Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:26:14

Excerpt #1, from Anne of the Island, by L. M. Montgomery

…would be a satisfying spot for studying or dreaming. “It’s all so delicious that I know we are going to wake up and find it a fleeting vision of the night,” said Priscilla as they went away. “Miss Patty and Miss Maria are hardly such stuff as dreams are made of,” laughed Anne. “Can you fancy them ‘globe-trotting’—especially in those shawls and caps?” “I suppose they’ll take them off when they really begin to trot,” said Priscilla, “but I know they’ll take their knitting with them everywhere. They simply couldn’t be parted from it. They will walk about Westminster Abbey and knit, I feel sure. Meanwhile, Anne, we shall be living in Patty’s Place—and on Spofford Avenue. I feel like a millionairess even now.” “I feel like one of the morning stars that sang for joy,” said Anne. Phil Gordon crept into Thirty-eight, St. John’s, that night and flung herself on Anne’s bed. “Girls, dear, I’m tired to death. I feel like the man without a country—or was it without a shadow? I forget which. Anyway, I’ve been packing up.” “And I suppose you are worn out because you couldn’t decide which things to pack first, or where to put them,” laughed Priscilla. “E-zackly. And when I had got everything jammed in somehow, and my…

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Excerpt #2, from Sixty Years in Southern California, 1853

…John Butterfield was originally a New York stage-driver and later the organizer of the American Express Company, as well as projector of the Morse telegraph line between New York and Buffalo. As the head of John Butterfield & Company, he was one of my customers in 1857. He contracted with the United States, in 1858, as President of the Overland Mail Company, to carry mail between San Francisco and the Missouri River. To make this possible, sections of the road, afterward popularly referred to as the Butterfield Route, were built; and the surveyors, Bishop and Beale, were awarded the contract for part of the work. It is my recollection that they used for this purpose some of the camels imported by the United States Government, and that these animals were in charge of Greek George to whom I have already referred. Butterfield chose a route from San Francisco coming down the Coast to Gilroy, San José and through the mountain passes; on to Visalia and Fort Tejón, and then to Los Angeles, in all some four hundred and sixty-two miles. From Los Angeles it ran eastward through El Monte, San Bernardino, Temécula and Warner’s Ranch to Fort Yuma, and then by way of El Paso to St. Louis. In this manner, Butterfield arranged for what was undoubtedly the longest continuous stage-line ever established, the entire length being about two thousand, eight hundred…

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Excerpt #3, from French Idioms and Proverbs, by de V. Payen

…business best. Mien J’y ai mis du mien, mettez-y du vôtre = I have given way a bit, meet me half-way; I have done my share at it, now it’s your turn. Mieux *Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien = Leave well alone. Ils criaient à qui mieux mieux = Each was trying to shout louder than the other; Each tried to drown the others’ voices. Je ne demande pas mieux = Nothing would give me greater pleasure. Elle est mieux que sa sœur = She is prettier than her sister. Faute de mieux = For want of something better. Tant mieux = So much the better. Il est au mieux avec son médecin = He is on the best terms with his doctor. On ne peut mieux = As well as possible; It could not be better. Vous arrivez on ne peut mieux = You could not have come at a more opportune moment. Milieu Le juste milieu = The golden mean. Au beau milieu = In the very midst….

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Excerpt #4, from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum

…makes one forget he is afraid.” “Very well, I will give you that sort of courage tomorrow,” replied Oz. “How about my heart?” asked the Tin Woodman. “Why, as for that,” answered Oz, “I think you are wrong to want a heart. It makes most people unhappy. If you only knew it, you are in luck not to have a heart.” “That must be a matter of opinion,” said the Tin Woodman. “For my part, I will bear all the unhappiness without a murmur, if you will give me the heart.” “Very well,” answered Oz meekly. “Come to me tomorrow and you shall have a heart. I have played Wizard for so many years that I may as well continue the part a little longer.” “And now,” said Dorothy, “how am I to get back to Kansas?” “We shall have to think about that,” replied the little man. “Give me two or three days to consider the matter and I’ll try to find a way to carry you over the desert. In the meantime you shall all be treated as my guests, and while you live in the Palace my people will wait upon you and obey your slightest wish. There is only one thing I ask in return for my help—such as it is. You must keep my secret and tell no one I am a humbug.” They agreed to say nothing of what they had learned, and went back to…

