Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:25:34

Excerpt #1, from Sailing Alone Around the World, by Joshua Slocum

…from her true course that she might ride safely over the waves. I was now scudding her for the channel between Africa and the island of Fuerteventura, the easternmost of the Canary Islands, for which I was on the lookout. At 2 P.M., the weather becoming suddenly fine, the island stood in view, already abeam to starboard, and not more than seven miles off. Fuerteventura is twenty-seven hundred feet high, and in fine weather is visible many leagues away. The wind freshened in the night, and the Spray had a fine run through the channel. By daylight, September 3, she was twenty-five miles clear of all the islands, when a calm ensued, which was the precursor of another gale of wind that soon came on, bringing with it dust from the African shore. It howled dismally while it lasted, and though it was not the season of the harmattan, the sea in the course of an hour was discolored with a reddish-brown dust. The air remained thick with flying dust all the afternoon, but the wind, veering northwest at night, swept it back to land, and afforded the Spray once more a clear sky. Her mast now bent under a strong, steady pressure, and her bellying sail swept the sea as she rolled scuppers under, courtesying to the waves. These rolling waves thrilled me as they tossed my ship, passing quickly under her keel. This was grand sailing….

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Excerpt #2, from The power and the glory, by Henry Kuttner

…“We have atomic power now,” Miller said. “The beginnings of it. You’re merely beginning. It will be a long, long time before you stand where Atlantis once stood. First you must change the very structure of your world! Only then will you change, will the radiation-caused mutation alter you and give you the powers and senses you lost when a world went to war a millennium ago. “The fires of matter itself moved across the planet, and where it passed, structure altered and what was bright and shining and glorious became a dull, empty thing. Men lost their specialized, hard-won powers then. But the seeds remain latent in their bodies, recessive characteristics. Here, on the mountain, the recessive can become dominant for a little while. It is unstable, of course. . . .” “Then—I’m like you? Tsi told me but I couldn’t believe it. I’m a—a sort of superman?” “Every gift has its price,” she said oddly. “There is beauty here but there is terror too. You must have noticed that you see with clearer eyes—the eyes of the mind.” “Yes,” he said. “I’ve noticed that. Things are—shining, somehow.” “It would be well if you remembered your own world,” Orelle said, after a little pause. Her eyes were troubled. “Your own atomic structure has altered but that can take place only once.”…

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Excerpt #3, from Robot nemesis, by E. E. Smith

…a new ray-projector–tell them anything except the truth!" “All right. I have sufficient authority to see that your requests are granted, I think.” And thus it came about that when the immense Terrestrial Contingent lifted itself into the air Ferdinand Stone was in his private laboratory in the flagship, surrounded by apparatus and equipment of his own designing, much of which was connected to special generators by leads heavy enough to carry their full output. Earth some thirty hours beneath them, Stone felt himself become weightless. His ready suspicions blazed. He pressed Martin’s combination upon his visiphone panel. “What’s the matter?” he rasped. “What’re they down for?” “It’s nothing serious,” the admiral assured him. “They’re just waiting for additional instructions about our course in the maneuvers.” “Not serious, huh?” Stone grunted. “I’m not so sure of that. I want to talk to you, and this room’s the only place I know where we’ll be safe. Can you come down here right away?” “Why, certainly,” Martin assented. “I never paid any attention to our course,” the physicist snapped as his visitor entered the laboratory. “What was it?” “Take-off exactly at midnight of June nineteenth,” Martin recited,…

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Excerpt #4, from Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, by John Wesley Powell

…and one also upon each succeeding day until four baths, as a ceremony of purification, have been indulged in. On the evening of the day before the meeting his preceptor visits him at his own wig´iwam when, with the assistance of friends, the presents are collected and carried to the Midē´-wigân and suspended from the transverse poles near the roof. The officiating priests may subsequently join him, when smoking and singing form the chief entertainment of the evening. By this time numerous visitors have gathered together and are encamped throughout the adjacent timber, and the sound of the drum, where dancing is going on, may be heard far into the night. Early on the morning of the day of the ceremonies the candidate goes to the sudatory where he first awaits the coming of his preceptor and later the arrival of the Midē´ priests by whom he is escorted to the Midē´wigân. With the assistance of the preceptor he arranges his gift of tobacco which he takes with him to the sacred inclosure, after which a smoke offering is made, and later Midē´ songs are chanted. These may be of his own composition as he has been a professor of magic a sufficient lapse of time to have composed them, but to give evidence of superior powers the chief, or some other of the officiating priests, will perhaps be sufficiently inspired to sing. The following was prepared and chanted by one of the Midē´ priests at the third-degree meeting at White Earth,…

