Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:26:47

Excerpt #1, from Anne of Green Gables, by L. M. Montgomery

…“I’m Anne of Green Gables,” said the small visitor tremulously, clasping her hands with her characteristic gesture, “and I’ve come to confess, if you please.” “Confess what?” “That it was all my fault about jumping into bed on you last night. I suggested it. Diana would never have thought of such a thing, I am sure. Diana is a very ladylike girl, Miss Barry. So you must see how unjust it is to blame her.” “Oh, I must, hey? I rather think Diana did her share of the jumping at least. Such carryings on in a respectable house!” “But we were only in fun,” persisted Anne. “I think you ought to forgive us, Miss Barry, now that we’ve apologized. And anyhow, please forgive Diana and let her have her music lessons. Diana’s heart is set on her music lessons, Miss Barry, and I know too well what it is to set your heart on a thing and not get it. If you must be cross with anyone, be cross with me. I’ve been so used in my early days to having people cross at me that I can endure it much better than Diana can.” Much of the snap had gone out of the old lady’s eyes by this time and was replaced by a twinkle of amused interest. But she still said severely: “I don’t think it is any excuse for you that you were only in fun….

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Excerpt #2, from Grimm Tales Made Gay, by Guy Wetmore Carryl

…His wife used to wait in the hall! When this wandering mortal Set foot on the portal, She always appeared on the scene, And, far from ideally, Remarked: “Well, I really Would like to know where you have been!” Now what is the good of a wandering life, If you have to tell all that you do to your wife? [Illustration] She’d indulge in a copious cry, She’d remark she’d undoubtedly die, Or, like many another, Go back to her mother, And what would the world think of that? She only grew pleasant, When offered a present Of gloves or a gown or a hat: And more than his talisman saved him in fare Fortunatus expended in putting things square! And The Moral is easily said:…

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Excerpt #3, from Nick Carter Stories No. 143, June 5, 1915: The sultan’s pearls; or, Nick

…crew. There would be nothing gained by continuing on board as a boatswain, with Captain Lawton and Van Cross giving him orders. Neither was it desirable that Chick and Patsy should be sailors, either. Having come to this decision, it had not been difficult for all three to get rid of their make-ups, and so well did they accomplish this that Captain Lawton had not the slightest suspicion they ever had been on his ship before. “Do you want to see the prisoner, Mr. Carter?” asked the captain, in a tone of respect that was rather amusing, considering how surly and insolent he had been at first. “Yes. Take me to him, please,” answered Nick. “And I should be glad if you will have a boat ready to put me ashore when I have looked over things below.” “Sure you shall have a boat,” assented the captain promptly. CHAPTER V. NICK HAS HIS OWN WAY. Two men were guarding the top of the companionway during the colloquy between Nick Carter and the captain, but, at a signal from the latter, they drew aside to allow the detective to go down to the prisoner. The man at the cabin door opened it as Nick Carter stepped forward,…

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Excerpt #4, from A Floating City, and The Blockade Runners, by Jules Verne

…made his fortune, and that at twenty-five he is already too old to begin the struggle. Among these adventurers, inventors, and fortune-hunters, Dean Pitferge pointed out to me some singularly interesting characters. Here was a chemist, a rival of Dr. Liebig, who pretended to have discovered the art of condensing all the nutritious parts of a cow into a meat-tablet, no larger than a five-shilling piece. He was going to coin money out of the cattle of the Pampas. Another, the inventor of a portable motive-power—a steam horse in a watch-case—was going to exhibit his patent in New England. Another, a Frenchman from the “Rue Chapon,” was carrying to America 30,000 cardboard dolls, which said “papa” with a very successful Yankee accent, and he had no doubt but that his fortune was made. But besides these originals, there were still others whose secrets we could not guess; perhaps among them was some cashier flying from his empty cash-box, and a detective making friends with him, only waiting for the end of the passage to take him by the collar; perhaps also we might have found in this crowd clever genii, who always find people ready to believe in them, even when they advocate the affairs of “The Oceanic Company for lighting Polynesia with gas,” or “The Royal Society for making incombustible coal.” But at this moment my attention was attracted by the entrance of a young…

