Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:26:13

Excerpt #1, from Peter Pan, by J. M. Barrie

…Cinderella.” They talked of Cinderella, and Tootles was confident that his mother must have been very like her. It was only in Peter’s absence that they could speak of mothers, the subject being forbidden by him as silly. “All I remember about my mother,” Nibs told them, “is that she often said to my father, ‘Oh, how I wish I had a cheque-book of my own!’ I don’t know what a cheque-book is, but I should just love to give my mother one.” While they talked they heard a distant sound. You or I, not being wild things of the woods, would have heard nothing, but they heard it, and it was the grim song: “Yo ho, yo ho, the pirate life, The flag o’ skull and bones, A merry hour, a hempen rope, And hey for Davy Jones.” At once the lost boys—but where are they? They are no longer there. Rabbits could not have disappeared more quickly. I will tell you where they are. With the exception of Nibs, who has darted away to reconnoitre, they are already in their home under the ground, a very delightful residence of which we shall see a good deal…

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Excerpt #2, from The Knights of the Round Table: Stories of King Arthur and the Holy Grail, by Frost

…there to see its grandeur and its beauty. We stopped at St. Buryan, and a very old woman showed us the church. It is a curious old place, and it has some fine carvings. But the old woman, who showed us everything and explained it to us, could not understand what there was about it that we found interesting. She had been showing this church to people, she said, for more than fifty years, and she had never been able to make out yet why they wanted to see it. Then we went on to see the Logan Rock, and got a guide to find it for us. We could never have found it for ourselves, because it is so mixed up with so many other rocks. It is a huge rocking stone. It weighs I don’t know how many tons, but a strong man can move it a little, if he knows just how and where to take hold of it and push. The guide rocked it for us, and he said that we did it ourselves when we tried, but I think he flattered us. He helped us to climb on the top of it—not an easy thing to do at all—and then he rocked it with us sitting on it. As he led the way back he took us through a narrow passage between two great rocks and told us that we must each of us make a wish as we passed through and never tell what it was, and then it would come true. “But we don’t need to ask what the young ladies wish,” he said, “they all wish the same thing.” We wondered how many years he had been making that same joke over and over again. No doubt he must have got some pretty…

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Excerpt #3, from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson

…It offended him both as a lawyer and as a lover of the sane and customary sides of life, to whom the fanciful was the immodest. And hitherto it was his ignorance of Mr. Hyde that had swelled his indignation; now, by a sudden turn, it was his knowledge. It was already bad enough when the name was but a name of which he could learn no more. It was worse when it began to be clothed upon with detestable attributes; and out of the shifting, insubstantial mists that had so long baffled his eye, there leaped up the sudden, definite presentment of a fiend. “I thought it was madness,” he said, as he replaced the obnoxious paper in the safe, “and now I begin to fear it is disgrace.” With that he blew out his candle, put on a greatcoat, and set forth in the direction of Cavendish Square, that citadel of medicine, where his friend, the great Dr. Lanyon, had his house and received his crowding patients. “If anyone knows, it will be Lanyon,” he had thought. The solemn butler knew and welcomed him; he was subjected to no stage of delay, but ushered direct from the door to the dining-room where Dr. Lanyon sat alone over his wine. This was a hearty, healthy, dapper, red-faced gentleman, with a shock of hair prematurely white, and a boisterous and decided manner. At sight of Mr. Utterson, he sprang up from his chair and welcomed him with both hands. The geniality, as was…

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Excerpt #4, from The Pursuit of the House Boat, by John Kendrick Bangs

…not satisfied with the terms offered you; nor can I ever let it be said of me that to retain my position as janitor of your organization I sacrificed a trust committed to my charge. I’ll gladly lend you my private launch, though I don’t think it will aid you much, because the naphtha-tank has exploded, and the screw slipped off and went to the bottom two weeks ago. Still, it is at your service, and I’ve no doubt that either Phidias or Benvenuto Cellini will carve out a paddle for you if you ask him to.” “Bah!” retorted Raleigh. “You might as well offer us a pair of skates.” “I would, if I thought the river’d freeze,” retorted Charon, blandly. Raleigh and Hamlet turned away impatiently and left Charon to his own devices, which for the time being consisted largely of winking his other eye quietly and outwardly making a great show of grief. “He’s too canny for us, I am afraid,” said Sir Walter. “We’ll have to pay him his money.” “Let us first consult Sherlock Holmes,” suggested Hamlet, and this they proceeded at once to do. “There is but one thing to be done,” observed the astute detective after he had heard Sir Walter’s statement of the case. “It is an old saying that one should fight fire with fire. We must meet modern business methods with modern commercial ideas. Charter his vessel at his own…

