Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:25:32

Excerpt #1, from The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe

…Thou talk’st of Christ, contrary to thy promise: Thou shouldst not think of God: think of the devil, And of his dam too. FAUSTUS. Nor will I henceforth: pardon me in this, And Faustus vows never to look to heaven, Never to name God, or to pray to him, To burn his Scriptures, slay his ministers, And make my spirits pull his churches down. LUCIFER. Do so, and we will highly gratify thee. Faustus, we are come from hell to shew thee some pastime: sit down, and thou shalt see all the Seven Deadly Sins appear in their proper shapes. FAUSTUS. That sight will be as pleasing unto me, As Paradise was to Adam, the first day Of his creation. LUCIFER. Talk not of Paradise nor creation; but mark this show: talk of the devil, and nothing else.–Come away! Enter the SEVEN DEADLY SINS.[105] Now, Faustus, examine them of their several names and dispositions. FAUSTUS. What art thou, the first? PRIDE. I am Pride. I disdain to have any parents. I am like to Ovid’s flea; I can creep into every corner of a wench; sometimes,…

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Excerpt #2, from The Submarine Hunters: A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War

…Scotland Yard, but Hawke, mindful of a former failure, induced him not to do so. The detective, who had occasion to contrast unfavourably the summary powers of arrest under the Defence of the Realm Act with those allowed by the Civil Power, was eventually allowed to communicate with his brother officer at Parkeston Quay. And then the military authorities required a considerable amount of convincing. It looked as if Detective-inspector Hawke would have to remain under arrest until next morning. While Ferret was losing time and patience in his efforts to release his confrère, Ross and Vernon noticed a man hurrying along the quay. He was short and thick-set. He wore a long mackintosh, the collar of which was turned up and helped, with the peak of his cap, to hide his features. Suddenly the man’s foot tripped over a ring-bolt. He cursed under his breath, but sufficiently loudly for the lads to overhear. Ross gripped his companion’s arm. The fellow was swearing in German. “Von Ruhle!” he whispered. He made a movement as if to issue from his place of concealment, but Haye restrained him. “Hold on!” he cautioned in a low voice. The man paused on the gangway. A partly shaded electric light threw a glare upon his face. He wore a heavy beard and moustache….

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Excerpt #3, from The Great Boer War, by Arthur Conan Doyle

…with guns. Lord Roberts determined to drive them off, and on March 28th Tucker’s 7th Division, consisting of Chermside’s brigade (Lincolns, Norfolks, Hampshires, and Scottish Borderers), and Wavell’s brigade (Cheshires, East Lancashires, North Staffords, and South Wales Borderers), were assembled at Glen. The artillery consisted of the veteran 18th, 62nd, and 75th R.F.A. Three attenuated cavalry brigades with some mounted infantry completed the force. The movement was to be upon the old model, and in result it proved to be only too truly so. French’s cavalry were to get round one flank, Le Gallais’s mounted infantry round the other, and Tucker’s Division to attack in front. Nothing could be more perfect in theory and nothing apparently more defective in practice. Since on this as on other occasions the mere fact that the cavalry were demonstrating in the rear caused the complete abandonment of the position, it is difficult to see what the object of the infantry attack could be. The ground was irregular and unexplored, and it was late before the horsemen on their weary steeds found themselves behind the flank of the enemy. Some of them, Le Gallais’s mounted infantry and Davidson’s guns, had come from Bloemfontein during the night, and the horses were exhausted by the long march, and by the absurd weight which the British troop-horse is asked to carry. Tucker advanced his infantry exactly as Kelly-Kenny had done…

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Excerpt #4, from Thought Forms, by Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater

…vain, and find instead of it a vast conglomeration of thought-forms of that second type which take the shape of material objects. Instead of tokens of devotion, we see floating above the “worshippers” the astral images of hats and bonnets, of jewellery and gorgeous dresses, of horses and of carriages, of whisky-bottles and of Sunday dinners, and sometimes of whole rows of intricate calculations, showing that men and women alike have had during their supposed hours of prayer and praise no thoughts but of business or of pleasure, of the desires or the anxieties of the lower form of mundane existence. Yet sometimes in a humbler fane, in a church belonging to the unfashionable Catholic or Ritualist, or even in a lowly meeting-house where there is but little of learning or of culture, one may watch the deep blue clouds rolling ceaselessly eastward towards the altar, or upwards, testifying at least to the earnestness and the reverence of those who give them birth. Rarely–very rarely–among the clouds of blue will flash like a lance cast by the hand of a giant such a thought-form as is shown in Fig. 15; or such a flower of self-renunciation as we see in Fig. 16 may float before our ravished eyes; but in most cases we must seek elsewhere for these signs of a higher development. Upward Rush of Devotion.–The form in Fig. 15 bears much the same relation to that of Fig. 14 as did the clearly outlined projectile of…

