Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:26:13

Excerpt #1, from My Man Jeeves, by P. G. Wodehouse

…she was wearing the most perfectly ripping dress. I couldn’t begin to describe it. I can only say it was the limit. It struck me that if this was how she was in the habit of looking every night when they were dining quietly at home together, it was no wonder that Bobbie liked domesticity. “Here’s old Reggie, dear,” said Bobbie. “I’ve brought him home to have a bit of dinner. I’ll phone down to the kitchen and ask them to send it up now—what?” She stared at him as if she had never seen him before. Then she turned scarlet. Then she turned as white as a sheet. Then she gave a little laugh. It was most interesting to watch. Made me wish I was up a tree about eight hundred miles away. Then she recovered herself. “I am so glad you were able to come, Mr. Pepper,” she said, smiling at me. And after that she was all right. At least, you would have said so. She talked a lot at dinner, and chaffed Bobbie, and played us ragtime on the piano afterwards, as if she hadn’t a care in the world. Quite a jolly little party it was—not. I’m no lynx-eyed sleuth, and all that sort of thing, but I had seen her face at the beginning, and I knew that she was working the whole time and working hard, to keep herself in hand, and that she would have given that diamond what’s-its-name in…

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Excerpt #2, from Around the World with Josiah Allen’s Wife, by Marietta Holley

…say. Evangeline Noble stood off by herself leanin’ on the rail of the deck as if she see through the beauty into the inner heart of things, and see in her mind’s eye all the work her own people, the missionaries, had done there. The thought that they had taken the natives like diamonds incrusted in dirt and cleansed them of the blackest of their habits. She see in the past natives burying their children alive, putting to death the mentally weak, worshipping horrible idols, killing and eating their enemies, etc., etc. But now, under the blessed light of the torch, that long procession of martyrs had held up, the former things wuz passin’ away, and she, too, wuz one of that blessed host of God’s helpers. She looked riz up and radiant as if she see way beyend the islands of the sea and all she hoped to do for her Master on earth, and as if he wuz talking to her now, teaching her his will. Nigher to us Elder Wessel wuz standing, and he sez, lifting up his eyes to heaven: “Oh islands of the sea! where every prospect pleases and only man is vile.” And Arvilly hearn him and snapped out, "I d’no as they’re so very vile till traders and other civilized folks teach ’em to drink and cheat…

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Excerpt #3, from Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar Life, by Knox

…on the afternoon of the seventeenth, we carried our baggage to the Ingodah, which lay half a mile from shore. We reached the steamer after about twenty minutes pulling in a whale-boat and shipping a barrel of water through the carelessness of an oarsman. At Nicolayevsk the Amoor is about a mile and a half wide, with a depth of twenty to thirty-five feet in the channel. I asked a resident what he thought the average rapidity of the current in front of the town. “When you look at it or float with it,” said he, “I think it is about three and a half miles. If you go against it you find it not an inch less than five miles.” The rowers had no light task to stem the rapid stream, and I think it was about like the Mississippi at Memphis. The boat was to leave early in the morning. I took a farewell dinner with Mr. Chase, and at ten o’clock received a note from Borasdine announcing his readiness to go to the steamer. Anossoff, Chase, and half a dozen others assembled to see us off, and after waking the echoes and watchmen on the pier, we secured a skiff and reached the Ingodah. The rain was over, and stars were peeping through occasional loop-holes in the clouds. [Illustration: SEEING OFF.] ‘Seeing off’ consumed much time and more champagne. As we left the…

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Excerpt #4, from The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

…“Nick?” He asked again. “What?” “Want any?” “No … I just remembered that today’s my birthday.” I was thirty. Before me stretched the portentous, menacing road of a new decade. It was seven o’clock when we got into the coupé with him and started for Long Island. Tom talked incessantly, exulting and laughing, but his voice was as remote from Jordan and me as the foreign clamour on the sidewalk or the tumult of the elevated overhead. Human sympathy has its limits, and we were content to let all their tragic arguments fade with the city lights behind. Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair. But there was Jordan beside me, who, unlike Daisy, was too wise ever to carry well-forgotten dreams from age to age. As we passed over the dark bridge her wan face fell lazily against my coat’s shoulder and the formidable stroke of thirty died away with the reassuring pressure of her hand. So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight. ———————————————————————— The young Greek, Michaelis, who ran the coffee joint beside the…

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Excerpt #5, from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle