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Excerpt #5, from English Literature, by William J. Long

…harmony to every touch of the wind; and the figure is strikingly accurate, as well as interesting, for there is hardly a sight or a sound, from a violet to a mountain and from a bird note to the thunder of the cataract, that is not reflected in some beautiful way in Wordsworth’s poetry. (2) Of all the poets who have written of nature there is none that compares with him in the truthfulness of his representation. Burns, like Gray, is apt to read his own emotions into natural objects, so that there is more of the poet than of nature even in his mouse and mountain daisy; but Wordsworth gives you the bird and the flower, the wind and the tree and the river, just as they are, and is content to let them speak their own message. (3) No other poet ever found such abundant beauty in the common world. He had not only sight, but insight, that is, he not only sees clearly and describes accurately, but penetrates to the heart of things and always finds some exquisite meaning that is not written on the surface. It is idle to specify or to quote lines on flowers or stars, on snow or vapor. Nothing is ugly or commonplace in his world; on the contrary, there is hardly one natural phenomenon which he has not glorified by pointing out some beauty that was hidden from our eyes. (4) It is the life of nature which is everywhere recognized; not mere growth and cell changes, but sentient, personal life; and the recognition…

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Excerpt #6, from A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, by John Stuart Mill

…probability that they are connected is not measured by the total number of instances in which they have been found together, but by the excess of that number above the number due to the absolutely frequency of A. If, for example, A exists always, and therefore co-exists with every thing, no number of instances of its co-existence with B would prove a connection; as in our example of the fixed stars. If A be a fact of such common occurrence that it may be presumed to be present in half of all the cases that occur, and therefore in half the cases in which B occurs, it is only the proportional excess above half that is to be reckoned as evidence toward proving a connection between A and B. In addition to the question, What is the number of coincidences which, on an average of a great multitude of trials, may be expected to arise from chance alone? there is also another question, namely, Of what extent of deviation from that average is the occurrence credible, from chance alone, in some number of instances smaller than that required for striking a fair average? It is not only to be considered what is the general result of the chances in the long run, but also what are the extreme limits of variation from the general result, which may occasionally be expected as the result of some smaller number of instances. The consideration of the latter question, and any consideration of the…

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Excerpt #7, from Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens

…Wemmick that I hardly knew what to make of Mr. Jaggers’s manner. “Tell him that, and he’ll take it as a compliment,” answered Wemmick; “he don’t mean that you should know what to make of it.—Oh!” for I looked surprised, “it’s not personal; it’s professional: only professional.” Wemmick was at his desk, lunching—and crunching—on a dry hard biscuit; pieces of which he threw from time to time into his slit of a mouth, as if he were posting them. “Always seems to me,” said Wemmick, “as if he had set a man-trap and was watching it. Suddenly—click—you’re caught!” Without remarking that man-traps were not among the amenities of life, I said I supposed he was very skilful? “Deep,” said Wemmick, “as Australia.” Pointing with his pen at the office floor, to express that Australia was understood, for the purposes of the figure, to be symmetrically on the opposite spot of the globe. “If there was anything deeper,” added Wemmick, bringing his pen to paper, “he’d be it.” Then, I said I supposed he had a fine business, and Wemmick said, “Ca-pi-tal!” Then I asked if there were many clerks? to which he replied,— “We don’t run much into clerks, because there’s only one Jaggers, and…

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Excerpt #8, from In the Sargasso Sea, by Thomas A. Janvier

…locked up in the cabin to starve. However, as I found out a little later, while my guess was a close one it still was wrong. The four bunks, two on each side, were not enclosed, and the only door opening from the cabin was in the bulkhead forward–and worth trying because it might lead to a store-room, I thought. It was a very stout-looking door, and across it, resting in strong iron catches, were two heavy wooden bars. These puzzled me a good deal, there being no sense in barring the outside of a store-room door in that fashion, since the door did not seem to be locked and anybody could lift the bars away. However, I got them out of their sockets without much difficulty; and after a good deal of tugging at a ring made fast in it I got the door open too–and instantly I was thrust back from the opening by an outpouring of the same vile heavy musty stench that had come up from the cabin when I staved in the hatch, only this was still ranker and more vile. And I found that the door did not lead into a little store-room, as I had fancied, but right through from the cabin to the ship’s main-deck–that stretched away forward in a gloomy tunnel, as black as a cellar on a rainy night, into which I could see only for four or five yards. Indeed, but for the way that the ship chanced to be lying–with her stern toward the west, so that a good deal of light came in through the broken skylight from the ruddy…

