Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:26:40

Excerpt #1, from The Sky Detectives; Or, How Jack Ralston Got His Man, by Ambrose Newcomb

…the fantastic Joshua trees that seemed to be engaged in a shimmering dance in the blazing sunlight; moving shadows that sometimes crossed the line of his vision he made out to be buzzards on the wing, circling in search of their carrion meal; while others on the ground he recognized as coyotes skulking along, frightened by the sight and noise coming from far over their heads, and trying to reach their secret dens in some rocky canyon or defile. Noon came in due time, with the ship keeping up its steady grind, and having left hundreds of miles in its wake. Perk began to realize that he had eaten his breakfast at an unearthly hour, and concluding that a bite of something, together with a swig of water from their jug, might go well, he mentioned the interesting fact that the usual lunch hour had come, at which Jack nodded his head, as if to leave all that sort of thing to the discretion of his trusted pard. So they had a pick-up snack, which was quite acceptable to the two airmen, able to enjoy their meals even while cutting capers up among the clouds. It was another thing to the novice Simeon, whose appetite had not come back, though he did manage to swallow a few bites, and have a drink of cold water to wash things down. By slow degrees he was getting the upper hand of his dreadful fears, for while familiarity could not be said to bring contempt, nevertheless he was becoming accustomed to the…

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Excerpt #2, from Gulliver’s Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, by Jonathan Swift

…in my poor opinion, be of much use for the despatch of business, in those countries where senates have any share in the legislative power; beget unanimity, shorten debates, open a few mouths which are now closed, and close many more which are now open; curb the petulancy of the young, and correct the positiveness of the old; rouse the stupid, and damp the pert. Again, because it is a general complaint, that the favourites of princes are troubled with short and weak memories; the same doctor proposed, “that whoever attended a first minister, after having told his business, with the utmost brevity and in the plainest words, should, at his departure, give the said minister a tweak by the nose, or a kick in the belly, or tread on his corns, or lug him thrice by both ears, or run a pin into his breech; or pinch his arm black and blue, to prevent forgetfulness; and at every levee day, repeat the same operation, till the business were done, or absolutely refused.” He likewise directed, “that every senator in the great council of a nation, after he had delivered his opinion, and argued in the defence of it, should be obliged to give his vote directly contrary; because if that were done, the result would infallibly terminate in the good of the public.” When parties in a state are violent, he offered a wonderful contrivance…

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Excerpt #3, from Weather, Crops, and Markets. Vol. 2, No. 6, by Anonymous

…with 22.10¢ at the close of the previous week and 10.81¢ for the corresponding day last year. The decline in October future contracts on the New York Cotton Exchange amounted to 38 points, and on the New Orleans Cotton Exchange to 39 points. October future contracts on the Liverpool Cotton Association closed at 12.24d. per lb. on July 28, compared with 12.59d. at the close of the previous week and 8.39d. for the corresponding day last year. The volume of spot sales as reported by the cotton exchanges in the 10 designated markets was somewhat larger than the previous week, amounting to 29,057 bales, compared with 26,939 bales the previous week and 29,715 bales for the corresponding period in 1921. The total sales reported by the exchanges in the 10 designated spot markets from Aug. 1 to July 29 amounted to 3,361,605 bales, compared with 3,303,552 bales for the corresponding period last season. Dullness was reported to have developed in the dry goods trade, but with little change in the price levels as compared with those of the previous week. Closing Future Prices for July 29 and for the Corresponding Days in 1921 and 1920. ─────────┬─────────────────────────────┬───────────────────────────── Month. │ New York. │ New Orleans….

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Excerpt #4, from Not that it Matters, by A. A. Milne

…folded twice and placed beneath one, brings something of the solace which good literature will always bring. My friends had noticed before the war, without being able to account for it, that my views became noticeably more orthodox as the summer advanced, only to fall away again with the approach of autumn. I must have been influenced subconsciously by the leading articles. It rained, and play was stopped for an hour or two. Before the war I should have been annoyed about this, and I should have said bitterly that it was just my luck. But now I felt that I was indeed lucky thus to recapture in one day all the old sensations. It was delightful to herald again a break in the clouds, and to hear the crowd clapping hopefully as soon as ever the rain had ceased; to applaud the umpires, brave fellows, when they ventured forth at last to inspect the pitch; to realize from the sudden activity of the groundsmen that the decision was a favourable one; to see the umpires, this time in their white coats, come out again with the ball and the bails; and so to settle down once more to the business of the day. Perhaps the cricket was slow from the point of view of the follower of league football, but I do not feel that this is any condemnation of it. An essay of Lamb’s would be slow to a reader…

