Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:26:52

Excerpt #1, from The Radio Boys Rescue the Lost Alaska Expedition, by Gerald Breckenridge

…together the aerial series condenser, the blocking condenser, the grid condenser, the telegraph key, the chopper, the choke coil in the key circuit, the filament volt-meter, the protective condenser in the power circuit, the storage battery and the motor generator. Farnum and MacDonald asked questions, although Dick and Art were content to sit silent and watch, keen-eyed, as the construction work progressed. Several times, too, Dick arose and went to the water’s edge to keep watch against surprise. That any would be attempted for the time being, nobody believed, as they figured the enemy would consider them on guard. As they worked, Jack explained for the benefit of the others. His description of how the low voltage current from the storage battery flowed into one of the windings of the generator and drives it as a motor thus generating higher voltage in the other winding both puzzled and interested them. By the time, the set was ready for use, Farnum, who was something of a mechanic by inclination, had a fair understanding of the set, but MacDonald, though interested, was bewildered. “I’m fair beat,” he confessed. “Anyhow, just so you boys can make it work!” “Oh, we’ll make it work, all right,” Frank assured him. “Well, now, to try to call the Post. What’s its call, Mr. MacDonald?” “I happen to remember,” said MacDonald. “We were all so interested when…

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Excerpt #2, from Across Asia on a Bicycle, by Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

…Our morning ablutions were usually made à la Turk: by having water poured upon the hands from a spouted vessel. Cleanliness is, with the Turk, perhaps, more than ourselves, the next thing to godliness. But his ideas are based upon a very different theory. Although he uses no soap for washing either his person or his clothes, yet he considers himself much cleaner than the giaour, for the reason that he uses running water exclusively, never allowing the same particles to touch him the second time. A Turk believes that all water is purified after running six feet. As a test of his faith we have often seen him lading up drinking-water from a stream where the women were washing clothes just a few yards above. [Illustration: SCENE AT A GREEK INN.] As all cooking and eating had stopped at the sound of the morning cannon, we found great difficulty in gathering together even a cold breakfast of ekmek, yaourt, and raisins. Ekmek is a cooked bran-flour paste, which has the thinness, consistency, and almost the taste of blotting-paper. This is the Turkish peasant’s staff of life. He carries it with him everywhere; so did we. As it was made in huge circular sheets, we would often punch a hole in the middle, and slip it up over our arms. This we found the handiest and most serviceable mode of transportation, being handy to eat without removing our hands from the handle-bars, and also answering the purpose of sails in case of a favoring wind. Yaourt, another…

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Excerpt #3, from Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad

…there I thought of these two, guarding the door of Darkness, knitting black wool as for a warm pall, one introducing, introducing continuously to the unknown, the other scrutinizing the cheery and foolish faces with unconcerned old eyes. Ave! Old knitter of black wool. Morituri te salutant. Not many of those she looked at ever saw her again—not half, by a long way. “There was yet a visit to the doctor. ‘A simple formality,’ assured me the secretary, with an air of taking an immense part in all my sorrows. Accordingly a young chap wearing his hat over the left eyebrow, some clerk I suppose—there must have been clerks in the business, though the house was as still as a house in a city of the dead—came from somewhere up-stairs, and led me forth. He was shabby and careless, with inkstains on the sleeves of his jacket, and his cravat was large and billowy, under a chin shaped like the toe of an old boot. It was a little too early for the doctor, so I proposed a drink, and thereupon he developed a vein of joviality. As we sat over our vermouths he glorified the Company’s business, and by and by I expressed casually my surprise at him not going out there. He became very cool and collected all at once. ‘I am not such a fool as I look, quoth Plato to his disciples,’ he said sententiously, emptied his glass with great resolution, and we rose. “The old doctor felt my pulse, evidently thinking of something else the…

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Excerpt #4, from All the World Over: Interesting Stories of Travel, Thrilling Adventure and Home

