Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:25:29

Excerpt #1, from History of the war in the Peninsula and in the south of France from the year

…intercepted, or carelessly delayed, it was not until the 8th of April, that the duke of Dalmatia was assured of his departure for Salamanca. On the other hand Lord Wellington’s operations were so rapidly pushed forward, that Soult cannot be censured for false calculations. No general could suspect that such an outwork as the Picurina, would be taken by storm without being first battered; still less that Badajos, with its lofty walls, its brave garrison, and its celebrated governor, would in like manner be carried before the counterscarp was blown in, and the fire of the defences ruined. In fine, no man accustomed to war could have divined the surpassing resolution and surpassing fortune also, of the British general and his troops; neither is it impertinent to observe here, that as the French never use iron ordnance in a siege, their calculations were necessarily formed upon the effect of brass artillery, which is comparatively weak and slow: with brass guns the breaches would have been made three days later. The fall of Badajos may therefore be traced partly to the Russian war, which drew fifteen thousand men from the army of the south, partly to the irresolution of Marmont, who did neither execute the emperor’s plan nor his own; finally, to the too great extent of…

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Excerpt #2, from The Aztec Treasure

…King’s symbol an’ th’ arrow, all reg’lar, blazed on th’ rock." “Is the trail good enough to make a start on now?” Rayburn asked; “we won’t have more than half an hour more light, but I’d give a lot to get off this mountain before dark, and every foot down that we go we’ll be that much warmer. We’d stand a pretty fair chance of freezing up here to-night without any fire.” “Th’ trail’s all right for a good half-mile, anyway,” Young answered; “an’ I guess it’s good all th’ way. It’s pretty much th’ same as th’ one we come up by, an’ that’s good enough, where it don’t jump cañons, t’ go along in th’ dark; but we must rustle if we mean t’ do much by daylight.” We were back at the pyramid by this time, and we found Fray Antonio very willing to be off with us that we might try to get well down the mountain before night set in; for at that great elevation the quick beating of his heart added very sensibly to the throbbing pain of his wound. Therefore we lost no time in getting our packs upon our backs, and upon the back of El Sabio, and briskly started downward; and the keen cold that came into the air, as the sun sunk away behind the mountain peaks at last, warned us that it was safer to take the risks of a descent almost in darkness than to stay for the night upon that bleak mountain-top without a fire….

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Excerpt #3, from The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; the Art of Controversy, by Arthur Schopenhauer

…If you had a dog and wanted to make him fond of you, and fancied that of your hundred rare and excellent characteristics the mongrel would be sure to perceive one, and that that would be sufficient to make him devoted to you body and soul–if, I say, you fancied that, you would be a fool. Pat him, give him something to eat; and for the rest, be what you please: he will not in the least care, but will be your faithful and devoted dog. Now, believe me, it is just the same with men–exactly the same. As Goethe says, man or dog, it is a miserable wretch: Denn ein erbärmlicher Schuft, so wie der Mensch, ist der hund. If you ask why these contemptible fellows are so lucky, it is just because, in themselves and for themselves and to themselves, they are nothing at all. The value which they possess is merely comparative; they exist only for others; they are never more than means; they are never an end and object in themselves; they are mere bait, set to catch others.[1] I do not admit that this rule is susceptible of any exception, that is to say, complete exceptions. There are, it is true, men–though they are sufficiently rare–who enjoy some subjective moments; nay, there are perhaps some who for every hundred subjective moments enjoy a few that are objective; but a higher state of perfection scarcely ever occurs. But do not take yourself for an…

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Excerpt #4, from The Grenadier Guards in the Great War of 1914 to 1918, Vol. 3 of 3, by Ponsonby

…Lieut. R. S. Challands No. 3 Company. Lieut. W. A. Pembroke " " 2nd Lieut. N. P. Andrews " " Lieut. H. Freeman-Greene No. 4 Company. 2nd Lieut. L. F. A. d’Erlanger " " 2nd Lieut. C. A. Fitch " " Capt. W. Lindsay, R.A.M.C. Medical Officer. Capt. the Rev. C. Venables Chaplain. [Sidenote: Nov. 5.] At 2.15 A.M. the Battalion moved out from Villers Pol with intervals of thirty yards between platoons, and marched to La Buvette cross-roads, where a halt was made, and the Lewis guns were taken off the limbers. Directed by two guides from the 1st Battalion Scots Guards, the Battalion made its way across country to a bridge, where a long halt was made to find the Headquarters of the 3rd Battalion Grenadiers–no easy matter in the dark. The Battalion eventually managed to get into position close behind the front line posts. No. 2 Company, under Lieutenant Kennaway, was on the right and in touch with the 2/20th London Regiment from the Sixty-second Division; No. 3 Company, under Lieutenant Challands, on the left in touch with the 2nd Battalion Scots Guards; No. 4 Company, under Lieutenant Freeman-Greene,…