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Excerpt #5, from The Intrusion of Jimmy, by P. G. Wodehouse

…He went on. Molly was sitting quite still, looking into the shrubbery. He assumed she was listening; but whether she was or not, he must go on talking. The situation was difficult. Silence would make it more difficult. “Now, look at Lord Dreever,” he said. “There’s a young man with one of the oldest titles in England. He could go anywhere and do what he liked, and be excused for whatever he did because of his name. But he doesn’t. He’s got the right stuff in him. He doesn’t go racketing around–” “His uncle doesn’t allow him enough pocket-money,” said Molly, with a jarring little laugh. “Perhaps, that’s why.” There was a pause. McEachern required a few moments in which to marshal his arguments once more. He had been thrown out of his stride. Molly turned to him. The hardness had gone from her face. She looked up at him wistfully. “Father, dear, listen,” she said. “We always used to understand each other so well!” He patted her shoulder affectionately. "You can’t mean what you say? You know I don’t love Lord Dreever. You know he’s only a boy. Don’t you want me to marry a man? I love this old place, but surely you can’t think that it can really matter in a thing like…

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Excerpt #6, 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 #7, from The Terror: A Mystery, by Arthur Machen

…was at the beginning of the manuscript, and the sentences flowed more easily, as if the cloud on Secretan’s mind had lifted for a while. There was a fresh start, as it were, and the writer began again, in ordinary letter-form: “DEAR LEWIS,”I hope you will excuse all this confusion and wandering. I intended to begin a proper letter to you, and now I find all that stuff that you have been reading–if this ever gets into your hands. I have not the energy even to tear it up. If you read it you will know to what a sad pass I had come when it was written. It looks like delirium or a bad dream, and even now, though my mind seems to have cleared up a good deal, I have to hold myself in tightly to be sure that the experiences of the last days in this awful place are true, real things, not a long nightmare from which I shall wake up presently and find myself in my rooms at Chelsea. "I have said of what I am writing, ‘if it ever gets into your hands,’ and I am not at all sure that it ever will. If what is happening here is happening everywhere else, then I suppose, the world is coming to an end. I cannot understand it, even now I can hardly believe it. I know that I dream such wild dreams and walk in such mad fancies that I have to look out and look about me to make sure that I am not still dreaming….

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Excerpt #8, from Moby Dick; Or, The Whale, by Herman Melville

…voyage—beyond both stormy Capes; a ship in which some thousands of his hard earned dollars were invested; a ship, in which an old shipmate sailed as captain; a man almost as old as he, once more starting to encounter all the terrors of the pitiless jaw; loath to say good-bye to a thing so every way brimful of every interest to him,—poor old Bildad lingered long; paced the deck with anxious strides; ran down into the cabin to speak another farewell word there; again came on deck, and looked to windward; looked towards the wide and endless waters, only bounded by the far-off unseen Eastern Continents; looked towards the land; looked aloft; looked right and left; looked everywhere and nowhere; and at last, mechanically coiling a rope upon its pin, convulsively grasped stout Peleg by the hand, and holding up a lantern, for a moment stood gazing heroically in his face, as much as to say, “Nevertheless, friend Peleg, I can stand it; yes, I can.” As for Peleg himself, he took it more like a philosopher; but for all his philosophy, there was a tear twinkling in his eye, when the lantern came too near. And he, too, did not a little run from cabin to deck—now a word below, and now a word with Starbuck, the chief mate. But, at last, he turned to his comrade, with a final sort of look about him,—“Captain Bildad—come, old shipmate, we must go. Back the main-yard there! Boat ahoy! Stand by to come close alongside, now! Careful,…

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Excerpt #9, from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas: An Underwater Tour of the World, by Verne