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Excerpt #5, from The Pursuit of the House Boat, by John Kendrick Bangs

…[Picture: Kidd’s companions endeavouring to restore evaporating portions of his anatomy with a steam-atomizer] X A WARNING ACCEPTED “IT is with no desire to interrupt my friend Cassandra unnecessarily,” said Mrs. Noah, as the prophetess was about to narrate her story, “that I rise to beg her to remember that, as an ancestress of Captain Kidd, I hope she will spare a grandmother’s feelings, if anything in the story she is about to tell is improper to be placed before the young. I have been so shocked by the stories of perfidy and baseness generally that have been published of late years, that I would interpose a protest while there is yet time if there is a line in Cassandra’s story which ought to be withheld from the public; a protest based upon my affection for posterity, and in the interests of morality everywhere.” “You may rest easy upon that score, my dear Mrs. Noah,” said the prophetess. “What I have to say would commend itself, I am sure, even to the ears of a British matron; and while it is as complete a demonstration of man’s perfidy as ever was, it is none the less as harmless a little tale as the Dottie Dimple books or any other more recent study of New England character.” “Thank you for the load your words have lifted from my mind,” said Mrs….

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Excerpt #6, from The Critique of Pure Reason, by Immanuel Kant

…small, the former is considered as existing for the sake of the latter, and requiring to be adapted to it. Among the trivial subjects of discussion in the old schools of dialectics was this question: “If a ball cannot pass through a hole, shall we say that the ball is too large or the hole too small?” In this case it is indifferent what expression we employ; for we do not know which exists for the sake of the other. On the other hand, we cannot say: “The man is too long for his coat”; but: “The coat is too short for the man.” We are thus led to the well-founded suspicion that the cosmological ideas, and all the conflicting sophistical assertions connected with them, are based upon a false and fictitious conception of the mode in which the object of these ideas is presented to us; and this suspicion will probably direct us how to expose the illusion that has so long led us astray from the truth. Section VI. Transcendental Idealism as the Key to the Solution of Pure Cosmological Dialectic In the transcendental æsthetic we proved that everything intuited in space and time, all objects of a possible experience, are nothing but phenomena, that is, mere representations; and that these, as presented to us—as extended bodies, or as series of changes—have no self-subsistent existence apart from human thought. This doctrine I…

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Excerpt #7, from The Alchemist, by Ben Jonson

…Firk, like a flounder; kiss, like a scallop, close; And tickle him with thy mother tongue. His great Verdugoship has not a jot of language; So much the easier to be cozen’d, my Dolly. He will come here in a hired coach, obscure, And our own coachman, whom I have sent as guide, No creature else. [KNOCKING WITHOUT.] Who’s that? [EXIT DOL.] SUB. It is not he? FACE. O no, not yet this hour. [RE-ENTER DOL.] SUB. Who is’t? DOL. Dapper, Your clerk. FACE. God’s will then, queen of Fairy, On with your tire; [EXIT DOL.] and, doctor, with your robes. Let’s dispatch him for God’s sake….

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Excerpt #8, 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 #9, from Essays, by Ralph Waldo Emerson, by Ralph Waldo Emerson

…if he seek a temporary peace by the diversion of his thoughts from politics or vexed questions, hiding his head like an ostrich in the flowering bushes, peeping into microscopes, and turning rhymes, as a boy whistles to keep his courage up. So is the danger a danger still; so is the fear worse. Manlike let him turn and face it. Let him look into its eye and search its nature, inspect its origin,–see the whelping of this lion,–which lies no great way back; he will then find in himself a perfect comprehension of its nature and extent; he will have made his hands meet on the other side, and can henceforth defy it and pass on superior. The world is his who can see through its pretension. What deafness, what stone-blind custom, what overgrown error you behold is there only by sufferance,–by your sufferance. See it to be a lie, and you have already dealt it its mortal blow. Yes, we are the cowed,–we the trustless. It is a mischievous notion that we are come late into nature; that the world was finished a long time ago. As the world was plastic and fluid in the hands of God, so it is ever to so much of his attributes as we bring to it. To ignorance and sin it is flint. They adapt themselves to it as they may; but in proportion as a man has any thing in him divine, the firmament flows before him and takes his signet[66] and form. Not he is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind….

