Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:26:07

Excerpt #1, from Cliff Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe, by S. Baring

…the villagers were wont to gather to elect their magistrates without interference from the Bastard of Albret. Within is a bench cut in the rock, and the roof is encrusted with stalactite formations like cauliflowers. Immediately above the village is a much larger cavern 72 feet high and 36 feet deep. It is vaulted like a dome, and tendrils of ivy and vine hang down draping the entrance. Violets grow in purple masses at the opening, and maiden-hair fern luxuriates within. At the extreme end, high up, to be reached only by a ladder of forty rungs, is another opening into a cave that runs far into the bowels of the Causse, to where the water falls in a cascade that now flows forth beneath the outer cave and supplies the village with drinking water and a place for washing linen. Hard by the great entrance is another cave situated high up, and called the Citadel, much smaller, access to which is obtained by a narrow track in the face of the rock, with notches cut in the limestone to receive the beams and struts that supported a wooden gallery which once provided easy access to the cave. I did not myself climb up and investigate the citadel, not having a steady head on the edge of a precipice, and what information I give was received from the curé, who seemed very much amused at my shirking the scramble, and thought that the Englishman of to-day must be very different from the Englishman of the fourteenth century who crawled about these cliffs…

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Excerpt #2, from A Sub and a Submarine: The Story of H.M. Submarine R19 in the Great War

…She’ll be done in, Macquare." Even if the dog managed to withstand the low temperature of the water, she would be in considerable danger from the drifting floes. Quickly the Hon. Derek rose to the occasion and ordered the Berthon to be launched. The collapsible boat was unfolded in record time and dropped over the side on the ice. Three men, one of whom was Cassidy, followed, and, grasping the gunwale, urged the Berthon forward like a sleigh across the 300 yards of frozen water that separated the submarine from the canal. “Avast there, Flirt!” shouted Cassidy when the boat drew within hailing distance, for the terrier was dipping one paw into the water as a preliminary to jumping in. At the sound of the A.B.’s voice Flirt cocked one ear, gave a yelp of welcome, and leapt from the fixed ice to a detached piece that had drifted within reach. “Silly little josser!” exclaimed another of the Berthon’s crew as the floe tilted under the dog’s weight. It looked as if the animal would slide backwards in spite of her frantic efforts to find a firm foothold. Not until her body was half immersed did the sheet of ice recover itself, only to tilt in the opposite direction and…

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Excerpt #3, from Thought Forms, by Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater

…influence of human thought, and every impulse sent out, either from the mental body or from the astral body of man, immediately clothes itself in a temporary vehicle of this vitalised matter. Such a thought or impulse becomes for the time a kind of living creature, the thought-force being the soul, and the vivified matter the body. Instead of using the somewhat clumsy paraphrase, “astral or mental matter ensouled by the monadic essence at the stage of one of the elemental kingdoms,” theosophical writers often, for brevity’s sake, call this quickened matter simply elemental essence; and sometimes they speak of the thought-form as “an elemental.” There may be infinite variety in the colour and shape of such elementals or thought-forms, for each thought draws round it the matter which is appropriate for its expression, and sets that matter into vibration in harmony with its own; so that the character of the thought decides its colour, and the study of its variations and combinations is an exceedingly interesting one. This thought-form may not inaptly be compared to a Leyden jar, the coating of living essence being symbolised by the jar, and the thought energy by the charge of electricity. If the man’s thought or feeling is directly connected with someone else, the resultant thought-form moves towards that person and discharges itself upon his astral and mental bodies. If the man’s thought is about himself, or is based upon a…

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Excerpt #4, from The Radio Amateur’s Hand Book, by A. Frederick Collins

…and the energy of motion would practically offset each other and so the energy would not be used up. But as the spring beats the air the latter is sent out in impulses and the conversion of the vibrations of the spring into waves in the air soon uses up the energy you have imparted to it and it comes to rest. In order to send out continuous waves in the air instead of damped waves as with a flat steel spring you can use an electric driven tuning fork, see C, in which an electromagnet is fixed on the inside of the prongs and when this is energized by a battery current the vibrations of the prongs of the fork are kept going, or are sustained, as shown in the diagram at D. Damped and Sustained Electric Oscillations.–The vibrating steel spring described above is a very good analogue of the way that damped electric oscillations which surge in a circuit set up and send out periodic electric waves in the ether while the electric driven tuning fork just described is likewise a good analogue of how sustained oscillations surge in a circuit and set up and send out continuous electric waves in the ether as the following shows. Now the inductance and resistance of a circuit such as is shown at A in Fig. 35, slows down, and finally damps out entirely, the electric oscillations of the high frequency currents, see B, where these are…

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Excerpt #5, from On the Anzac trail: Being extracts from the diary of a New Zealand sapper, by Anzac

