Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:26:06

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

…“I am amazed! What is the nature of my nephew’s business, Mr. Wooster?” “Oh, just business, don’t you know. The same sort of thing Carnegie and Rockefeller and all these coves do, you know.” I slid for the door. “Awfully sorry to leave you, but I’ve got to meet some of the lads elsewhere.” Coming out of the lift I met Bicky bustling in from the street. “Halloa, Bertie! I missed him. Has he turned up?” “He’s upstairs now, having some tea.” “What does he think of it all?” “He’s absolutely rattled.” “Ripping! I’ll be toddling up, then. Toodle-oo, Bertie, old man. See you later.” “Pip-pip, Bicky, dear boy.” He trotted off, full of merriment and good cheer, and I went off to the club to sit in the window and watch the traffic coming up one way and going down the other. It was latish in the evening when I looked in at the flat to dress for dinner. “Where’s everybody, Jeeves?” I said, finding no little feet pattering about the place. “Gone out?” “His grace desired to see some of the sights of the city, sir. Mr….

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Excerpt #2, from Norman Ten Hundred, by A. Stanley Blicq

…nearly unmans you. With fast-thumping heart you hear the approach of guttural Hun voices … DOWN and QUIET. At last calm thinking points out that yon burning house is in your own lines. Make for it and all is well. Aye. Scouts, does the pulse quicken even now? What is the thin veneer of a mere nine hundred years semi-civilisation? Two thousand years before the Conquest the fierce warrior Northmen lived by the might of the halbert, fighters one and all from the days when the war-inspired mother croned of the battle-axe to her babe. And in the Normans was that Norse spirit dormant; but one night of such hardship as yet undreamt of had sufficed for an awakening. In the dawn they looked out with nearly bloodshot eyes towards the German front. He would counter-attack, would he? Let him come! He came! They poured one long volley into the long-coated line. It wavered, broke, thinned. At the junction with the Middlesex an Englishman gazed in unfeigned astonishment at the ugly, set features of his Norman companion. “But,” he said, “they might have wanted to be prisoners.” “Oh.” Ozanne grunted, “don’t want none,” and squinting down the sights let loose another trio. “This,” he added, “is the Great Undertaking.” “Yes, well?” “I am the undertaker. For my job … must ’ave bodies … and I,”…

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Excerpt #3, from Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich, by Stephen Leacock

…reporters and compositors the news went seething forth in a flood that the Erie Auriferous Consolidated was going to shatter into fragments like the bursting of a dynamite bomb. It rushed with a thousand whispering tongues from street to street till it filled the corridors of the law courts and the lobbies of the offices, and till every honest man that held a share of the stock shivered in his tracks and reached out to give, sell, or destroy it. Only the unwinking Idiots, and the mild Orphans, and the calm Deaf mutes and the impassive Chinese held tight to what they had. So gathered the storm, till all the town, like the great rotunda of the Grand Palaver, was filled with a silent “call for Mr. Tomlinson,” voiceless and ominous. And while all this was happening, and while at Skinyer and Beatem’s they worked with frantic pens and clattering type there came a knock at the door, hesitant and uncertain, and before the eyes of the astounded office there stood in his wide-awake hat and long black coat the figure of “the man Tomlinson” himself. And Skinyer, the senior partner, no sooner heard what Tomlinson wanted than he dashed across the outer office to his partner’s room with his hyena face all excitement as he said: "Beatem, Beatem, come over to my room. This man is absolutely the biggest thing in America. For sheer calmness and nerve I never heard of…

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Excerpt #4, from Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War, by Finley Peter Dunne

…or engagin’ in some other spoort iv childhood! Go wan with ye!" “But who are they, annyhow?” “I make it a rule in me life not to discuss anny woman’s charac-ter,” replied Mr. Dooley, sternly. “If Doc Nansen was off there skylarkin’ with Flora an’ Fauna, it’s his own business, an’ I make no inquiries. A lady’s a lady, be she iver so humble; an’, as Shakespeare says, cursed be th’ man that’d raise an ax to her, save in th’ way iv a joke. We’ll talk no scandal in this house, Hinnissy.” But, after his friend had gone, Mr. Dooley leaned over confidentially, and whispered to Mr. McKenna, “But who are Flora an’ Fauna, Jawn?” “I don’t know,” said Mr. McKenna. “It sounds mighty suspicious, annyhow,” said the philosopher. “I hope th’ doc’ll be able to square it with his wife.” ON A POPULIST CONVENTION. "Keep ye’er eye on th’ Pops, Jawn. They’re gr-reat people an’ a gr-reat pa-arty. What is their principles? Anny ol’ thing that th’ other pa-arties has rijected. Some iv thim is in favor iv coining money out iv baled hay an’ dhried apples at a ratio iv sixteen to wan, an’ some is in favor iv coinin’ on’y th’ apples. Thim are th’ inflationists. Others want th’ gover’mint to divide up the rivinues equally among all la-ads that’s too sthrong to wurruk. Th’ Pops is again th’ banks an’ again the…