…Ef May thought of brother Gus’ careless scholarship, and trembled. “There’s a little girl that told a lie to her mother,–hear her moan and sob! She will confess her fault and ask to be forgiven, in the morning, I think.” Ef May silently took the lesson to heart. “Do you see that old fellow in the corner? How he grasps with his hands and mutters, and now he is trying to call ‘murder!’ He has spent all his life hoarding up riches, and now, sleeping or waking, he lives in constant terror of losing his gold that he will neither spend for himself or others.” “But here,” and the speaker pointed to a corner near at hand, where rolled up into a round yellow ball, was the figure of Johnny Staples, sound asleep in the velvety depths of an easy chair, his good-natured, honest little face, calm and peaceful, with not a cloud of suffering, remorse or fear to mar its innocent beauty. “But here,” he repeated, “is one who will find in our friend’s party the refreshment and rest that only health and innocence can reasonably expect.” Just then the company showed signs of a general breaking up, and the assembled guests gave such a loud, unanimous snore that Ef May started up, terrified half out of her senses; and pulling vigorously at…

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Excerpt #5, 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 #6, from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, by Mark Twain

…it out of my mind. But now it was different; I wanted it all the time; it was nag, nag, nag, right along, and no rest; I couldn’t get it out of my mind; and so at last I lost my temper and said hang a man that would make a suit of armor without any pockets in it. You see I had my handkerchief in my helmet; and some other things; but it was that kind of a helmet that you can’t take off by yourself. That hadn’t occurred to me when I put it there; and in fact I didn’t know it. I supposed it would be particularly convenient there. And so now, the thought of its being there, so handy and close by, and yet not get-at-able, made it all the worse and the harder to bear. Yes, the thing that you can’t get is the thing that you want, mainly; every one has noticed that. Well, it took my mind off from everything else; took it clear off, and centered it in my helmet; and mile after mile, there it stayed, imagining the handkerchief, picturing the handkerchief; and it was bitter and aggravating to have the salt sweat keep trickling down into my eyes, and I couldn’t get at it. It seems like a little thing, on paper, but it was not a little thing at all; it was the most real kind of misery. I would not say it if it was not so. I made up my mind that I would carry along a reticule next time, let it look how it might, and people say what they would. Of course…

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Excerpt #7, from The Satyricon — Complete, by Petronius Arbiter

…calling for a bowl of wine, Dama spoke up, “A day’s nothing at all: it’s night before you can turn around, so you can’t do better than to go right to the dining-room from your bed. It’s been so cold that I can hardly get warm in a bath, but a hot drink’s as good as an overcoat: I’ve had some long pegs, and between you and me, I’m a bit groggy; the booze has gone to my head.” CHAPTER THE FORTY-SECOND. Here Seleucus took up the tale. “I don’t bathe every day,” he confided, “a bath uses you up like a fuller: water’s got teeth and your strength wastes away a little every day; but when I’ve downed a pot of mead, I tell the cold to suck my cock! I couldn’t bathe today anyway, because I was at a funeral; dandy fellow, he was too, good old Chrysanthus slipped his wind! Why, only the other day he said good morning’ to me, and I almost think I’m talking to him now! Gawd’s truth, we’re only blown-up bladders strutting around, we’re less than flies, for they have some good in them, but we’re only bubbles. And supposing he had not kept to such a low diet! Why, not a drop of water or a crumb of bread so much as passed his lips for five days; and yet he joined the majority! Too many doctors did away with him, or rather, his time had come, for a doctor’s not good for anything except for a consolation to your mind! He was well carried out, anyhow, in the very bed he slept in during his lifetime. And he was…

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Excerpt #8, from The War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells

…sudden whirl of black smoke driving across the road hid him for a moment. I ran to my neighbour’s door and rapped to satisfy myself of what I already knew, that his wife had gone to London with him and had locked up their house. I went in again, according to my promise, to get my servant’s box, lugged it out, clapped it beside her on the tail of the dog cart, and then caught the reins and jumped up into the driver’s seat beside my wife. In another moment we were clear of the smoke and noise, and spanking down the opposite slope of Maybury Hill towards Old Woking. In front was a quiet sunny landscape, a wheat field ahead on either side of the road, and the Maybury Inn with its swinging sign. I saw the doctor’s cart ahead of me. At the bottom of the hill I turned my head to look at the hillside I was leaving. Thick streamers of black smoke shot with threads of red fire were driving up into the still air, and throwing dark shadows upon the green treetops eastward. The smoke already extended far away to the east and west—to the Byfleet pine woods eastward, and to Woking on the west. The road was dotted with people running towards us. And very faint now, but very distinct through the hot, quiet air, one heard the whirr of a machine-gun that was presently stilled, and an intermittent cracking of rifles. Apparently the Martians were setting fire to everything within range of…