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Excerpt #5, from The Knights of the Round Table: Stories of King Arthur and the Holy Grail, by Frost

…they went to the cathedral together and they saw an old man kneeling at the altar. He was the same old man whom they had seen so many times before, who had been made to live so far beyond his time by the power of the Holy Grail, Joseph of Arimathæa. On the altar before him lay the spear with the drops of blood flowing from its point. The three knights knelt before the altar, Galahad nearer to it than the others, and they were there for a long time. Then the old man rose and came to the chest where the Grail was and took it out and held it up before them, and the light that shone from the blood that was in it, through the crystal of the cup, was greater and stronger than ever. The whole cathedral was bright with it. It streamed up among the arches of the roof and lighted old pictures that were painted there. For years before they had scarcely been seen, they were so dim with time and with dust and with the smoke of incense. Now, with the light of the Holy Grail upon it, the place was again a piece of Heaven, filled with wonderful forms. There was Elijah, in his chariot of fire; there were saints and angels; and all about them and among them there were little stars of gold, that glowed and twinkled in the new brightness like the stars of the real Heaven. The old man set the Grail upon the altar and came to Galahad and touched his hand and kissed him. Then all at once the church grew dark and…

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Excerpt #6, from The Story of the Great War, Volume 1, by Churchill, Miller, and Reynolds

…“No country has had to suffer more than Russia from crimes prepared on foreign territory. Have we ever claimed to employ in any country whatsoever the procedure with which your papers threaten Serbia? Do not embark on such a course.” On the same day (July 6, 1914), M. Yov. M. Yovanovitch, Serbian Minister at Vienna, telegraphed to M. Pashitch, Prime Minister at Belgrade, that the excitement in military and government circles against Serbia was growing, owing to the tone of the press, which was diligently exploited by the Austro-Hungarian Legation at Belgrade. On the same date he informed the Prime Minister in detail of the press agitation against Serbia. By headlines the people were led to infer, on the date of the crime of Sarajevo, that the two perpetrators were Serbs from Serbia proper. In later reports there was a marked tendency to connect the crime with Serbia. Belgrade was indicated as the place of its origin by the visit to that capital of the assassins, and by the bombs originating there, which facts had been elucidated at the trial of the assassins in Sarajevo. The Hungarian press claimed that there was evidence to show: "1. That the perpetrators while in Belgrade associated with the comitadji [revolutionist] Mihaylo Ciganovitch; and (2) that the organizer and instigator of the outrage was Major…

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Excerpt #7, from The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties, by Richard Runciman Terry

…With a heave, etc. And you’ll wave to us till the sun goes down. And good morning, etc. 3. Änd when we get to New York town, Oh it’s there we’ll drink, and sorrows drown. 4. When we’re back once möre in London Docks, All the pretty girls will come in flocks. 5. Änd Poll, and Bet, and Sue will say: “Oh it’s here comes Jack with his three years’ pay.” 6. So a long good-bye to you, my dear, And a last farewell, and a long farewell. 19. Hanging Johnny. (HALLIARDS.) [Music illustration: 1. Oh they call me hanging Johnny. Away, boys, away. They says I hangs for money. Oh hang, boys, hang.] 2. Änd first I hanged my daddy. (twice) 3. Änd then I hanged my mother, My sister and my brother….

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Excerpt #8, from The Sea

…being hoodwinked because they know I am crazy, and I sometimes tremble lest I should be grabbed from behind and whisked off to a lunatic asylum. The best years of my youth were made one continual agony for me by my writing. A young author, especially if at first he does not make a success, feels clumsy, ill-at-ease, and superfluous in the world. His nerves are all on edge and stretched to the point of breaking; he is irresistibly attracted to literary and artistic people, and hovers about them unknown and unnoticed, fearing to look them bravely in the eye, like a man with a passion for gambling, whose money is all gone. I did not know my readers, but for some reason I imagined they were distrustful and unfriendly; I was mortally afraid of the public, and when my first play appeared, it seemed to me as if all the dark eyes in the audience were looking at it with enmity, and all the blue ones with cold indifference. Oh, how terrible it was! What agony! NINA. But don’t your inspiration and the act of creation give you moments of lofty happiness? TRIGORIN. Yes. Writing is a pleasure to me, and so is reading the proofs, but no sooner does a book leave the press than it becomes odious to me; it is not what I meant it to be; I made a mistake to write it at all; I am provoked and discouraged. Then the public reads it and says: “Yes, it is clever and pretty, but not nearly as good as Tolstoi,” or…

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Excerpt #9, from Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, by Peter Mark Roget