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Excerpt #5, from Tales of the Air Mail Pilots, by Burt M. McConnell

…town, that Pilot Vance was forced down by a blizzard at nightfall, and unceremoniously dumped out on his head when his machine tipped over on its nose. He had landed in a patch of manzanita brush, higher than he could reach, and there he was forced to stay until daylight came. Blanchfield, another pilot, was caught in the grip of a “twister” peculiar to the Nevada desert, on one occasion, and also had a narrow escape from death when his plane broke out in flames as he landed at the Elko Air Mail field. Once, with the thermometer at 60° below zero, he made a flight of 235 miles through blinding sheets of snow to deliver the mail. When Blanchfield finally landed at Reno, looking more like a huge snowman than a human being, the cockpit of his machine was almost full of snow and the pilot himself seemed to be frozen to his seat. On still another occasion, while flying in a blizzard, Blanchfield was forced to land on the snow-covered desert. After a five-hour search, the pilot came upon the shack of a wrinkled old Indian, who shoved a rifle in this “sky-devil’s” face and refused point-blank to help him crank the motor of his machine. In the Utah-Wyoming Bad Lands, between Salt Lake City and Rock Springs, occurred the forced landing of Pilot Bishop, which would have terminated fatally had it not been for the exceptional bravery and good flying judgment of Ellis. It was in this section of the country…

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Excerpt #6, from The Man with Two Left Feet, and Other Stories, by P. G. Wodehouse

…The statement that it meant everything to him insinuated itself so frequently into his conversation that it weighed on Elizabeth’s mind like a burden, and by degrees she found herself giving the play place of honour in her thoughts over and above her own little ventures. With this stupendous thing hanging in the balance, it seemed almost wicked of her to devote a moment to wondering whether the editor of an evening paper, who had half promised to give her the entrancing post of Adviser to the Lovelorn on his journal, would fulfil that half-promise. At an early stage in their friendship the young man had told her the plot of the piece; and if he had not unfortunately forgotten several important episodes and had to leap back to them across a gulf of one or two acts, and if he had referred to his characters by name instead of by such descriptions as ‘the fellow who’s in love with the girl–not what’s-his-name but the other chap’–she would no doubt have got that mental half-Nelson on it which is such a help towards the proper understanding of a four-act comedy. As it was, his precis had left her a little vague; but she said it was perfectly splendid, and he said did she really think so. And she said yes, she did, and they were both happy. Rehearsals seemed to prey on his spirits a good deal. He attended them with the pathetic regularity of the young dramatist, but they appeared…

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Excerpt #7, from The Principles of Biology, Volume 2 (of 2), by Herbert Spencer

…parasitaire que nous avons examinés, le parasite joue, par rapport à son hôte, absolument le même rôle que la glande génitale d’un type progénétique. Il détourne, pour sa propre subsistance, une partie des principes qui auraient servi au développement de l’animal. Aussi les effets produits sont-ils tout à fait de même ordre.” A phenomenon so anomalous as this, explicable upon the hypothesis set forth but not otherwise explicable, furnishes striking verification.] CHAPTER XI. INTERPRETATION AND QUALIFICATION. § 362. Considering the difficulties of inductive verification, we have, I think, as clear a correspondence between the à priori and à posteriori conclusions, as can be expected. The many factors co-operating to bring about the result in every case, are so variable in their absolute and relative amounts, that we can rarely disentangle the effect of each one, and have usually to be content with qualified inferences. Though in the mass organisms show us an unmistakable relation between great size and small fertility, yet special comparisons among them are nearly always partially vitiated by differences of structure, differences of nutrition, differences of expenditure. Though it is beyond question that the more complex…

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Excerpt #8, from Argot and Slang, by Albert Barrère