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Excerpt #9, from Ancient, Curious, and Famous Wills, by Virgil M. Harris

…himself and the fortune he had amassed, but if he entertained any malicious sentiments against those to whom he was obliged to leave what he could not take away with him, he seems to have been fully justified in the somewhat severe animadversions he has passed on some of his legatees. To a lady relative, who had been full of attentions for him, he left a broken cup, jeering her with the taunt that while she thought she was taking him in he was laughing in his sleeve at the grimace she would make when she found that it was he who had got all her little gifts, her smiles and favors out of her, knowing all the while that he had no intention of repaying them as she expected. “As for you,” he says at the end of the will, “you, my good and admirable valet, who have so long taken me for your dupe, you will now learn that it is you who have been mine; when at the conclusion of my dinner you thought I was applauding your economy and your zeal, in carefully putting together the remains of bottles of wine and keeping them for the next meal, it never occurred to you that I was well aware you took for your own use whole bottles. When you came with tearful eyes and coaxing voice to wait on me the moment I was suffering from any trifling indisposition, presenting to me my tisanes with an assumed air of condolence and anxiety, you little thought how my instinct,…

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Excerpt #10, from Canadian Fairy Tales, by Cyrus MacMillan

…hidden them." So they changed back to the shapes of dog and stick and went to sleep. The next morning the woman and her boy set off to the forest near the mountain, to gather berries and to dig up medicine roots. They took the dog and the stick with them. At noon, after they had worked for some time, they sat down to have their luncheon. The woman threw the stick down on the ground, and the boy let the dog run away among the shrubs. The dog wandered to the side of the mountain. There he found an opening like the mouth of a cave. Peering into the place he saw many buffaloes within, and he knew that at last he had found the hiding place of the giant’s plunder. He went back to the woman and the boy and began to bark. This was the signal agreed on with his companion. The woman and her son thought he was barking at a bird, and they laughed at his capers as he jumped about. But he was in reality calling to his comrade. The stick understood the call and wiggled like a snake through the underbrush to the dog’s side, unseen by the boy and his mother. They then entered the large cave in the side of the mountain, and there they found a great herd of buffaloes–all the buffaloes that had been driven from the prairies. The dog barked at them and snapped at their heels, and the stick beat them, and they began to drive them quickly out of the cavern and eastward toward the…

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Excerpt #11, from Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, by Henry David Thoreau

…not want the world to be changed; but he answered with a chuckle of surprise in his Canadian accent, not knowing that the question had ever been entertained before, “No, I like it well enough.” It would have suggested many things to a philosopher to have dealings with him. To a stranger he appeared to know nothing of things in general; yet I sometimes saw in him a man whom I had not seen before, and I did not know whether he was as wise as Shakespeare or as simply ignorant as a child, whether to suspect him of a fine poetic consciousness or of stupidity. A townsman told me that when he met him sauntering through the village in his small close-fitting cap, and whistling to himself, he reminded him of a prince in disguise. His only books were an almanac and an arithmetic, in which last he was considerably expert. The former was a sort of cyclopædia to him, which he supposed to contain an abstract of human knowledge, as indeed it does to a considerable extent. I loved to sound him on the various reforms of the day, and he never failed to look at them in the most simple and practical light. He had never heard of such things before. Could he do without factories? I asked. He had worn the home-made Vermont gray, he said, and that was good. Could he dispense with tea and coffee? Did this country afford any beverage beside water? He had soaked hemlock leaves in water and drank it, and thought that was…

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Excerpt #12, from A Doll’s House : a play, by Henrik Ibsen

…You spent a whole year in Italy, didn’t you? NORA. Yes. It was no easy matter to get away, I can tell you. It was just after Ivar was born; but naturally we had to go. It was a wonderfully beautiful journey, and it saved Torvald’s life. But it cost a tremendous lot of money, Christine. MRS LINDE. So I should think. NORA. It cost about two hundred and fifty pounds. That’s a lot, isn’t it? MRS LINDE. Yes, and in emergencies like that it is lucky to have the money. NORA. I ought to tell you that we had it from papa. MRS LINDE. Oh, I see. It was just about that time that he died, wasn’t it? NORA. Yes; and, just think of it, I couldn’t go and nurse him. I was expecting little Ivar’s birth every day and I had my poor sick Torvald to look after. My dear, kind father—I never saw him again, Christine. That was the saddest time I have known since our marriage….

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