…not long ago, a short time ago. Phr. di novello tutto par bello [It]; nullum est jam dictum quod non dictum est prius [Lat.]; una scopa nuova spazza bene [It]. 124. Oldness – N. oldness &c adj.^; age, antiquity; cobwebs of antiquity. maturity; decline, decay; senility &c 128. seniority, eldership, primogeniture. archaism &c (the past) 122; thing of the past, relic of the past; megatherium^; Sanskrit. tradition, prescription, custom, immemorial usage, common law. V. be old &c adj.; have had its day, have seen its day; become old &c adj.; age, fade, senesce. Adj. old, ancient, antique; of long standing, time-honored, venerable; elder, eldest; firstborn. prime; primitive, primeval, primigenous^; paleolontological, paleontologic, paleoanthropological, paleoanthropic^, paleolithic, primordial, primordinate^; aboriginal &c (beginning) 66; diluvian^, antediluvian; protohistoric^; prehistoric; antebellum, colonial, precolumbian; patriarchal, preadamite^; paleocrystic^; fossil, paleozoolical, paleozoic, preglacial^, antemundane^; archaic, classic, medieval, Pre-Raphaelite, ancestral, black-letter….

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Excerpt #10, from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas: An Underwater Tour of the World, by Verne

…money. Where had this precious metal come from? How had the captain amassed this gold, and what was he about to do with it? I didn’t pronounce a word. I gaped. Captain Nemo took out the ingots one by one and arranged them methodically inside the chest, filling it to the top. At which point I estimate that it held more than 1,000 kilograms of gold, in other words, close to 5,000,000 francs. After securely fastening the chest, Captain Nemo wrote an address on its lid in characters that must have been modern Greek. This done, the captain pressed a button whose wiring was in communication with the crew’s quarters. Four men appeared and, not without difficulty, pushed the chest out of the lounge. Then I heard them hoist it up the iron companionway by means of pulleys. Just then Captain Nemo turned to me: “You were saying, professor?” he asked me. “I wasn’t saying a thing, captain.” “Then, sir, with your permission, I’ll bid you good evening.” And with that, Captain Nemo left the lounge. I reentered my stateroom, very puzzled, as you can imagine. I tried in vain to fall asleep. I kept searching for a relationship between the appearance of the diver and that chest filled with gold. Soon, from certain rolling and pitching movements, I sensed that the Nautilus had…

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Excerpt #11, from The Awakening, and Selected Short Stories, by Kate Chopin

…Unlocking the door of her bath-room she went inside, and soon emerged, bringing a rug, which she spread upon the floor of the gallery, and two huge hair pillows covered with crash, which she placed against the front of the building. The two seated themselves there in the shade of the porch, side by side, with their backs against the pillows and their feet extended. Madame Ratignolle removed her veil, wiped her face with a rather delicate handkerchief, and fanned herself with the fan which she always carried suspended somewhere about her person by a long, narrow ribbon. Edna removed her collar and opened her dress at the throat. She took the fan from Madame Ratignolle and began to fan both herself and her companion. It was very warm, and for a while they did nothing but exchange remarks about the heat, the sun, the glare. But there was a breeze blowing, a choppy, stiff wind that whipped the water into froth. It fluttered the skirts of the two women and kept them for a while engaged in adjusting, readjusting, tucking in, securing hair-pins and hat-pins. A few persons were sporting some distance away in the water. The beach was very still of human sound at that hour. The lady in black was reading her morning devotions on the porch of a neighboring bath-house. Two young lovers were exchanging their hearts’ yearnings beneath the children’s tent, which they had found unoccupied….

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Excerpt #12, from Mr. Munchausen , by John Kendrick Bangs

…to bring the balloon down so near to the earth that our anchor rope dangled directly over the encampment, so that my valet and I, without wasting any of our gas, could climb down and secure all the magnificent treasures in rugs and silks and rare jewels these robbers of the desert had managed to get together in the course of their depredations. When these were placed in the car another breeze came up, and for the rest of the time we drifted idly about in the heavens waiting for a convenient place to land. In this manner we were blown hither and yon for three months over land and sea, and finally we were wrecked upon a tall tree in India, whence we escaped by means of a convenient elephant that happened to come our way, upon which we rode triumphantly into Calcutta. The treasures we had secured from the Arabs, unfortunately, we had to leave behind us in the tree, where I suppose they still are. I hope some day to go back and find them." Here Mr. Munchausen paused for a moment to catch his breath. Then he added with a sigh. “Of course, I went back to France immediately, but by the time I reached Paris the war was over, and the Emperor was in exile. I was too late to save him–though I think if he had lived some sixty or seventy years longer I should have managed to restore his throne, and Imperial splendour to him.” The Twins gazed into the fire in silence for a minute or two. Then one…

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