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Excerpt #10, from Candide, by Voltaire

…to Venice–me, my servants, my baggage, and these two sheep?" The skipper asked ten thousand piastres. Candide did not hesitate. “Oh! oh!” said the prudent Vanderdendur to himself, “this stranger gives ten thousand piastres unhesitatingly! He must be very rich.” Returning a little while after, he let him know that upon second consideration, he could not undertake the voyage for less than twenty thousand piastres. “Well, you shall have them,” said Candide. “Ay!” said the skipper to himself, “this man agrees to pay twenty thousand piastres with as much ease as ten.” He went back to him again, and declared that he could not carry him to Venice for less than thirty thousand piastres. “Then you shall have thirty thousand,” replied Candide. “Oh! oh!” said the Dutch skipper once more to himself, “thirty thousand piastres are a trifle to this man; surely these sheep must be laden with an immense treasure; let us say no more about it. First of all, let him pay down the thirty thousand piastres; then we shall see.” Candide sold two small diamonds, the least of which was worth more than what the skipper asked for his freight. He paid him in advance. The two sheep were put on board. Candide followed in a little boat to join the vessel in the roads. The skipper seized his opportunity, set sail, and…

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Excerpt #11, from History for ready reference, Volume 3 (of 6), Greece to Nibelungen, by J. N. Larned

…volume 2, page 200._ COMMON LAW: A. D. 1499 (circa). Copyright. "From about the period of the introduction of printing into this country, that is to say, towards the end of the fifteenth century, English authors had, in accordance with the opinion of the best legal authorities, a right to the Copyright in their works, according to the Common Law of the Realm, or a right to their ‘copy’ as it was anciently called, but there is no direct evidence of the right until 1558. The Charter of the Stationers’ Company, which to this day is charged with the Registration of Copyright, was granted by Philip and Mary in 1556. The avowed object of this corporation was to prevent the spread of the Reformation. Then there followed the despotic jurisdiction of the Star Chamber over the publication of books, and the Ordinances and the Licensing Act of Charles II. At the commencement of the 18th century there was no statutory protection of Copyright. Unrestricted piracy was rife. The existing remedies of a bill in equity and an action at law were too cumbrous and expensive to protect the authors’ Common Law rights, and authors petitioned Parliament for speedier and…

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Excerpt #12, from The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsène Lupin, Gentleman

…discretion; for why should I struggle? Behind that man, there were ten others who would come to his assistance. Should I risk my life to save a few tapestries and bibelots? Throughout the night, my torture endured. Insufferable torture, terrible anguish! The noises had stopped, but I was in constant fear of their renewal. And the man! The man who was guarding me, weapon in hand. My fearful eyes remained cast in his direction. And my heart beat! And a profuse perspiration oozed from every pore of my body! Suddenly, I experienced an immense relief; a milk-wagon, whose sound was familiar to me, passed along the boulevard; and, at the same time, I had an impression that the light of a new day was trying to steal through the closed window-blinds. At last, daylight penetrated the room; other vehicles passed along the boulevard; and all the phantoms of the night vanished. Then I put one arm out of the bed, slowly and cautiously. My eyes were fixed upon the curtain, locating the exact spot at which I must fire; I made an exact calculation of the movements I must make; then, quickly, I seized my revolver and fired. I leaped from my bed with a cry of deliverance, and rushed to the window. The bullet had passed through the curtain and the window-glass, but it had not touched the man–for the very good reason that there was…

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