Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:25:28

Excerpt #1, from The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran

…in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance. For what is prayer but the expansion of yourself into the living ether? And if it is for your comfort to pour your darkness into space, it is also for your delight to pour forth the dawning of your heart. And if you cannot but weep when your soul summons you to prayer, she should spur you again and yet again, though weeping, until you shall come laughing. When you pray you rise to meet in the air those who are praying at that very hour, and whom save in prayer you may not meet. Therefore let your visit to that temple invisible be for naught but ecstasy and sweet communion. For if you should enter the temple for no other purpose than asking you shall…

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Excerpt #2, from Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2, by William Patten

…of his doubts. “It was easy for me to give you daring advice then, Ralph,” she said. “Like most school-girls, I thought that life was a great and glorious thing, and that happiness was a fruit which hung within reach of every hand. Now I have lived for six years trying single-handed to relieve the want and suffering of the needy people with whom I come in contact, and their squalor and wretchedness have sickened me, and, what is still worse, I feel that all I can do is as a drop in the ocean, and, after all, amounts to nothing. I know I am no longer the same reckless girl who, with the very best intention, sent you wandering through the wide world; and I thank God that it proved to be for your good, although the whole now appears quite incredible to me. My thoughts have moved so long within the narrow circle of these mountains that they have lost their youthful elasticity, and can no more rise above them.” Ralph detected, in the midst of her despondency, a spark of her former fire, and grew eloquent in his endeavors to persuade her that she was unjust to herself, and that there was but a wider sphere of life needed to develop all the latent powers of her rich nature. At the dinner-table, her father again sat eying his guest with that same cold look of distrust and suspicion. And when the meal was at an end, he rose abruptly and called his daughter into another room….

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Excerpt #3, from Our Knowledge Box; or, Old Secrets and New Discoveries., by Unknown

…an ounce of gum arabic; when cold, stir it up with one and a half pounds of loaf sugar, and a spoonful of powdered ginger, or twelve drops of essence of ginger. Roll and beat the whole up into a paste; make it into a flat cake, and punch out the lozenges with a round stamp; dry them near the fire, or in an oven. Peppermint Lozenges.–Best powdered white sugar, seven pounds; pure starch, one pound; oil of peppermint to flavor. Mix with mucilage. Peppermint, Rose or Hoarhound Candy.–They may be made as lemon candy. Flavor with essence of rose or peppermint or finely powdered hoarhound. Pour it out in a buttered paper, placed in a square tin pan. To Clarify Sugar for Candies.–To every pound of sugar, put a large cup of water, and put it in a brass or copper kettle, over a slow fire, for half an hour; pour into it a small quantity of isinglass and gum Arabic, dissolved together. This will cause all impurities to rise to the surface; skim it as it rises. Flavor according to taste. All kinds of sugar for candy, are boiled as above directed. When boiling loaf sugar, add a tablespoonful of rum or vinegar, to prevent its becoming too brittle whilst making. Loaf sugar when boiled, by pulling and making into small rolls, and twisting a little, will make what is called little rock, or snow. By pulling loaf sugar after it is boiled, you can make it as white as snow….

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Excerpt #4, from The American Diary of a Japanese Girl, by Yoné Noguchi

…It was better than a blank, anyway, I said philosophically. Now let me send a little present to my home! A little thing is a deal sweeter. I ordered fourteen packets of N. Y. Central Park lawn seed from a nursery. New York Central Park! Doesn’t it sound grand? And other flower seeds also. The dwarf sweet pea is named “Cupid.” It will be no wonder if my father mistakes it for a kibisho. Cupid is a handsome boy, not a bullfrog-looking teapot, funny papa! He is garden crazy. I can imagine how conceited he will be showing around his western sea flowers when they are in bloom. I asked my uncle to translate the directions. Isn’t it handy to keep a secretary? I’ll not miss signing my name on the translation. My daddy may think it was done by myself. Woman is a snob. Now what for mamma? 18th—Mother Schuyler took me to her church. Such a heathen me!…

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Excerpt #5, from Grimms’ Fairy Tales, by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm