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Excerpt #5, from The Terror: A Mystery, by Arthur Machen

…had been worked. The idea, he said, was that this was a part, and a most important part, of the great German plot to destroy England and the British Empire. The scheme had been prepared years ago, some thought soon after the Franco-Prussian War. Moltke had seen that the invasion of England (in the ordinary sense of the term invasion) presented very great difficulties. The matter was constantly in discussion in the inner military and high political circles, and the general trend of opinion in these quarters was that at the best, the invasion of England would involve Germany in the gravest difficulties, and leave France in the position of the tertius gaudens. This was the state of affairs when a very high Prussian personage was approached by the Swedish professor, Huvelius. Thus Merritt, and here I would say in parenthesis that this Huvelius was by all accounts an extraordinary man. Considered personally and apart from his writings he would appear to have been a most amiable individual. He was richer than the generality of Swedes, certainly far richer than the average university professor in Sweden. But his shabby, green frock-coat, and his battered, furry hat were notorious in the university town where he lived. No one laughed, because it was well known that Professor Huvelius spent every penny of his private means and…

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Excerpt #6, from Phrases and Names, Their Origins and Meanings, by Trench H. Johnson

…=Indian Whisky.= The name given to specially adulterated whisky for sale to the Indians of North America. =India Paper.= A special kind of paper, made of vegetable fibre in China and Japan, on which the first impressions, called India proof, of engravings are taken. See “India.” =India Proof.= See “India Paper.” =India-rubber.= Caoutchouc, first imported from China, but now found elsewhere. See “India.” =India-rubber Railway Sandwich.= The typical refreshment-room sandwich, the bread slices of which are as a rule so stale that they defy hasty mastication. =Indigo.= A blue dye prepared from the Indicus, or Indian plant. =Industrial Schools.= Also known as Ragged Schools, of which the scholars are waifs and strays brought together for the acquirement of some useful industry. =Infra.= Latin for below, beneath. A word very generally met with in library catalogues: “See Infra.” It is the antithesis of Supra, above. =Infra Dig.= Short for Infra Dignitatem, which expresses the Latin for “beneath one’s dignity.” =Infant.= In law, any person under the age of twenty-one….

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Excerpt #7, from Bel Ami; Or, The History of a Scoundrel: A Novel, by Guy de Maupassant

…to read it, but the figures danced before her eyes; she handed the paper to Duroy. “Here, pay it for me; I cannot see.” At the same time, she put her purse in his hand. The total was one hundred and thirty francs. Duroy glanced at the bill and when it was settled, whispered: “How much shall I give the waiter?” “Whatever you like; I do not know.” He laid five francs upon the plate and handed the purse to its owner, saying: “Shall I escort you home?” “Certainly; I am unable to find the house.” They shook hands with the Forestiers and were soon rolling along in a cab side by side. Duroy could think of nothing to say; he felt impelled to clasp her in his arms. “If I should dare, what would she do?” thought he. The recollection of their conversation at dinner emboldened, but the fear of scandal restrained him. Mme. de Marelle reclined silently in her corner. He would have thought her asleep, had he not seen her eyes glisten whenever a ray of light penetrated the dark recesses of the carriage. Of what was she thinking? Suddenly she moved her foot, nervously, impatiently. That movement caused him to tremble, and turning quickly, he cast himself upon her, seeking her lips with his. She uttered a cry, attempted to repulse him and then…

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Excerpt #8, from The Principles of Biology, Volume 1 (of 2), by Herbert Spencer

…their early lives in the water, acquire more completely the structures fitting them to live on land, to which they then migrate. Lastly, we have closely-allied creatures, like the Surinam toad and the terrestrial salamander, which, though they belong by their structures to the class Amphibia, are not amphibious in their habits–creatures the larvæ of which do not pass their early lives in the water, and yet go through these same metamorphoses! Must we then think, like Von Baer, that the distribution of kindred organisms through different media presents an insurmountable difficulty? On the contrary, with facts like these before us, the evolution-hypothesis supplies possible interpretations of many phenomena that are else unaccountable. After seeing the ways in which such changes of media are in some cases gradually imposed by physical conditions, and in other cases voluntarily commenced and slowly increased in the search after food; we shall begin to understand how, in the course of evolution, there have arisen strange obscurations of one type by the externals of another type. When we see land-birds occasionally feeding by the water-side, and then learn that one of them, the water-ouzel, an “anomalous member of the strictly terrestrial thrush family, wholly subsists by diving–grasping the stones with its feet and using its wings under water”–we are enabled to comprehend how, under pressure of population, aquatic habits may be acquired by creatures organized for…