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Excerpt #9, from The Airship “Golden Hind”, by Percy F. Westerman

…cat: ‘Hind by Percy F. Westerman-39488-0.txt’: No such file or directory

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Excerpt #10, from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography, by Charlotte Brontë

…populous, less picturesque; more stirring, less romantic. The roads were heavy, the night misty; my conductor let his horse walk all the way, and the hour and a half extended, I verily believe, to two hours; at last he turned in his seat and said— “You’re noan so far fro’ Thornfield now.” Again I looked out: we were passing a church; I saw its low broad tower against the sky, and its bell was tolling a quarter; I saw a narrow galaxy of lights too, on a hillside, marking a village or hamlet. About ten minutes after, the driver got down and opened a pair of gates: we passed through, and they clashed to behind us. We now slowly ascended a drive, and came upon the long front of a house: candlelight gleamed from one curtained bow-window; all the rest were dark. The car stopped at the front door; it was opened by a maid-servant; I alighted and went in. “Will you walk this way, ma’am?” said the girl; and I followed her across a square hall with high doors all round: she ushered me into a room whose double illumination of fire and candle at first dazzled me, contrasting as it did with the darkness to which my eyes had been for two hours inured; when I could see, however, a cosy and agreeable picture presented itself to my view. A snug small room; a round table by a cheerful fire; an arm-chair…

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Excerpt #11, from The Principles of Biology, Volume 2 (of 2), by Herbert Spencer

…through it (Grasses) or make its exit sideways (Palms), or be formed at the side (Alisma); and Dicotyledons very similarly. “The occurrence of completely sheathing leaves in grasses is perhaps correlated with the absence of cambium, but grasses are an aberrant type among monocotyledons, and secondary thickening is only found in very few genera of this class, so that the correlation is, so to speak, negative and indirect…. It is clear that the greater part of the discussion will have to be re-written.” For the reasons assigned in the preface I cannot undertake to re-write the discussion, as suggested. It must stand for what it is worth. All I can do is here to include along with it the foregoing criticisms. I may, however, indicate the line of defence I should take were I to go again into the matter. The objections are based on the structure of existing Liverworts and Phænogams. But I have already referred to the probability–or, indeed, the certainty–that in conformity with the general principle set forth in the note to Chapter I, we must conclude that the early types of Liverworts out of which the Phænogams are supposed to have evolved, as well as the early types of Phænogams in which the stages of evolution were presented, no longer exist. We must infer that forms simpler than any now known, and more intermediate in their traits, were the forms concerned; and if so, it may be held that…

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Excerpt #12, from A Parody Outline of History, by Donald Ogden Stewart

…in its all-consuming appeal. No, life to his father was a simple problem in army ethics–a problem in which duty was “a”, one of the known factors; “x,” the unknown, was either “bravery” or “cowardice” when brought in contact with “a”. Having solved this problem, his father had closed the book; of the higher mathematics, and especially of those complex problems to which no living man knew the final answer, he had no conception. And yet—- Philip resumed his reading to avoid the old endless maze of subtleties. “It is not that I did not–or do not–love you. It is, rather, that something within me is crying out–something which is stronger than I, and which I cannot resist. I have waited two years to be sure. Yesterday, as soon as I reached here, I took my work to the man who is considered the finest art critic in Paris. He told me that there was a quality to my painting which he had seen in that of no living artist; he told me that in five years of hard work I should be able to produce work which Botticelli would be proud to have done. Do you understand that, Mary–Botticelli!”But no, forgive me. My paean of joy comes strangely in a letter which should be of abject humility for what must seem to you, to father, and to all, a cowardly, selfish act of desertion–a whining failure to face life. Oh dear, dear Mary if you could but understand what a hell I have…

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