…rather to my surprise, showed that my surmise was correct. “When I returned to London I called upon the milliner, who had recognised Straker as an excellent customer of the name of Derbyshire, who had a very dashing wife, with a strong partiality for expensive dresses. I have no doubt that this woman had plunged him over head and ears in debt, and so led him into this miserable plot.” “You have explained all but one thing,” cried the Colonel. “Where was the horse?” “Ah, it bolted, and was cared for by one of your neighbours. We must have an amnesty in that direction, I think. This is Clapham Junction, if I am not mistaken, and we shall be in Victoria in less than ten minutes. If you care to smoke a cigar in our rooms, Colonel, I shall be happy to give you any other details which might interest you.” II. The Adventure of the Cardboard Box In choosing a few typical cases which illustrate the remarkable mental qualities of my friend, Sherlock Holmes, I have endeavoured, as far as possible, to select those which presented the minimum of sensationalism, while offering a fair field for his talents. It is, however, unfortunately impossible entirely to…

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Excerpt #6, from History of biology, by L. C. Miall

…Such likeness was called affinity,[1] though no attempt was made to explain in what sense the term was to be understood. As late as the year 1835 one of the first botanists in Europe (Elias Fries) could say no more about affinity between species than that it was quoddam supernaturale, a supernatural property. A tolerable outline of a classification of animals was attained much earlier than a tolerable classification of plants. The characters available for the classification of plants are, to begin with, less obvious than those which the zoologist can employ. Moreover, the botanists were restricted to a narrower view of their subject. Zoologists, though they were expected to bestow the best part of their time upon vertebrates, were encouraged to study all animals more or less. Botanists, on the other hand, were practically obliged to concentrate their attention upon the classification of the flowering plants. The physician, herb-collector, and gardener cared nothing about any plants except such as bear flowers and fruit; but of these they expected full descriptions, and were clamorous for a system which would enable even a tyro to make out every species with certainty and ease. The task set before the botanist was comparable in respect of difficulty with the construction of a detailed and completely satisfactory classification of birds, which zoology has never yet been…

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Excerpt #7, from Curiosities of the Sky, by Garrett Putman Serviss

…ours the interior might be composed of molten matter while the exterior crust had become rigid like the shell of an egg; then the force of the tidal explosion'' produced by the appulse of another sun would be more violent in consequence of the greater resistance overcome. Such, then, is the mechanism of the first phase in the history of a spiral nebula according to the Planetesimal Hypothesis. Two suns, perhaps extinguished ones, have drawn near together, and an explosive outburst has occured in one or both. The second phase calls for a more agile exercise of the imagination. To simplify the case, let us suppose that only one of the tugging suns is seriously affected by the strain. Its vast wings produced by the outburst are twisted into spirals by their rotation and the contending attractions exercised upon them, as the two suns, like battleships in desperate conflict, curve round each other, concentrating their destructive energies. Then immense quantities of débris are scattered about in which eddies are created, and finally, as the sun that caused the damage goes on its way, leaving its victim to repair its injuries as it may, the dispersed matter cools, condenses, and turns into streams of solid particles circling in elliptical paths about their parent sun. These particles, or fragments, are theplanetesimals’’ of the theory. In consequence of the inevitable intersection of the…

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Excerpt #8, from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle

…in this chair and let me preach to you for a little. I don’t know quite what to do, and I should value your advice. Light a cigar and let me expound.” “Pray do so.” “Well, now, in considering this case there are two points about young McCarthy’s narrative which struck us both instantly, although they impressed me in his favour and you against him. One was the fact that his father should, according to his account, cry ‘Cooee!’ before seeing him. The other was his singular dying reference to a rat. He mumbled several words, you understand, but that was all that caught the son’s ear. Now from this double point our research must commence, and we will begin it by presuming that what the lad says is absolutely true.” “What of this ‘Cooee!’ then?” “Well, obviously it could not have been meant for the son. The son, as far as he knew, was in Bristol. It was mere chance that he was within earshot. The ‘Cooee!’ was meant to attract the attention of whoever it was that he had the appointment with. But ‘Cooee’ is a distinctly Australian cry, and one which is used between Australians. There is a strong presumption that the person whom McCarthy expected to meet him at Boscombe Pool was someone who had been in Australia.” “What of the rat, then?”…

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Excerpt #9, from The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

