Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:25:02

Excerpt #1, from The Republic, by Plato

…greatly admired by this people because they had all things in common; and the short prayer which Jesus Christ taught men is used in their worship. It is a duty of the chief magistrates to pardon sins, and therefore the whole people make secret confession of them to the magistrates, and they to their chief, who is a sort of Rector Metaphysicus; and by this means he is well informed of all that is going on in the minds of men. After confession, absolution is granted to the citizens collectively, but no one is mentioned by name. There also exists among them a practice of perpetual prayer, performed by a succession of priests, who change every hour. Their religion is a worship of God in Trinity, that is of Wisdom, Love and Power, but without any distinction of persons. They behold in the sun the reflection of His glory; mere graven images they reject, refusing to fall under the ‘tyranny’ of idolatry. Many details are given about their customs of eating and drinking, about their mode of dressing, their employments, their wars. Campanella looks forward to a new mode of education, which is to be a study of nature, and not of Aristotle. He would not have his citizens waste their time in the consideration of what he calls ‘the dead signs of things.’ He remarks that he who knows one science only, does not really know that one any more than the rest, and insists strongly on the…

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Excerpt #2, from Popular Tales from the Norse, by Asbjørnsen, Moe, and Dasent

…into the wood, and lay down to sleep. Meantime Buttercup set to work and cut a hole in the sack with his knife; then he crept out and put a great root of a fir-tree into the sack, and ran home to his mother. When the hag got home and saw what there was in the sack, you may fancy she was in a fine rage. Next day the old wife sat and baked again, and her dog began to bark just as he did the day before. “Run out, Buttercup, my boy”, said she, “and see what Goldtooth is barking at.” “Well, I never!” cried Buttercup, as soon as he got out; “if there isn’t that ugly old beast coming again with her head under her arm, and a great sack at her back.” “Under the kneading-trough with you and hide”, said his mother. “Good day!” said the hag, “is your Buttercup at home to-day?” “I’m sorry to say he isn’t”, said his mother; “he’s out in the wood with his father, shooting ptarmigan.” “What a bore”, said the hag; “here I have a beautiful little silver spoon I want to give him.” “Pip, pip! here I am”, said Buttercup, and crept out. “I’m so stiff in the back”, said the old witch, “you must creep into the sack and fetch it out for yourself.”…

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Excerpt #3, from Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens

…Mr. Bumble no sooner uttered Oliver’s name, in explanation of his errand, than Mrs. Bedwin, who had been listening at the parlour door, hastened into the passage in a breathless state. “Come in, come in,” said the old lady: “I knew we should hear of him. Poor dear! I knew we should! I was certain of it. Bless his heart! I said so all along.” Having heard this, the worthy old lady hurried back into the parlour again; and seating herself on a sofa, burst into tears. The girl, who was not quite so susceptible, had run upstairs meanwhile; and now returned with a request that Mr. Bumble would follow her immediately: which he did. He was shown into the little back study, where sat Mr. Brownlow and his friend Mr. Grimwig, with decanters and glasses before them. The latter gentleman at once burst into the exclamation: “A beadle. A parish beadle, or I’ll eat my head.” “Pray don’t interrupt just now,” said Mr. Brownlow. “Take a seat, will you?” Mr. Bumble sat himself down; quite confounded by the oddity of Mr. Grimwig’s manner. Mr. Brownlow moved the lamp, so as to obtain an uninterrupted view of the beadle’s countenance; and said, with a little impatience,…

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Excerpt #4, from Primitive & Mediaeval Japanese Texts, by F. Victor Dickins

…kamu nagara futoshikimashite 30 Sumerogi no shikimasu kuni to ama no hara ihato wo hiraki kamu nobori 35 nobori imashinu waga ohokimi miko no mikoto no amenoshita shiroshimeshiseba 40 haru hana no tafutokaramu to mochi-tsuki no tatahashikemu to amenoshita 45 yomo no hito no ohobuneno omohi tanomite amatsumidzu…

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Excerpt #5, from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll

…Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose— What made you so awfully clever?” “I have answered three questions, and that is enough,” Said his father; “don’t give yourself airs! Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff? Be off, or I’ll kick you down stairs!” “That is not said right,” said the Caterpillar. “Not quite right, I’m afraid,” said Alice, timidly; “some of the words have got altered.” “It is wrong from beginning to end,” said the Caterpillar decidedly, and there was silence for some minutes. The Caterpillar was the first to speak. “What size do you want to be?” it asked. “Oh, I’m not particular as to size,” Alice hastily replied; “only one doesn’t like changing so often, you know.” “I don’t know,” said the Caterpillar. Alice said nothing: she had never been so much contradicted in her life before, and she felt that she was losing her temper. “Are you content now?” said the Caterpillar. “Well, I should like to be a little larger, sir, if you wouldn’t mind,” said Alice: “three inches is such a wretched height to be.”…

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Excerpt #6, from Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), by Jerome K. Jerome

…This evening, however, they had evidently made a mistake, and had put the wind round at our back instead of in our face. We kept very quiet about it, and got the sail up quickly before they found it out, and then we spread ourselves about the boat in thoughtful attitudes, and the sail bellied out, and strained, and grumbled at the mast, and the boat flew. I steered. There is no more thrilling sensation I know of than sailing. It comes as near to flying as man has got to yet—except in dreams. The wings of the rushing wind seem to be bearing you onward, you know not where. You are no longer the slow, plodding, puny thing of clay, creeping tortuously upon the ground; you are a part of Nature! Your heart is throbbing against hers! Her glorious arms are round you, raising you up against her heart! Your spirit is at one with hers; your limbs grow light! The voices of the air are singing to you. The earth seems far away and little; and the clouds, so close above your head, are brothers, and you stretch your arms to them. We had the river to ourselves, except that, far in the distance, we could see a fishing-punt, moored in mid-stream, on which three fishermen sat; and we skimmed over the water, and passed the wooded banks, and no one spoke….

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Excerpt #7, from Mirrors of Moscow, by Louise Stevens Bryant

…after Lenin had been shot and terribly wounded by an assassin and when small hope of recovery was entertained. “We will him to live and he will live!” he cried to an audience which rose to its feet in a wave of irrepressible emotion. It was this speech which lighted the torch of the Red Terror as a back-fire against the White Terror, already so far under way that the very life of the revolution was at stake. But it is well for Trotsky and for the revolution that Trotsky did not direct this terror; he was too passionate and too thorough a soul to have been entrusted with such a conflagration. Trotsky is not a diplomat. He was not successful as Foreign Minister. Diplomacy is too cut and dried to be harmonious with his talents. To be a good diplomat one must be contained and calculating and unemotional, content with the material on hand; one cannot be an originator. Trotsky is essentially an originator. It was not his destiny to accept the ready-made. It was his destiny to tear Russia out of old ruts and send her bleeding but inspired down new ways; it was his destiny to make war on Russian inertia, which is the curse of Russia and the whole East. In Trotsky we discern something distinctly elemental. He looks like a fighter, with his burning eyes and sharp decisive way of speaking, his gestures, his quick regular gait. When he is calm he does not appear…

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Excerpt #8, from The Old East Indiamen, by E. Keble Chatterton

…merrie meeting in this world, if it be his good will and pleasure. “The passage to the East India lieth in 62½ degrees, by the North West on the America side. Your very loving friend, “JAMES LANCASTER.” Such was the brief, matter-of-fact, intensely practical letter which he indited—the very letter which we should have expected from a leader of this type. He succeeded presently in getting it put aboard the Hector, with the order to her captain to proceed. Night came on and when the morning broke Lancaster little expected to find his “chummy ship” still by his side. But he had forgotten that the Hector’s commander was a man like himself, and being a real good fellow he declined to leave a friend in distress, even though it was disobeying the orders of his admiral. So with excellent seamanship the Hector was kept at a reasonable distance from the Dragon, determined to stand by. Meanwhile the Dragon’s carpenter had got to work again and the rudder had been repaired. As if to encourage them, the weather after two or three days began to get better, and the sea to go down. The admiral therefore made a signal ordering the Hector to come nearer. This she did, and then her master, Sander Cole by name, was able to come aboard the flagship, bringing with him the best swimmer in the ship, and the best divers. These men were of the greatest…

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Excerpt #9, from Our Pirate Hoard, by Thomas A. Janvier