…Jardinier_. The pair induce a simpleton to dig at the foot of a tree for a buried treasure, when they rob him of his money; a swindler who pretends he has just returned from America; (familiar) a drink, something between grog and punch. Faire l’œil —-, to scrutinize with searching glance. Oeil —-, eye with purposely amorous, “killing,” expression; also a very sharp eye. AMÉRICAINE, vol à l’ (see CHARRIAGE). AMI (thieves’), expert thief, “gonnof;” —- de collège, prison chum. AMICABLEMENT (popular), in a friendly manner, affectionately. AMINCHE, AMINCHEMAR, AMINCHEMINCE, m. (thieves’), friend, “ben cull;” —- d’aff, accomplice, “stallsman.” AMIS, m. pl. (popular), comme cochons, “thick” friends. AMITEUX, adj. (popular), friendly, amiable, gentle. AMOCHER (popular), to bruise, to ill-treat, to “manhandle.” S’—- la gueule, to maul one another’s face, to “mug” one another. AMORCÉ, adj. (popular), furnished, garnished. V’la qu’est richement amorcé, j’en suis moi-même ébaubi.–=RICHEPIN.= AMOUREUX (popular), hunchback, or “lord;” —- de carême, a timid lover. Literally a “Lent lover.” (Printers’) Papier —-, _paper that…

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Excerpt #9, from At the Earth’s Core, by Edgar Rice Burroughs

…while beneath our feet a thick mountain grass formed a soft and noiseless carpet. Since we had entered the canyon we had had no glimpse of our pursuers, and I was commencing to hope that they had lost our trail and that we would reach the now rapidly nearing cliffs in time to scale them before we should be overtaken. Ahead we neither saw nor heard any sign which might betoken the success of Hooja’s mission. By now he should have reached the outposts of the Sarians, and we should at least hear the savage cries of the tribesmen as they swarmed to arms in answer to their king’s appeal for succor. In another moment the frowning cliffs ahead should be black with primeval warriors. But nothing of the kind happened–as a matter of fact the Sly One had betrayed us. At the moment that we expected to see Sarian spearmen charging to our relief at Hooja’s back, the craven traitor was sneaking around the outskirts of the nearest Sarian village, that he might come up from the other side when it was too late to save us, claiming that he had become lost among the mountains. Hooja still harbored ill will against me because of the blow I had struck in Dian’s protection, and his malevolent spirit was equal to sacrificing us all that he might be revenged upon me. As we drew nearer the barrier cliffs and no sign of rescuing Sarians appeared Ghak became both angry and alarmed, and presently as the sound…

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Excerpt #10, from The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century, by Clarence Henry Haring

…a private article on the subject; but the English commissioners steadfastly refused, and offered to forbid trade only with ports actually under Spanish authority. Finally a compromise was reached in the words “in quibus ante bellum fuit commercium, juxta et secundum usum et observantiam.”[157] This article was renewed in Cottington’s Treaty of 1630. The Spaniards themselves, indeed, in 1630, were willing to concede a free navigation in the American seas, and even offered to recognise the English colony of Virginia if Charles I. would admit articles prohibiting trade and navigation in certain harbours and bays. Cottington, however, was too far-sighted, and wrote to Lord Dorchester: “For my own part, I shall ever be far from advising His Majesty to think of such restrictions, for certainly a little more time will open the navigation to those parts so long as there are no negative capitulations or articles to hinder it.”[158] The monopolistic pretensions of the Spanish government were evidently relaxing, for in 1634 the Conde de Humanes confided to the English agent, Taylor, that there had been talk in the Council of the Indies of admitting the English to a share in the freight of ships sent to the West Indies, and even of granting them a limited permission to go to those regions on their own account. And in 1637 the Conde de Linhares, recently appointed governor of Brazil, told the English ambassador, Lord Aston, that he was very anxious that…

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Excerpt #11, from Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685

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Excerpt #12, from Famous Modern Ghost Stories, by Dorothy Scarborough et al.

…sleeves–all through the discreditable proceedings we knew with whom we were dealing, murderer and coward that he was!" But nothing of this did Mr. King say. With his better light he was trying to penetrate the mystery of the man’s death. That he had not once moved from the corner where he had been stationed; that his posture was that of neither attack nor defense; that he had dropped his weapon; that he had obviously perished of sheer horror of something that he saw–these were circumstances which Mr. King’s disturbed intelligence could not rightly comprehend. Groping in intellectual darkness for a clew to his maze of doubt, his gaze, directed mechanically downward in the way of one who ponders momentous matters, fell upon something which, there, in the light of day and in the presence of living companions, affected him with terror. In the dust of years that lay thick upon the floor–leading from the door by which they had entered, straight across the room to within a yard of Manton’s crouching corpse–were three parallel lines of footprints–light but definite impressions of bare feet, the outer ones those of small children, the inner a woman’s. From the point at which they ended they did not return; they pointed all one way. Brewer, who had observed them at the same moment, was leaning forward in an attitude of rapt attention, horribly pale….

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