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Excerpt #5, from Psychology and Social Practice, by John Dewey

…I cannot pass on from this phase of the discussion without at least incidental remark of the obverse side of the situation. The difficulties of psychological observation and interpretation are great enough in any case. We cannot afford to neglect any possible auxiliary. The great advantage of the psycho-physical laboratory is paid for by certain obvious defects. The completer control of conditions, with resulting greater accuracy of determination, demands an isolation, a ruling out of the usual media of thought and action, which leads to a certain remoteness, and easily to a certain artificiality. When the result of laboratory experiment informs us, for example, that repetition is the chief factor influencing recall, we must bear in mind that the result is obtained with nonsense material, i. e., by excluding the conditions of ordinary memory. The result is pertinent if we state it thus: The more we exclude the usual environmental adaptations of memory, the greater importance attaches to sheer repetition. It is dubious (and probably perverse) if we say: Repetition is the prime influence in memory. Now, this illustrates a general principle. Unless our laboratory results are to give us artificialities, mere scientific curiosities, they must be subjected to interpretation by gradual reapproximation to conditions of life. The results may be very accurate, very definitive in form; but the task of re-viewing them so as to see their actual import is clearly…

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Excerpt #6, from Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, by Henry David Thoreau

…and fall, the white-bellied swallows (Hirundo bicolor) skim over it, and the peetweets (Totanus macularius) “teter” along its stony shores all summer. I have sometimes disturbed a fishhawk sitting on a white-pine over the water; but I doubt if it is ever profaned by the wing of a gull, like Fair Haven. At most, it tolerates one annual loon. These are all the animals of consequence which frequent it now. You may see from a boat, in calm weather, near the sandy eastern shore, where the water is eight or ten feet deep, and also in some other parts of the pond, some circular heaps half a dozen feet in diameter by a foot in height, consisting of small stones less than a hen’s egg in size, where all around is bare sand. At first you wonder if the Indians could have formed them on the ice for any purpose, and so, when the ice melted, they sank to the bottom; but they are too regular and some of them plainly too fresh for that. They are similar to those found in rivers; but as there are no suckers nor lampreys here, I know not by what fish they could be made. Perhaps they are the nests of the chivin. These lend a pleasing mystery to the bottom. The shore is irregular enough not to be monotonous. I have in my mind’s eye the western indented with deep bays, the bolder northern, and the beautifully scalloped southern shore, where successive capes overlap each other and suggest unexplored coves between. The forest has never…

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Excerpt #7, from An Ideal Husband, by Oscar Wilde

…SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. When? When we were engaged? Do you think she would have married me if she had known that the origin of my fortune is such as it is, the basis of my career such as it is, and that I had done a thing that I suppose most men would call shameful and dishonourable? LORD GORING. [Slowly.] Yes; most men would call it ugly names. There is no doubt of that. SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [Bitterly.] Men who every day do something of the same kind themselves. Men who, each one of them, have worse secrets in their own lives. LORD GORING. That is the reason they are so pleased to find out other people’s secrets. It distracts public attention from their own. SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. And, after all, whom did I wrong by what I did? No one. LORD GORING. [Looking at him steadily.] Except yourself, Robert. SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [After a pause.] Of course I had private information about a certain transaction contemplated by the Government of the day, and I acted on it. Private information is practically the source of every large modern fortune. LORD GORING. [Tapping his boot with his cane.] And public scandal invariably the result. SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. [Pacing up and down the room.] Arthur, do you…

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Excerpt #8, from Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685

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Excerpt #9, from Grimms’ Fairy Tales, by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm