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Excerpt #5, from The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties, by Richard Runciman Terry

…a shanty.’ Like all traditional tunes, some shanties are in the ancient modes, and others in the modern major and minor keys. It is the habit of the ‘folk-songer’ (I am not alluding to our recognized folk-song experts) to find ‘modes’ in every traditional tune. It will suffice, therefore, to say that shanties follow the course of all other traditional music. Many are modern, and easily recognizable as such. Others are modal in character, such as ‘What shall we do with the drunken sailor?’ No. 14, and ‘The Hog’s-Eye Man,’ No. 11. Others fulfil to a certain extent modal conditions, but are nevertheless in keys, e.g. ‘Stormalong John,’ No. 10. Like many other folk-songs, certain shanties–originally, no doubt, in a mode–were, by the insertion of leading notes, converted into the minor key. There was also the tendency on the part of the modern sailor to turn his minor key into a major one. I sometimes find sailors singing in the major, nowadays, tunes which the very old men of my boyhood used to sing in the minor. A case in point is ‘Haul away, Joe,’ No. 28. Miss Smith is correct in giving it in the minor form which once obtained on the Tyne, and I am inclined to hazard the opinion that that was the original form and not, as now, the following:…

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Excerpt #6, from Persuasion, by Jane Austen

…must be a work of time to ascertain that no injury had been done to the spine; but Mr Robinson found nothing to increase alarm, and Charles Musgrove began, consequently, to feel no necessity for longer confinement. The child was to be kept in bed and amused as quietly as possible; but what was there for a father to do? This was quite a female case, and it would be highly absurd in him, who could be of no use at home, to shut himself up. His father very much wished him to meet Captain Wentworth, and there being no sufficient reason against it, he ought to go; and it ended in his making a bold, public declaration, when he came in from shooting, of his meaning to dress directly, and dine at the other house. “Nothing can be going on better than the child,” said he; “so I told my father, just now, that I would come, and he thought me quite right. Your sister being with you, my love, I have no scruple at all. You would not like to leave him yourself, but you see I can be of no use. Anne will send for me if anything is the matter.” Husbands and wives generally understand when opposition will be vain. Mary knew, from Charles’s manner of speaking, that he was quite determined on going, and that it would be of no use to teaze him. She said nothing, therefore, till he was out of the room, but as soon as there was only Anne to hear–…

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Excerpt #7, from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon

…171 (return) [ Diodor. Sicul. l. xvii. p. 590, edit. Wesseling.] 1711 (return) [ Berenice, or Myos-Hormos, on the Red Sea, received the eastern commodities. From thence they were transported to the Nile, and down the Nile to Alexandria.—M.] 172 (return) [ See a very curious letter of Hadrian, in the Augustan History, p. 245.] 173 (return) [ Such as the sacrilegious murder of a divine cat. See Diodor. Sicul. l. i. * Note: The hostility between the Jewish and Grecian part of the population afterwards between the two former and the Christian, were unfailing causes of tumult, sedition, and massacre. In no place were the religious disputes, after the establishment of Christianity, more frequent or more sanguinary. See Philo. de Legat. Hist. of Jews, ii. 171, iii. 111, 198. Gibbon, iii c. xxi. viii. c. xlvii.—M.] 174 (return) [ Hist. August. p. 195. This long and terrible sedition was first occasioned by a dispute between a soldier and a townsman about a pair of shoes.] 175 (return) [ Dionysius apud. Euses. Hist. Eccles. vii. p. 21. Ammian xxii. 16.] 1751 (return) [ The Bruchion was a quarter of Alexandria which extended along the largest of the two ports, and contained many…

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Excerpt #8, from Psmith, Journalist, by P. G. Wodehouse

…gloomy turn, say to yourselves, ‘All is well. Psmith is keeping a watchful eye upon our interests.’" “All the same, I should like to see this W. Windsor,” said Mr. Asher. Psmith shook his head. “I shouldn’t,” he said. “I speak in your best interests. Comrade Windsor is a man of the fiercest passions. He cannot brook interference. Were you to question the wisdom of his plans, there is no knowing what might not happen. He would be the first to regret any violent action, when once he had cooled off, but would that be any consolation to his victim? I think not. Of course, if you wish it, I could arrange a meeting–” Mr. Asher said no, he thought it didn’t matter. “I guess I can wait,” he said. “That,” said Psmith approvingly, “is the right spirit. Wait. That is the watch-word. And now,” he added, rising, “I wonder if a bit of lunch somewhere might not be a good thing? We have had an interesting but fatiguing little chat. Our tissues require restoring. If you gentlemen would care to join me–” Ten minutes later the company was seated in complete harmony round a table at the Knickerbocker. Psmith, with the dignified bonhomie…

