Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:25:44

Excerpt #1, 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 #2, from The Aztec Treasure

…could not help but show, his face and neck flushed red, and he declared that he had the toothache. And then, as a vent for his overwrought feelings–of all things in the world–he fell to cursing the Superintendent of the Old Colony Railroad: on the ground that but for this functionary, who most unjustifiably had discharged him, he never would have come to Mexico at all! For my own part, I was well convinced that Fray Antonio meant then to say good-bye to us; and for a long while, as I lay awake that night, my thoughts went backward over the time that we had been companions together, and so dwelt upon the faithfulness of his friendship, and upon his gallant bearing in all times of peril, and upon the pure and perfect holiness which characterized his every act and word. Into the future I dared not let my thoughts wander, for I could foresee no outcome to the purpose which he had planned so resolutely but a dreary sorrow that would rest heavily upon me through all the remainder of my days. And at last, worn out by my own grief, I fell into a troubled sleep. The faint gray light of early morning shone dimly in the room as Rayburn awakened me by shaking my arm; and the first words which he spoke to me were, “The Padre is not here!” As I roused myself fully, and sat up and looked into his face, I saw by the look that he gave me how fully he shared the dread that was in my…

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Excerpt #3, from The Old East Indiamen, by E. Keble Chatterton

…of voyaging to the Orient, he made the maps and journals which came back in these ships useful to subsequent navigators and of the greatest interest to merchants and others. And when he died his work was in part carried on by Samuel Purchas of Pilgrimes fame. The second of these voyages, in which Lancaster again triumphs over what many would call sheer bad luck, has been taken from a letter which was sent to the East India Company by one of its servants, and is preserved in the archives of the India Office and will be dealt with in the following chapter. But for the present we will confine our attention to the voyage of those three ships mentioned at the end of the last chapter. After leaving Devonshire the Penelope, Marchant Royall and Edward Bonaventure arrived at the Canary Isles in a fortnight, having the advantage of a fair north-east wind. Before reaching the Equator they were able to capture a Portuguese caravel bound from Lisbon for Brazil with a cargo of Portuguese merchandise consisting of 60 tuns of wine, 1200 jars of oil, about 100 jars of olives and other produce. This came as a veritable good fortune to the English ships, for the latter’s crews had already begun to be afflicted with bad health. “We had two men died before wee passed the line, and divers sicke, which tooke their sicknesse in those hote climates: for they be wonderful unholesome from 8 degrees of Northerly latitude unto the line, at that…

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Excerpt #4, from The Student’s Elements of Geology, by Sir Charles Lyell

…teeth (which, as in all the old-World apes, exactly agree in number with those in man) it differed from the Gorilla and Chimpanzee, and corresponded with the human species. Upper Miocene Beds of Œningen, in Switzerland.—The faluns of the Loire first served, as already stated (p. 211), as the type of the Miocene formations in Europe. They yielded a plentiful harvest of marine fossil shells and corals, but were entirely barren of plants and insects. In Switzerland, on the other hand, deposits of the same age have been discovered, remarkable for their botanical and entomological treasures. We are indebted to Professor Heer, of Zurich, for the description, restoration, and classification of several hundred species and varieties of these fossil plants, the whole of which he has illustrated by excellent figures in his “Flora Tertiaria Helvetiæ.” This great work, and those of Adolphe Brongniart, Unger, Goppert and others, show that this class of fossils is beginning to play the same important part in the classification of the tertiary strata containing lignite or brown coal as an older flora has long played in enabling us to understand the ancient coal or carboniferous formation. No small skepticism has always prevailed among botanists as to whether the leaves alone and the wood of plants could ever afford sufficient data for determining even genera and families in the vegetable kingdom. In…

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Excerpt #5, from Mental Radio, by Upton Sinclair