…he came back she had bound up her hair again, and all was safe. So they watched the geese till it grew dark. In the evening, after they came home, Curdken went to the old king, and said, ‘I cannot have that strange girl to help me to keep the geese any longer.’ ‘Why?’ said the king. ‘Because, instead of doing any good, she does nothing but tease me all day long.’ Then the king made him tell him what had happened. And Curdken said, ‘When we go in the morning through the dark gate with our flock of geese, she cries and talks with the head of a horse that hangs upon the wall, and says: ‘Falada, Falada, there thou hangest!’ and the head answers: ‘Bride, bride, there thou gangest! Alas! alas! if thy mother knew it, Sadly, sadly, would she rue it.’ And Curdken went on telling the king what had happened upon the meadow where the geese fed; how his hat was blown away; and how he was forced to run after it, and to leave his flock of geese to themselves. But the old king told the boy to go out again the next day: and when morning came, he placed himself behind the dark gate, and heard how she spoke to Falada, and how Falada answered. Then he went into the field, and hid himself in a bush by the meadow’s side; and he soon saw with his own…

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Excerpt #6, from Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted; Or, What’s in a Dream, by Gustavus Hindman Miller

…Milk.[125] To dream of drinking milk, denotes abundant harvest to the farmer and pleasure in the home; for a traveler, it foretells a fortunate voyage. This is a very propitious dream for women. To see milk in large quantities, signifies riches and health. To dream of dealing in milk commercially, denotes great increase in fortune. To give milk away, shows that you will be too benevolent for the good of your own fortune. To spill milk, denotes that you will experience a slight loss and suffer temporary unhappiness at the hands of friends. To dream of impure milk, denotes that you will be tormented with petty troubles. To dream of sour milk, denotes that you will be disturbed over the distress of friends. To dream of trying unsuccessfully to drink milk, signifies that you will be in danger of losing something of value or the friendship of a highly esteemed person. To dream of hot milk, foretells a struggle, but the final winning of riches and desires. To dream of bathing in milk, denotes pleasures and companionships of congenial friends….

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Excerpt #7, from On the Anzac trail: Being extracts from the diary of a New Zealand sapper, by Anzac

…of Australian and New Zealand infantry, was to march out of camp at sunset, duly discover the enemy’s position, and deliver a night attack with its full strength. The “enemy,” to which my company was attached, left early the same morning, being given a day in which to select the position and fortify it. Our luck was out when it came to dig. My word that subsoil was hard! In some places, graft as we might, three feet was all we could sink the trenches; we seemed to have struck the bedrock of Egypt. After messing up our tools badly and losing a lot of sweat we gave it best, contenting ourselves with raising the parapet where necessary, so as to afford the requisite cover and shelter to the defenders. Our own O.C. was naturally anxious to make an A1 show in his particular line, so we prepared a boncer defensive position. We had stacks of wire, and we didn’t spare it, shoving up entanglements that called for some getting through all along the line. It was understood that the wire would be plain stuff; but on the quiet, and to make matters more realistic, we shoved in a couple of strands of barbed—and smiled expectantly. We also rigged up a real good outfit in the way of coloured flares, and fixed dummy mines here and there in front of the entanglements; the latter were harmless, of course, but they sounded pretty bad when sprung….

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Excerpt #8, from Word Portraits of Famous Writers, by Mabel E. Wotton

…brain.” [Sidenote: The Century, 1881.] “Everything in her aspect and presence was in keeping with the bent of her soul. The deeply-lined face, the too marked and massive features, were united with an air of delicate refinement, which in one way was the more impressive because it seemed to proceed so entirely from within. Nay, the inward beauty would sometimes quite transform the external harshness; there would be moments when the thin hands that entwined themselves in their eagerness, the earnest figure that bowed forward to speak and hear, the deep gaze moving from one face to another with a grave appeal,–all these seemed the transparent symbols that showed the presence of a wise benignant soul. But it was the voice which best revealed her, a voice whose subdued intensity and tremulous richness seemed to environ her uttered words with the mystery of a work of feeling that must remain untold…. And then again, when in moments of more intimate converse some current of emotion would set strongly through her soul, when she would raise her head in unconscious absorption and look out into the unseen, her expression was not one to be soon forgotten. It had not, indeed, the serene felicity of souls to whose child-like confidence all heaven and earth are fair. Rather it was the look (if I may use a platonic phrase) of a strenuous Demiurge,…

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Excerpt #9, from Psmith, Journalist, by P. G. Wodehouse