…open-air cafés; in the dress of the natives, especially the sherbet and lemonade sellers, and the hawkers of sweetmeats and cigarettes; but it is the meeting of the Occident and Orient, the commingling of the East and West, and the effect is anything but congruous. Reader, I am not out to describe Cairo. For one thing, space forbids; for another, I reckon I amn’t a boss hand at descriptive writing; and, lastly, you can get as much of that kind of thing as you want in the guidebooks. But I should like to point out three places you should really pay a visit to the first time you blow into the old City: the Citadel, the Museum, and the Tombs of the Mamelukes; add to these the Zoo, and the Hezekieh Gardens on a Sunday afternoon, and you won’t regret it. It is a gay city, is Cairo; a bad old city, but, above all, an intensely interesting one. You will there, it is true, find vice, dirt, and immorality flaunted openly, the trimmings all shorn away. But you needn’t stop and look, you know—(you will, all the same). And “to the pure all things are pure.” Besides, when away from home things often strike you from a vastly different standpoint. You are out to “do” Egypt; you have paid to “do” it—then “do” it by all means. But take my tip, and exercise a wise discretion when writing to the folks at the old farm. Or don’t write—just mail them the guidebooks. CHAPTER V…

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Excerpt #6, from Remarks, by Bill Nye

…the damned souls who had formerly stopped at this hotel, but who had been rescued at last, and had hilariously gone to perdition, only to come back at night and torment the poor guest by bragging over the superiority of hell as a refuge from the Wallula hotel. Now and then in the night I would almost yield to a wild impulse and catch those pantaloons off the hook, to rush out and go to Canada with them, and then I would softly go through the pockets and hang them back again. It was an awful night. When morning dawned at last, and I took the pillow out of my ear and looked in the delirious and soap-spattered mirror, I saw that my beautiful hair, which had been such a source of pride to me ten years ago, had disappeared in places. I paid my bill, called the attention of the landlord to the fact that I had not taken those pantaloons and ‘betrayed’ his trust, and then I went away. Flying Machines. A long and exhaustive examination of the history of flying machines enables me to give briefly some of the main points of a few, for the benefit of those who may be interested in this science. I give what I do in order to prepare the public to take advantage of the different methods, and be ready at once to fly as soon as the weather gets pleasant. A Frenchman invented a flying-machine, or dofunny, as we scientists would term it, in 1600 and something, whereby he could sail down from the…

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Excerpt #7, from Investigation of Communist Activities in Seattle, Wash., Area, Hearings, Part 1

…Mr. DENNETT. I believe that I was first assigned to carry on this classwork in Portland, to keep this school going that was started. But that didn’t last very long because at that time the district organizer of the party was a man by the name of Alex Noral, who was here in Seattle. And Noral was troubled because they were unable to get someone to fill the function of a district agitprop director here in Seattle. So he was asking Fred Walker to come to Seattle to be the agitprop director because Fred Walker had organized such a successful school in Portland and had done such splendid work which met with the district approval. Walker, however, had personal reasons for not wanting to leave Portland. So he requested me to accept the assignment to Seattle. And I was perplexed as to what to do. I was in the middle of a school teaching year, but I was becoming more convinced all the time that there was no future in teaching–at least the way I wanted to do it. So I accepted, under a great deal of pressure, the assignment to come to Seattle. And that was, I say, under a great deal of pressure, too, because the way I was approached on it was that “Well, now you are a member of the party. You do what the party tells you to do, and you go where the party wants you to “go.” Mr. MOULDER. May I interrupt at that point before you start on…

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Excerpt #8, from Investigation of Communist activities in Seattle, Wash., area. Hearings, Part 3

…that—- Mr. O’CONNELL. May I say I had no connection; I was not an officer of the Washington Pension Union. Mr. TAVENNER. I was going to discuss that question, whether or not you were affiliated in any way with the Washington Pension Union. Mr. O’CONNELL. I think as executive secretary of the Democratic Party and as executive secretary of the Progressive Party I made speeches to State conventions of the Washington Pension Union, as did practically all the political leaders of the State of Washington, regardless of the party. I think during a period after my employment as executive secretary of the Democratic Party at the request of a local in Everett I was sent there to make a speech and I think I was–I am pretty sure I was paid expenses and I may have been paid a fee for the speech I made to the group at Everett at that time. Mr. TAVENNER. Was that a convention of the Washington Pension Union? Mr. O’CONNELL. No, as I remember it, the Everett meeting was some kind of a large local meeting that they had, some kind of an event or celebration or something of that kind that I spoke at. It is hard to recollect. It is a long time ago and I have made a lot of speeches all…

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Excerpt #9, from Dave Dashaway, Air Champion; Or, Wizard Work in the Clouds, by Roy Rockwood