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Excerpt #9, from Latin Phrase Book, by Carl Meissner

…a vero non abhorrere—to be probable. veri simile esse—to be probable. haec speciosiora quam veriora sunt—this is more plausible than true. vera et falsa (a falsis) diiudicare—to distinguish true and false. vera cum falsis confundere—to confuse true with false. veritas—veracity. re (vera), reapse (opp. specie)—in truth; really. in errore versari—to be mistaken. magno errore teneri—to be in gross error, seriously misled. in magno errore versari—to be in gross error, seriously misled. vehementer errare—to be in gross error, seriously misled. erroribus implicari (Tusc. 4. 27. 58)—to fall into error. per errorem labi, or simply labi—to take a false step. aliquem in errorem inducere, rapere—to lead a person into error. errorem animo imbibere—to get a mistaken notion into the mind. errorem cum lacte nutricis sugere (Tusc. 3. 1. 2)—to imbibe error from one’s mother’s breasts. error longe lateque diffusus—a wide-spread error. errorem tollere—to banish an error, do away with a false impression. errorem amputare et circumcīdere—to banish an error, do away with a false impression….

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Excerpt #10, from Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), by Jerome K. Jerome

…This evening, however, they had evidently made a mistake, and had put the wind round at our back instead of in our face. We kept very quiet about it, and got the sail up quickly before they found it out, and then we spread ourselves about the boat in thoughtful attitudes, and the sail bellied out, and strained, and grumbled at the mast, and the boat flew. I steered. There is no more thrilling sensation I know of than sailing. It comes as near to flying as man has got to yet—except in dreams. The wings of the rushing wind seem to be bearing you onward, you know not where. You are no longer the slow, plodding, puny thing of clay, creeping tortuously upon the ground; you are a part of Nature! Your heart is throbbing against hers! Her glorious arms are round you, raising you up against her heart! Your spirit is at one with hers; your limbs grow light! The voices of the air are singing to you. The earth seems far away and little; and the clouds, so close above your head, are brothers, and you stretch your arms to them. We had the river to ourselves, except that, far in the distance, we could see a fishing-punt, moored in mid-stream, on which three fishermen sat; and we skimmed over the water, and passed the wooded banks, and no one spoke….

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Excerpt #11, from Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, by Lewis Carroll

…I’ve offended it again!" for the mouse was swimming away from her as hard as it could go, and making quite a commotion in the pool as it went. So she called softly after it: “mouse dear! Do come back again, and we won’t talk about cats and dogs any more, if you don’t like them!” When the mouse heard this, it turned and swam slowly back to her: its face was quite pale, (with passion, Alice thought,) and it said in a trembling low voice “let’s get to the shore, and then I’ll tell you my history, and you’ll understand why it is I hate cats and dogs.” It was high time to go, for the pool was getting quite full of birds and animals that had fallen into it. There was a Duck and a Dodo, a Lory and an Eaglet, and several other curious creatures. Alice led the way, and the whole party swam to the shore. [Illustration] Chapter II [Illustration] They were indeed a curious looking party that assembled on the bank–the birds with draggled feathers, the animals with their fur clinging close to them–all dripping wet, cross, and uncomfortable. The first question of course was, how to get dry:…

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Excerpt #12, from Tess of the d’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman, by Thomas Hardy

…better than to lead a good life, and that was to be saved from leading any life whatever. Like all who have been previsioned by suffering, she could, in the words of M. Sully-Prudhomme, hear a penal sentence in the fiat, “You shall be born,” particularly if addressed to potential issue of hers. Yet such is the vulpine slyness of Dame Nature, that, till now, Tess had been hoodwinked by her love for Clare into forgetting it might result in vitalizations that would inflict upon others what she had bewailed as misfortune to herself. She therefore could not withstand his argument. But with the self-combating proclivity of the supersensitive, an answer thereto arose in Clare’s own mind, and he almost feared it. It was based on her exceptional physical nature; and she might have used it promisingly. She might have added besides: “On an Australian upland or Texan plain, who is to know or care about my misfortunes, or to reproach me or you?” Yet, like the majority of women, she accepted the momentary presentment as if it were the inevitable. And she may have been right. The intuitive heart of woman knoweth not only its own bitterness, but its husband’s, and even if these assumed reproaches were not likely to be addressed to him or to his by strangers, they might have reached his ears from his own fastidious brain….

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