…France, in the wake of those zodiacal stars due to twinkle over it in a few hours. The moon shone in the midst of the constellations at their zenith. I then remembered that this loyal, good-natured satellite would return to this same place the day after tomorrow, to raise the tide and tear the Nautilus from its coral bed. Near midnight, seeing that all was quiet over the darkened waves as well as under the waterside trees, I repaired to my cabin and fell into a peaceful sleep. The night passed without mishap. No doubt the Papuans had been frightened off by the mere sight of this monster aground in the bay, because our hatches stayed open, offering easy access to the Nautilus’s interior. At six o’clock in the morning, January 8, I climbed onto the platform. The morning shadows were lifting. The island was soon on view through the dissolving mists, first its beaches, then its summits. The islanders were still there, in greater numbers than on the day before, perhaps 500 or 600 of them. Taking advantage of the low tide, some of them had moved forward over the heads of coral to within two cable lengths of the Nautilus. I could easily distinguish them. They obviously were true Papuans, men of fine stock, athletic in build,…

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Excerpt #10, from A History of Indian Philosophy, Volume 1, by Surendranath Dasgupta

…beginning from the first disturbance of the prak@rti to the final transformation as the world-order, is subject to “a definite law which it cannot overstep.” In the words of Dr B.N.Seal [Footnote ref 1], "the process of evolution consists in the development of the differentiated (_vai@samya_) within the undifferentiated (sâmyâvasthâ) of the determinate (vies’a) within the indeterminate (avis’esa) of the coherent (yutasiddha) within the incoherent (ayutasiddha). The order of succession is neither from parts to whole nor from whole to the parts, but ever from a relatively less differentiated, less determinate, less coherent whole to a relatively more differentiated, more determinate, more coherent whole." The meaning of such an evolution is this, that all the changes and modifications in the shape of the evolving collocations of gu@na reals take place within the body of the prak@rti. Prak@rti consisting of the infinite reals is infinite, and that it has been disturbed does not mean that the whole of it has been disturbed and upset, or that the totality of the gu@nas in the prak@rti has been unhinged from a state of equilibrium. It means rather that a very vast number of gu@nas constituting the worlds of thought and matter has been upset. These gu@nas once thrown out of balance begin to group themselves together first in one form, then in another, then…

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Excerpt #11, from Argonaut stories, by Jerome Hart

…trimmed beard that fringed the cheeks, looked as natural as they could have done in the heyday of life. But just as inexplicable was the dress. It was composed of some light material such as is worn in hot climates, and had more in common with the ancient Greek chlamys, or the Arab burnous, than with any other type of dress that I recall. Such colors as it had were tasteful and resplendent, and had lost none of their original freshness. The feet were shod with sandals, and a gemmed ring still sparkled upon one of the fingers of the right hand. It was the face and figure of a handsome man of thirty, or thereabouts, and the whole posture was so indicative of repose as to indicate that, whoever he might be, he had met his end calmly and without pain. I turned mechanically toward Burnham and saw that he was watching my surprise and smiling. “Well, what do you think of my package,” he asked; “was it worth the trouble of bringing it here from the Arctic circle?” “I must congratulate you on your specimen,” I returned; “it will certainly be a great acquisition to our scientific men and antiquaries. But how are you going to preserve it? Won’t you find it rather a difficult matter to keep the ice in a state of congelation–and expensive, too, I should think?”…

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Excerpt #12, from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle

…services so valuable? or is it possible that—” He began biting his nails and staring blankly out of the window, and we hardly drew another word from him until we were in New Street. At seven o’clock that evening we were walking, the three of us, down Corporation Street to the company’s offices. “It is no use our being at all before our time,” said our client. “He only comes there to see me, apparently, for the place is deserted up to the very hour he names.” “That is suggestive,” remarked Holmes. “By Jove, I told you so!” cried the clerk. “That’s he walking ahead of us there.” He pointed to a smallish, dark, well-dressed man who was bustling along the other side of the road. As we watched him he looked across at a boy who was bawling out the latest edition of the evening paper, and running over among the cabs and busses, he bought one from him. Then, clutching it in his hand, he vanished through a doorway. “There he goes!” cried Hall Pycroft. “These are the company’s offices into which he has gone. Come with me, and I’ll fix it up as easily as possible.” Following his lead, we ascended five stories, until we found…

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