…[Illustration: Fig. 79a] Now why should an obelisk go on a jag, and have little circles at its base? The answer appears to be: it inherited the curves from the previous fish-hook, and the little circles from the next drawing. You will see that, having used up her supply of little circles, Craig did not get the next drawing so well (Figs. 80, 80a): [Illustration: Fig. 80] [Illustration: Fig. 80a] In series twenty-two I first drew a bed, and Craig made two attempts to draw a potted plant. My second drawing was a maltese cross, and Craig turned it into a basket (Figs. 81, 81a): [Illustration: Fig. 81] [Illustration: Fig. 81a] But she could not give up her plant. She added: “There is a flower basket in this lot, or potted plant.” The next drawing was a fleur-de-lis, which looks not unlike a potted plant or hanging basket (Fig. 82): [Illustration: Fig. 82] In drawing four she got the elements of a door-knob pretty well, and added: “See head of bird, too—eagle beak.” Drawing seven was a crane, with beak open….

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Excerpt #6, from The Alchemist, by Ben Jonson

…1640), and certain fragments and ingatherings which the poet would hardly have included himself. These last comprise the fragment (less than seventy lines) of a tragedy called “Mortimer his Fall,” and three acts of a pastoral drama of much beauty and poetic spirit, “The Sad Shepherd.” There is also the exceedingly interesting “English Grammar” “made by Ben Jonson for the benefit of all strangers out of his observation of the English language now spoken and in use,” in Latin and English; and “Timber, or Discoveries” “made upon men and matter as they have flowed out of his daily reading, or had their reflux to his peculiar notion of the times.” The “Discoveries,” as it is usually called, is a commonplace book such as many literary men have kept, in which their reading was chronicled, passages that took their fancy translated or transcribed, and their passing opinions noted. Many passages of Jonson’s “Discoveries” are literal translations from the authors he chanced to be reading, with the reference, noted or not, as the accident of the moment prescribed. At times he follows the line of Macchiavelli’s argument as to the nature and conduct of princes; at others he clarifies his own conception of poetry and poets by recourse to Aristotle. He finds a choice paragraph on eloquence in Seneca the elder and applies it to his own…

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Excerpt #7, from A Romance of Tompkins Square, by Thomas A. Janvier

…gruffly. “Open for him, but lock the door again. I must go up-stairs.” Gottlieb, with a queer smile upon his face, left the little back room; and a moment later Minna uttered a cry of surprise, as Herr Sohnstein unlocked the door and her own Hans entered the shop. What, she thought, could all these wonders mean? As for Aunt Hedwig, she had sunk down into her big armchair and her bright black eyes seemed to be fairly starting from her head. Herr Sohnstein locked the door again, as he had been ordered to do, and then brought Hans through the shop and into the little back room. Hans evidently was not a party to the mystery, whatever the mystery might be. He looked at Minna as wonderingly as she looked at him, and he was distressingly ill at ease. But there was no time for either of them to ask questions, for as Hans entered the room from the shop, Gottlieb returned to it. In his hand Gottlieb held the brown old parchment on which the lebkuchen recipe was written; the smile had left his face; he was very pale. For a moment there was an awkward pause. Then Gottlieb, trembling a little as he walked, crossed the room to where Hans stood and placed the parchment in his hands. And it was in a trembling, broken voice that Gottlieb said: "Hans, a most wicked man have I been. But my dead Minna has helped me, and here I give again to thee what I stole from thy chest–I who was a…

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Excerpt #8, from Macbeth, by William Shakespeare

…ANGUS. We are sent To give thee from our royal master thanks; Only to herald thee into his sight, Not pay thee. ROSS. And, for an earnest of a greater honour, He bade me, from him, call thee Thane of Cawdor: In which addition, hail, most worthy thane, For it is thine. BANQUO. What, can the devil speak true? MACBETH. The Thane of Cawdor lives: why do you dress me In borrow’d robes? …ANGUS. Who was the Thane lives yet, But under heavy judgement bears that life Which he deserves to lose. Whether he was combin’d With those of Norway, or did line the rebel With hidden help and vantage, or that with both…

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Excerpt #9, from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