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Excerpt #9, from Arms and the Man, by Bernard Shaw

…you. At least I didn’t mean to. But when I think of him charging the windmills and thinking he was doing the finest thing—(chokes with suppressed laughter). RAINA. (sternly). Give me back the portrait, sir. MAN. (with sincere remorse). Of course. Certainly. I’m really very sorry. (She deliberately kisses it, and looks him straight in the face, before returning to the chest of drawers to replace it. He follows her, apologizing.) Perhaps I’m quite wrong, you know: no doubt I am. Most likely he had got wind of the cartridge business somehow, and knew it was a safe job. RAINA. That is to say, he was a pretender and a coward! You did not dare say that before. MAN. (with a comic gesture of despair). It’s no use, dear lady: I can’t make you see it from the professional point of view. (As he turns away to get back to the ottoman, the firing begins again in the distance.) RAINA. (sternly, as she sees him listening to the shots). So much the better…

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Excerpt #10, from The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

…fellow to kiss. At the foot of the ladder he had been pale enough; but when he set foot on the scaffold at the top, his face suddenly became the colour of paper, positively like white notepaper. His legs must have become suddenly feeble and helpless, and he felt a choking in his throat—you know the sudden feeling one has in moments of terrible fear, when one does not lose one’s wits, but is absolutely powerless to move? If some dreadful thing were suddenly to happen; if a house were just about to fall on one;—don’t you know how one would long to sit down and shut one’s eyes and wait, and wait? Well, when this terrible feeling came over him, the priest quickly pressed the cross to his lips, without a word—a little silver cross it was—and he kept on pressing it to the man’s lips every second. And whenever the cross touched his lips, the eyes would open for a moment, and the legs moved once, and he kissed the cross greedily, hurriedly—just as though he were anxious to catch hold of something in case of its being useful to him afterwards, though he could hardly have had any connected religious thoughts at the time. And so up to the very block. “How strange that criminals seldom swoon at such a moment! On the contrary, the brain is especially active, and works incessantly—probably hard, hard, hard—like an engine at full pressure. I imagine that various thoughts must beat loud and fast through his…

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Excerpt #11, from The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas

…wishes to know on what day it will suit you to walk in the forest? Tomorrow, at the Hôtel Field of the Cloth of Gold, a lackey in black and red will wait for your reply.” “Oh!” said D’Artagnan, “this is rather warm; it appears that Milady and I are anxious about the health of the same person. Well, Planchet, how is the good Monsieur de Wardes? He is not dead, then?” “No, monsieur, he is as well as a man can be with four sword wounds in his body; for you, without question, inflicted four upon the dear gentleman, and he is still very weak, having lost almost all his blood. As I said, monsieur, Lubin did not know me, and told me our adventure from one end to the other.” “Well done, Planchet! you are the king of lackeys. Now jump onto your horse, and let us overtake the carriage.” This did not take long. At the end of five minutes they perceived the carriage drawn up by the roadside; a cavalier, richly dressed, was close to the door. The conversation between Milady and the cavalier was so animated that D’Artagnan stopped on the other side of the carriage without anyone but the pretty soubrette perceiving his presence. The conversation took place in English—a language which D’Artagnan could not understand; but by the accent the young man plainly saw that…

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Excerpt #12, from Desert Dust, by Edwin L. Sabin

…know, at each terminus, booms as long as the freight and passengers pile up–and all of a sudden the go-ahead business and professional men pull stakes for the next terminus as soon as located. That has been the custom, all the way from North Platte to Benton." “Which accounts for your acquaintance along the line. The trainmen seem to know you.” “Trainmen and others; oh, yes. It is to be expected. I have no objections to that. I am quite able to take care of myself, sir.” We were interrupted. A near-drunken rowdy (upon whom I had kept an uneasy corner of an eye) had been careening over the platform, a whiskey bottle protruding from the hip pocket of his sagging jeans, a large revolver dangling at his thigh, his slouch hat cocked rakishly upon his tousled head. His language was extremely offensive–he had an ugly mood on, but nobody interfered. The crowd stood aside–the natives laughing, the tourists like myself viewing him askance, and several Indians watching only gravely. He sighted us, and staggered in. “Howdy?” he uttered, with an oath. “Shay–hello, stranger. Have a smile. Take two, one for lady. Hic!” And he thrust his bottle at me. My Lady drew back. I civilly declined the “smile.” “Thank you. I do not drink.”…

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