…This was Italian work of the fifteenth century. Another cope was of green velvet, embroidered with heart-shaped groups of acanthus-leaves, from which spread long-stemmed white blossoms, the details of which were picked out with silver thread and coloured crystals. The morse bore a seraph’s head in gold-thread raised work. The orphreys were woven in a diaper of red and gold silk, and were starred with medallions of many saints and martyrs, among whom was St. Sebastian. He had chasubles, also, of amber-coloured silk, and blue silk and gold brocade, and yellow silk damask and cloth of gold, figured with representations of the Passion and Crucifixion of Christ, and embroidered with lions and peacocks and other emblems; dalmatics of white satin and pink silk damask, decorated with tulips and dolphins and fleurs-de-lis; altar frontals of crimson velvet and blue linen; and many corporals, chalice-veils, and sudaria. In the mystic offices to which such things were put, there was something that quickened his imagination. For these treasures, and everything that he collected in his lovely house, were to be to him means of forgetfulness, modes by which he could escape, for a season, from the fear that seemed to him at times to be almost too great to be borne. Upon the walls of the lonely locked room where he had spent so much of his boyhood, he had hung with his…

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Excerpt #10, from Best Russian Short Stories, by Leonid Andreyev et al.

…When the tree was down, his grandfather dragged it to the master’s house, and there they set about decorating it. The young lady, Olga Ignatyevna, Vanka’s great friend, busied herself most about it. When little Vanka’s mother, Pelagueya, was still alive, and was servant-woman in the house, Olga Ignatyevna used to stuff him with sugar-candy, and, having nothing to do, taught him to read, write, count up to one hundred, and even to dance the quadrille. When Pelagueya died, they placed the orphan Vanka in the kitchen with his grandfather, and from the kitchen he was sent to Moscow to Aliakhin, the shoemaker. “Come quick, dear Grandpapa,” continued Vanka, “I beseech you for Christ’s sake take me from here. Have pity on a poor orphan, for here they beat me, and I am frightfully hungry, and so sad that I can’t tell you, I cry all the time. The other day the master hit me on the head with a last; I fell to the ground, and only just returned to life. My life is a misfortune, worse than any dog’s… I send greetings to Aliona, to one-eyed Tegor, and the coachman, and don’t let any one have my mouth-organ. I remain, your grandson, Ivan Zhukov, dear Grandpapa, do come.” Vanka folded his sheet of paper in four, and put it into an envelope purchased the night before for a kopek. He thought a little, dipped…

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Excerpt #11, from Meddler’s Moon, by George O. Smith

…Joan Willson, present because of sheer curiosity pertaining to this Marie Baker creature whom she was prepared to dislike on sight, looked up from her book and drawled: “Oh brilliant repartee. You sound like that Cyril Smith routine that goes ‘Who’s he? Who’s who? Him, the man in the picture. What picture?’ And so forth for about an hour.” Peter smiled. “I suppose,” he said. “But it’s his fault, not mine. This effect is a sort of artificial generation of gravitic force.” Hedgerly nodded. “The first historic discovery that proves the relationship between magnetic phenomena and gravitic force. Now we’re on the right trail,” he concluded. Hedgerly walked over to the small barrette and mixed himself a drink. He lounged back against the bar and lifted his glass. “To my grandfather,” he said, “The discoverer of the Hedgerly Effect!” Peter looked at Joan weakly. “It’s fratricide to kill a brother, patricide to kill a father, homicide to kill just anybody, infanticide to kill your son, but what is it to kill a grandson?” Joan looked Hedgerly up and down and her lip curled in derision. “Insecticide,” she snapped. “Ignore him. Maybe he’ll go away. But Peter, what does this gravitic effect mean?” “I’m not too certain,” replied Peter wrinkling his brow. "Of course, since gravitic fields do act upon mass without charge, we can now…

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Excerpt #12, from Rocks and Their Origins, by Grenville A. J. Cole

…extreme minuteness of certain of the particles. True clayiness thus depends on the proportion of grains smaller than ·002 mm. in diameter. Yet Hall and Russell look to other causes to explain the continued suspension of such particles in the water, and they suggest the presence of potassium and sodium silicates of the zeolite group, which liberate by hydrolysis a little alkali in contact with a large bulk of water. Free alkalies prevent flocculation, and so encourage suspension of the particles. To the ordinary observer, a rock possesses the properties of clay, and is a clay, if it contains more than forty per cent. of particles less than ·01 mm. in diameter. But such rocks are found, on chemical analysis, to contain a large amount of kaolin, and the old view, that clays are massive kaolins, is thus substantially correct. None the less, clays are notably impure, and in many there is a large admixture of quartz sand. The kaolin, derived originally from the decay of other silicates, is rarely freed from a variety of minerals and rock-fragments that were associated with it in its place of origin. Grains of quartz and unaltered felspar a tenth of a millimetre in diameter distinctly “lighten” a clay soil, on account of their relative coarseness. A sandy clay is styled a Loam, and a fine-grained loam furnishes the ideal soil for the general purposes of a farmer. It…

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