…him: ‘Be so kind as to fetch me the small bundle I have left lying in the inn, and I will give you a ducat for doing it.’ His comrade ran thither and brought him what he wanted. As soon as the soldier was alone again, he lighted his pipe and summoned the black manikin. ‘Have no fear,’ said the latter to his master. ‘Go wheresoever they take you, and let them do what they will, only take the blue light with you.’ Next day the soldier was tried, and though he had done nothing wicked, the judge condemned him to death. When he was led forth to die, he begged a last favour of the king. ‘What is it?’ asked the king. ‘That I may smoke one more pipe on my way.’ ‘You may smoke three,’ answered the king, ‘but do not imagine that I will spare your life.’ Then the soldier pulled out his pipe and lighted it at the blue light, and as soon as a few wreaths of smoke had ascended, the manikin was there with a small cudgel in his hand, and said: ‘What does my lord command?’ ‘Strike down to earth that false judge there, and his constable, and spare not the king who has treated me so ill.’ Then the manikin fell on them like lightning, darting this way and that way, and whosoever was so much as touched by his cudgel fell to earth, and did not venture to stir again. The king was terrified; he threw himself on the soldier’s mercy, and merely to be allowed to live at all, gave him his kingdom for his own, and his daughter to wife….

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Excerpt #10, from Myths of the Norsemen: From the Eddas and Sagas, by H. A. Guerber

…Lay of Grimnir (Thorpe’s tr.). Isolated from her beloved companions, Idun pined, grew pale and sad, but persistently refused to give Thiassi the smallest bite of her magic fruit, which, as he well knew, would make him beautiful and renew his strength and youth. “All woes that fall On Odin’s hall Can be traced to Loki base. From out Valhalla’s portal ’Twas he who pure Iduna lured,– Whose casket fair Held apples rare That render gods immortal,– And in Thiassi’s tower immured.” Valhalla (J. C. Jones). Time passed. The gods, thinking that Idun had accompanied her husband and would soon return, at first paid no heed to her departure, but little by little the beneficent effect of the last feast of apples passed away. They began to feel the approach of old age, and saw their youth and beauty disappear; so, becoming alarmed, they began to search for the missing goddess….

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Excerpt #11, from Rocks and Their Origins, by Grenville A. J. Cole

…superincumbent rocks. We must remember also that submarine lavas have to sustain a pressure of an extra atmosphere for every thirty feet of depth, or 400 atmospheres at 2000 fathoms, and that such rocks have a claim to be regarded as deep-seated. The gases that igneous rocks contain, probably as essential features of the molten magma, and at a temperature above their critical points, escape to a large extent near or at the surface of the earth. The bubbles raised in lava, whereby it is rendered scoriaceous, and the clouds of vapour rising from cooling lava-flows and from the throat of a volcano in eruption, are sufficient evidences of this process. The extremely liquid lavas of Kilauea in Hawaii, which emit very little vapour, are notable as exceptions. In the case of masses that cool underground, the retention of gases, and ultimately of liquids, until a very late stage of consolidation retards crystallisation until temperatures are reached lower than those at which it starts in surface-flows. As A. Harker points out[60], “the loss of these substances, by raising the melting-points in the magma, may be the immediate cause of crystallisation, quite as much as any actual cooling.” The formation of crystals in lavas is rapid, and the average crystals are therefore small, and often felted together in a mesh, the interstices of which are filled by residual glass….

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Excerpt #12, from An Account of Egypt, by Herodotus

…hold most in honour of all, namely the Oracle of Leto which is in the city of Buto. The manner of divination however is not established among them according to the same fashion everywhere, but is different in different places. The art of medicine among them is distributed thus:–each physician is a physician of one disease and of no more; and the whole country is full of physicians, for some profess themselves to be physicians of the eyes, others of the head, others of the teeth, others of the affections of the stomach, and others of the more obscure ailments. Their fashions of mourning and of burial are these:–Whenever any household has lost a man who is of any regard amongst them, the whole number of women of that house forthwith plaster over their heads or even their faces with mud. Then leaving the corpse within the house they go themselves to and fro about the city and beat themselves, with their garments bound up by a girdle and their breasts exposed, and with them go all the women who are related to the dead man, and on the other side the men beat themselves, they too having their garments bound up by a girdle; and when they have done this, they then convey the body to the embalming. In this occupation certain persons employ themselves regularly and inherit this as a craft. These, whenever a corpse is conveyed to them, show to those who brought it wooden models of corpses…

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