…which his hopes and interest were fixed so intensely, was in peril. He knew it was scorched, from the faint smell of melting varnish. All he thought of was getting the Ariel outside the spreading circle of fire. He could choose no lanes between the numerous stacks, for the smoke now obscured everything. He had to trust to luck. Now he was running the machine along. “The mischief!” uttered Hiram abruptly, and went spinning back half a dozen feet. He had driven the biplane squarely into an unseen stack. The rebound shook him loose. He stumbled and fell. Then his head met some hard solid substance and he closed his eyes with a groan—senseless. It was the echo of the two shots that first aroused Dave Dashaway, who had stood looking after Hiram until he disappeared, and then awaited his return. The farmer had gone back to the porch, but now he ran down into the yard again with the words: “Hello! that was my gun—I’d know its sound anywhere, I think.” “Then something is wrong,” instantly decided Dave, quite stirred up. “I see nothing of the airship—” “No,” shouted the farmer, “but there’s a fire!” The moment he got beyond the barn, Dave also saw the smoke and flames. “My haystacks!” cried the farmer. “The Ariel!” murmured Dave. “And there is the biplane Hiram saw. Mr….

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Excerpt #10, from A Border Ruffian, by Thomas A. Janvier

…everything that the present occasion required. He seemed to have been sent from heaven direct. In twenty minutes Mr. Smith was asking for him at his hotel. “Mr. Livingstone? Mr. Livingstone is out.” “Did he leave any word as to when he would come in?” “Yes, sir. He said that a gentleman might call, and to say that he certainly would be back at six, and would not go out again to-night.” Mr. Smith looked at his watch–it was 5:30. Had there been any uncertainty as to Livingstone’s return, he would have waited. But it was clear that he was coming back to dine at his hotel, and to spend the evening there. A note, therefore, could be trusted to do the business, and by writing, instead of waiting, Mr. Smith would save half an hour; moreover, if he waited, he would not have time to make the mayonnaise. Probably it is only in Philadelphia that it ever occurs nowadays to the master of a feast to dress the salad; which, doubtless, is the reason why a better salad is served at certain dinner-tables in Philadelphia than at any other dinner-tables in the whole world. The thought of the mayonnaise settled the matter. Mr. Smith hastily wrote an account of the trying situation, and concluded his note with a solemn demand upon “dear old Van” to fill the vacant place, “in the holy name of the class of ’68, and for love of your old classmate, R. Smith.”…

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Excerpt #11, from The Observations of Professor Maturin, by Clyde Furst

…with a majority of the other members, opposed the craftsman and the engineer, in ascribing a certain monotony and shallowness to Japanese life, in spite of its old aestheticism and its new efficiency. Both of the diplomats endorsed the Persian specialist’s statement that “the hope of the East is in Western inoculation; it will never regenerate itself.” “Nor be regenerated,” growled the colonel. “From my point of view,” replied the artist, “it has no need to. Nature is the absolute artist, and nowhere else do people live so close to her. Rare natural beauty, a constant sun, and a mellow atmosphere give existence there such an intensity and richness that mere living becomes an art–‘pure pomegranate, not banana,’ as they say in Egypt.” “It takes the eyes of love to see angels,” concluded the archaeologist. “Natural savages may be noble, but effete races are not, and such most of the Eastern peoples seem to me. However, I may be wrong, or at least narrow; toleration is the great lesson of travel.” After a number of such discussions, which were listened to by all, the company returned by general consent to more specific topics–plans, principally, for future journeys. These had but a melancholy interest for me, who had not the remotest hope of realizing any of them, until the conversation became once more general in outlining an ideal rapid journey around the world. This whirled me past Honolulu palm trees and…

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Excerpt #12, from Round the Red Lamp: Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life, by Arthur Conan Doyle

…endure before they get broken in to medical practice. And then they know that nothing is so catching as shyness, and that if they do not keep a face of stone, their patient will be covered with confusion. And so they keep their face of stone, and earn the reputation perhaps of having a heart to correspond. I suppose nothing would shake your nerve, Manson." “Well, when a man lives year in year out among a thousand lunatics, with a fair sprinkling of homicidals among them, one’s nerves either get set or shattered. Mine are all right so far.” “I was frightened once,” says the surgeon. "It was when I was doing dispensary work. One night I had a call from some very poor people, and gathered from the few words they said that their child was ill. When I entered the room I saw a small cradle in the corner. Raising the lamp I walked over and putting back the curtains I looked down at the baby. I tell you it was sheer Providence that I didn’t drop that lamp and set the whole place alight. The head on the pillow turned and I saw a face looking up at me which seemed to me to have more malignancy and wickedness than ever I had dreamed of in a nightmare. It was the flush of red over the cheekbones, and the brooding eyes full of loathing of me, and of everything else, that impressed me. I’ll never forget my start as, instead of the chubby face of an infant, my…

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