ said Trentham. ’You mean Grimshaw; he was the only man besides ourselves who wore ducks. I don’t know. Grimshaw was a small man; the prisoner seemed a big fellow. I couldn’t see his face.’ ’Nor I. Whoever it is, I ’m afraid his number ’s up.’ ’I didn’t take much stock of Grinson’s yarns about cannibals, but it appears he ’s right. The niggers would hardly bring their prisoner down the chimney for the fun of it, or the trouble of taking him up again.’…

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Excerpt #10, from The philosophy of biology, by James Johnstone

…means of which the potential energy of stored chemical compounds passes into the kinetic energy of bodily movements; and the existence (so far as we can say that it exists in organisms other than ourselves) of some degree of consciousness. Neither do those morphological schemata which we construct as diagnostic of phyla, or classes, or orders, etc., separate these groups from each other so clearly and unequivocally as our classifications suggest. It might seem for instance that the presence or absence of a notochord would sharply distinguish between the vertebrate and invertebrate, but structures which suggest in their development the true notochordal skeleton of the typical vertebrate animal are to be traced in animals which exhibit few or none of the characters which we regard as diagnostic of the Vertebrate. Typical Arthropods and typical Vertebrates seem to be distinct from each other, but the extinct Ostracoderms of Silurian times may have been animals which possessed an internal axial skeleton, and which were also armed by a heavy dermal exo-skeleton. It is a hypothesis of considerable plausibility that they really were Arthropods, on the other hand they are usually regarded as Vertebrates. So also with most other phyla: the morphological characters which absolutely distinguish between one group and others are very few indeed, and the small appended groups that lie…

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Excerpt #11, from Round the Red Lamp: Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life, by Arthur Conan Doyle

…a man of wide reading, with catholic tastes and an extraordinary memory. His manner, too, was so pleasing and suave that one came, after a time, to overlook his repellent appearance. For a jaded and wearied man he was no unpleasant companion, and Smith found himself, after a time, looking forward to his visits, and even returning them. Clever as he undoubtedly was, however, the medical student seemed to detect a dash of insanity in the man. He broke out at times into a high, inflated style of talk which was in contrast with the simplicity of his life. “It is a wonderful thing,” he cried, “to feel that one can command powers of good and of evil–a ministering angel or a demon of vengeance.” And again, of Monkhouse Lee, he said,–“Lee is a good fellow, an honest fellow, but he is without strength or ambition. He would not make a fit partner for a man with a great enterprise. He would not make a fit partner for me.” At such hints and innuendoes stolid Smith, puffing solemnly at his pipe, would simply raise his eyebrows and shake his head, with little interjections of medical wisdom as to earlier hours and fresher air. One habit Bellingham had developed of late which Smith knew to be a frequent herald of a weakening mind. He appeared to be forever talking to himself. At late hours of the night, when there could be no visitor…

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Excerpt #12, from The Principles of Biology, Volume 1 (of 2), by Herbert Spencer

…their early lives in the water, acquire more completely the structures fitting them to live on land, to which they then migrate. Lastly, we have closely-allied creatures, like the Surinam toad and the terrestrial salamander, which, though they belong by their structures to the class Amphibia, are not amphibious in their habits–creatures the larvæ of which do not pass their early lives in the water, and yet go through these same metamorphoses! Must we then think, like Von Baer, that the distribution of kindred organisms through different media presents an insurmountable difficulty? On the contrary, with facts like these before us, the evolution-hypothesis supplies possible interpretations of many phenomena that are else unaccountable. After seeing the ways in which such changes of media are in some cases gradually imposed by physical conditions, and in other cases voluntarily commenced and slowly increased in the search after food; we shall begin to understand how, in the course of evolution, there have arisen strange obscurations of one type by the externals of another type. When we see land-birds occasionally feeding by the water-side, and then learn that one of them, the water-ouzel, an “anomalous member of the strictly terrestrial thrush family, wholly subsists by diving–grasping the stones with its feet and using its wings under water”–we are enabled to comprehend how, under pressure of population, aquatic habits may be acquired by creatures organized for…

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