…In this description of our domestic circle I include Henry Clerval; for he was constantly with us. He went to school with me, and generally passed the afternoon at our house; for being an only child, and destitute of companions at home, his father was well pleased that he should find associates at our house; and we were never completely happy when Clerval was absent. I feel pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind, and changed its bright visions of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self. But, in drawing the picture of my early days, I must not omit to record those events which led, by insensible steps to my after tale of misery: for when I would account to myself for the birth of that passion, which afterwards ruled my destiny, I find it arise, like a mountain river, from ignoble and almost forgotten sources; but, swelling as it proceeded, it became the torrent which, in its course, has swept away all my hopes and joys. Natural philosophy is the genius that has regulated my fate; I desire therefore, in this narration, to state those facts which led to my predilection for that science. When I was thirteen years of age, we all went on a party of pleasure to the baths near Thonon: the inclemency of the weather obliged us to remain a day confined to the inn. In this…

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Excerpt #10, from Stage Coach and Tavern Days, by Alice Morse Earle

…delivered a series of Moral Dialogues In Five Parts Depicting the evil effects of jealousy and other bad passions and Proving that happiness can only spring from the pursuit of Virtue. MR. DOUGLASS–Will represent a noble magnanimous Moor called Othello, who loves a young lady named Desdemona, and, after he marries her, harbours (as in too many cases) the dreadful passion of jealousy. Of jealousy, our being’s bane Mark the small cause and the most dreadful pain. MR. ALLYN–Will depict the character of a specious villain, in the regiment of Othello, who is so base as to hate his commander on mere suspicion and to impose on his best friend. Of such characters, it is to be feared, there are thousands in the world, and the one in question may present to us a salutary warning. The man that wrongs his master and his friend What can he come to but a shameful end? MR. HALLAM–Will delineate a young and thoughtless officer who is traduced by Mr. Allyn and, getting drunk, loses his situation and his general’s esteem. All young men whatsoever take example from Cassio. _The ill effects of drinking would you see?…

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Excerpt #11, from The Principles of the Art of Conversation, by J. P. Mahaffy

…their inferior or equal from a professional point of view. It is this perfect liberty, this spiritual equality, often designated as the free masonry of sport, from which arises the charm of talking upon subjects of common interest to one confessedly inferior in many respects. But in one he is commonly your superior, even apart from his sport. It has been far more important to him all his life to study and know the characters of his employers than it has been for them to study his, and so he is generally your superior in perceiving what will please, and what topics are to be selected or avoided in conversation. Nothing has struck me more in many such talks than the acute estimate which these people form of the strength and weakness of those who are their patrons. These are illustrations of a general kind, to show how inferiority in social station may not imply inferiority for the purposes of conversation, so that we may even here attain that equality which I regard as essential for its success. ———————————————————————— THE RELATIONS OF SEX AND AGE § 45. So far we have been considering the quality of the company as determined by social position, which, if not an absolutely artificial distinction, is at least frequently such, so that it may be even reversed by circumstances. There are great distinctions made by nature…

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Excerpt #12, from Canadian Fairy Tales, by Cyrus MacMillan

…strange fairy people of the mountains, of whom he had often heard. “What do you want?” he asked. “I have been sent to you with a precious gift,” answered the little man. The old man wondered greatly, but he said nothing. Then the fairy from the blue hills said, “You are old and lonely. You have done many noble deeds, and you have always gone about bringing good to others. In that way you have found peace. And because of your good life, I have been sent to bring you more contentment. Your work is done, but your life is not yet ended, and you have still a long time to dwell upon the earth. You must live out your mortal course. You are longing always for your dead wife and children, and you are often thinking of your youth, and with you the days are long and time hangs heavy. But I have been sent to you with a gift that will help you to pass the time more pleasantly.” Then the little man gave him a number of small seeds and said, “Plant these at once, here, in the ashes from which I have just risen.” The old man did as he was told. At once the seeds sprouted and great leaves grew from them, and soon the place where the bird had been burned up became a large field of Tobacco. The fairy then gave him a large pipe and said, "Dry these leaves and place them in this pipe and smoke them. You will have great…

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