…body with the pleased smile of an infant destroying a Noah’s Ark with a tack-hammer. Despite these efforts, however, he was plainly getting all the worst of it. Energetic Mr. Wolmann, relying on his long left, was putting in three blows to his one. When the gong sounded, ending the first round, the house was practically solid for the Cyclone. Whoops and yells rose from everywhere. The building rang with shouts of, “Oh, you Al.!” Psmith turned sadly to Billy. “It seems to me, Comrade Windsor,” he said, “that this merry meeting looks like doing Comrade Brady no good. I should not be surprised at any moment to see his head bounce off on to the floor.” “Wait,” said Billy. “He’ll win yet.” “You think so?” “Sure. He comes from Wyoming,” said Billy with simple confidence. Rounds two and three were a repetition of round one. The Cyclone raged almost unchecked about the ring. In one lightning rally in the third he brought his right across squarely on to the Kid’s jaw. It was a blow which should have knocked any boxer out. The Kid merely staggered slightly and returned to business, still smiling. “See!” roared Billy enthusiastically in Psmith’s ear, above the…

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Excerpt #10, from Famous Modern Ghost Stories, by Dorothy Scarborough et al.

…sleeves–all through the discreditable proceedings we knew with whom we were dealing, murderer and coward that he was!" But nothing of this did Mr. King say. With his better light he was trying to penetrate the mystery of the man’s death. That he had not once moved from the corner where he had been stationed; that his posture was that of neither attack nor defense; that he had dropped his weapon; that he had obviously perished of sheer horror of something that he saw–these were circumstances which Mr. King’s disturbed intelligence could not rightly comprehend. Groping in intellectual darkness for a clew to his maze of doubt, his gaze, directed mechanically downward in the way of one who ponders momentous matters, fell upon something which, there, in the light of day and in the presence of living companions, affected him with terror. In the dust of years that lay thick upon the floor–leading from the door by which they had entered, straight across the room to within a yard of Manton’s crouching corpse–were three parallel lines of footprints–light but definite impressions of bare feet, the outer ones those of small children, the inner a woman’s. From the point at which they ended they did not return; they pointed all one way. Brewer, who had observed them at the same moment, was leaning forward in an attitude of rapt attention, horribly pale….

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Excerpt #11, from The Astral Plane, by C. W. Leadbeater

…higher in intellect, and therefore the more blame-worthy, stand the Tibetan black magicians, who are often, though incorrectly, called by Europeans Dûgpas–a title properly belonging, as is quite correctly explained by Surgeon-Major Waddell in his recent work on The Buddhism of Tibet, only to the Bhotanese subdivision of the great Kargyu sect, which is part of what may be called the semi-reformed school of Tibetan Buddhism. The Dûgpas no doubt deal in Tântrik magic to a considerable extent, but the real red-hatted entirely unreformed sect is that of the Ñin-mâ-pa, though far beyond them in a still lower depth lie the Bön-pa–the votaries of the aboriginal religion, who have never accepted any form of Buddhism at all. It must not, however, be supposed that all Tibetan sects except the Gelûgpa are necessarily and altogether evil; a truer view would be that as the rules of other sects permit considerably greater laxity of life and practice, the proportion of self-seekers among them is likely to be much larger than among the stricter reformers. The investigator will occasionally meet on the astral plane students of occultism from all parts of the world (belonging to lodges quite unconnected with the Masters of whom Theosophists know most) who are in many cases most earnest and self-sacrificing seekers after truth. It is noteworthy, however, that all such lodges are at least aware of the existence of the great…

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Excerpt #12, from Guide to Fortune Telling, by Dreams, by Anonymous

…post-paid upon receipt of only =Ten Cents=. KEYSTONE BOOK CO., Philadelphia, Pa. * * * * * Parlor Magic. [Illustration] This valuable textbook contains complete and exhaustive directions for performing over one hundred amusing and mysterious tricks in magic and legerdemain, including sleights with dice, dominoes, cards, ribbons, rings, fruit, coin, balls, handkerchiefs, etc., etc., the whole illustrated and clearly explained with 121 engravings. The directions for performing these tricks are made so very clear by the aid of the many illustrations given that any one may readily perform them, and thus become a veritable wizard in his own circle of acquaintances. Tricks which you have seen performed by professional magicians, and which have seemed to you almost miraculous, are so clearly and fully explained in this book that you may perform them with ease. Among the tricks explained in the book are: “The Magic Coin,” “The Magic Handkerchief,” “The Dancing Egg,” “The Domino Oracle,” “The Magic Bond,” “To Swallow a Barber’s Pole,” “The Restored Ribbon,” “The Magnetized Cane,” “To Eat a Peck of Shavings, and Convert them into a Ribbon,” “The Wonderful Hat,” “The Pepper-Box Trick,” “The Bag of…

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