…the churn-wash-boiler, we had a wagon-load. Susan was horrified at the thought of his giving the churn-wash-boiler to the asylum. “Even if they only are allowed to use it as a wash-boiler,” she argued, earnestly, “think what dreadful ideas of untidiness it will put into those destitute red Indian children’s heads!–ideas,” she went on, “which will only tend to make them disgrace instead of doing credit to the position of easy affluence to which your legacy will lift them when they return to their barbaric wilds. If you must give it to them, at least conceal from them–I beg of you, conceal from them–the fatal fact that it ever was meant to be a churn too.” Gregory Wilkinson promised Susan that he would conceal this fact from the destitute red Indian children; and then the train started, and he and the churn-wash-boiler were whisked away. We really were very sorry to part with him. V. Two or three days later I happened to meet Old Jacob as I was coming away from the post-office in Lewes, and I was both pained and surprised to perceive that the old man was partially intoxicated. When he caught sight of me he came at me with such a lurch that had I not caught him by the arm he certainly would have fallen to the ground. At first he…

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Excerpt #10, from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Complete, by Mark Twain

…Can you pray?” “I’ll try, but don’t you be afeard. They ain’t going to hurt us. ‘Now I lay me down to sleep, I—’” “Sh!” “What is it, Huck?” “They’re humans! One of ’em is, anyway. One of ’em’s old Muff Potter’s voice.” “No—’tain’t so, is it?” “I bet I know it. Don’t you stir nor budge. He ain’t sharp enough to notice us. Drunk, the same as usual, likely—blamed old rip!” “All right, I’ll keep still. Now they’re stuck. Can’t find it. Here they come again. Now they’re hot. Cold again. Hot again. Red hot! They’re p’inted right, this time. Say, Huck, I know another o’ them voices; it’s Injun Joe.” “That’s so—that murderin’ half-breed! I’d druther they was devils a dern sight. What kin they be up to?” The whisper died wholly out, now, for the three men had reached the grave and stood within a few feet of the boys’ hiding-place. “Here it is,” said the third voice; and the owner of it held the lantern up and revealed the face of young Doctor Robinson. Potter and Injun Joe were carrying a handbarrow with a rope and a couple…

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Excerpt #11, from Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata, by H. G. Wells

…Our little book is the merest beginning in zoology; we have stated one or two groups of facts and made one or two suggestions. The great things of the science of Darwin, Huxley, Wallace, and Balfour remain mainly untold. In the book of nature there are written, for instance, the triumphs of survival, the tragedy of death and extinction, the tragi-comedy of degradation and inheritance, the gruesome lesson of parasitism, and the political satire of colonial organisms. Zoology is, indeed, a philosophy and a literature to those who can read its symbols. In the contemplation of beauty of form and of mechanical beauty, and in the intellectual delight of tracing and elucidating relationships and criticising appearances, there is also for many a great reward in zoological study. With an increasing knowledge of the facts of the form of life, there gradually appears to the student the realization of an entire unity shaped out by their countless, and often beautiful, diversity. And at last, in the place of the manifoldness of a fair or a marine store, the student of science perceives the infinite variety of one consistent and comprehensive Being– a realization to which no other study leads him at present so surely. To the student who feels inclined to amplify this brief outline of Vertebrate Anatomy, we may mention the following books: Wiedersheim’s and Parker’s Vertebrates, Huxley’s Anatomy of the…

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Excerpt #12, from The Wave: An Egyptian Aftermath, by Algernon Blackwood

…conditions—-’ She gave details of the singular mood that had come upon her with the arrival of Tony, but Tom hardly heard her. Only too well he knew the explanation. The touch of ecstasy was no new thing, although its manifestation may have been peculiar. He had known it himself in his own lesser love affairs. But that she could calmly tell him about it, that she could deliberately describe this effect upon her of another man–! It baffled him beyond all thoughts or words. . . . Was the self-revelation an unconscious one? Did she realise the meaning of what she told him? The Lettice he had known could surely not say this thing. In her he felt again, more distinctly than before, another person–division, conflict. Her hesitations, her face, her gestures, her very language proved it. He shrank, as from some one who inflicted pain as a child, unwittingly, to see what the effect would be. . . . He remembered the incident of the insect in the sand. . . . ‘And I feel–even now–I could do it again,’ her voice pierced in across his moment of hidden anguish. The knife she had thrust again into his breast was twisted then. It was time that he said something, and a sentence offered itself in time to save him. The desire to hide his pain from her was too strong to be disobeyed. He wanted to know, yet not, somehow, to prevent. He seized…

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