Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:26:30

Excerpt #1, from Helps to Latin Translation at Sight, by Edmund Luce

…infelix senecta traxit, ut exulem te, deinde hostem viderem? Potuisti populari hanc terram, quae te genuit atque aluit? Non tibi, quamvis infesto animo et minaci perveneras, ingredienti fines ira cecidit? Non, cum in conspectu {10} Roma fuit, succurrit: Intra illa moenia domus ac penates mei sunt, mater, coniunx liberique? Ergo ego nisi peperissem, Roma non oppugnaretur; nisi filium haberem, libera in libera patria mortua essem.’ … Uxor deinde ac liberi amplexi, fletusque ab {15} omni turba mulierum ortus et conploratio sui patriaeque fregere tandem virum. Complexus inde suos dimittit; ipse retro ab urbe castra movit. Abductis deinde legionibus ex agro Romano invidia rei oppressum perisse tradunt alii alio leto. {20} LIVY, ii. 40. [Linenotes: 1. +Coriolanus.+ Gaius Marcius received the cognomen of Coriolanus for his bravery at the capture of the Volscian town of Corioli (S.E. of Rome). After this, in a time of famine at Rome, C. advised that the corn obtained elsewhere should not be distributed, unless the Plebeians would give up their Tribunes. For this he was impeached and went into voluntary exile among the Volsci. +consternatus+ = in strong emotion–lit. ‘stretched on the ground.’…

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Excerpt #2, from Tales of the Samurai, by Asataro Miyamori

…So saying, Nobuyuki summoned a maid and in a low voice gave an order. Presently a bottle of saké and some cups were brought in. Then the fusuma between this and the next room was gently slid open and there appeared a beautiful young woman clad in a gay uchikaké or gown, who knelt with movements full of grace on the threshold. It was none other than Katsuno. “What is your pleasure, my lord?” said she bowing reverently first to Nobuyuki and then to Hachiya. “Ah, is it Katsuno? I want you to serve us with saké. Sit nearer to me, Hachiya; come, let us have some saké.” “Excuse me, my lord. Something tells me I am needed at home; besides it is getting late. With your kind permission, I will go home at once.” “No, no; not just yet, Hachiya. Though it is late no loved one is waiting for your return, I imagine. Ha, ha! Come, you cannot refuse. Katsuno, pour him out a cup of saké!” [Illustration: She filled Hachiya’s cup to the brim] Katsuno hesitated bashfully, but on Nobuyuki’s repeating his command, she took the bottle, and with a hand that trembled filled Hachiya’s cup to the brim. Their eyes met and both blushed consciously. “If you have drunk, let Katsuno have the cup,” said Nobuyuki. “I should return the cup to your lordship.”…

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Excerpt #3, from Japanese Fairy Tales, by Yei Theodora Ozaki

…rejected. Whenever any merchants from other countries arrived, the rich people rushed to them eager to buy poisons. These they swallowed eagerly, hoping for death to come so that they might go to Paradise. But what were deadly poisons in other lands were without effect in this strange place, and people who swallowed them with the hope of dying, only found that in a short time they felt better in health instead of worse. Vainly they tried to imagine what death could be like. The wealthy would have given all their money and all their goods if they could but shorten their lives to two or three hundred years even. Without any change to live on forever seemed to this people wearisome and sad. In the chemist shops there was a drug which was in constant demand, because after using it for a hundred years, it was supposed to turn the hair slightly gray and to bring about disorders of the stomach. Sentaro was astonished to find that the poisonous globe-fish was served up in restaurants as a delectable dish, and hawkers in the streets went about selling sauces made of Spanish flies. He never saw any one ill after eating these horrible things, nor did he ever see any one with as much as a cold. Sentaro was delighted. He said to himself that he would never grow tired of living, and that he considered it profane to wish for death….

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Excerpt #4, from The Gravity Business, by James E. Gunn

…spaceships and later the polarizer. The polarizer polarizes gravity into a straight line. That makes the ship take off and continue accelerating until the polarizer is shut off or its angle is shifted." The faces looked at him silently. Finally Joyce could endure it no longer. “That’s just nonsense! You all know it. Grampa’s no genius. He’s just a tinkerer. One day he happened to tinker out the polarizer. He doesn’t know how it works any more than I do.” “Now wait a minute!” Grampa protested. “That’s not fair. Maybe I didn’t figure out the theory myself, but I read everything the scientists ever wrote about it. Wanted to know myself what made the blamed thing work. What I told you is what the scientists said, near as I remember. Now me–I’m like Edison. I do it and let everybody else worry over ‘why.’” “The only thing you ever did was the polarizer,” Joyce snapped. “And then you spent everything you got from it on those fool perpetual-motion machines and those crazy longevity schemes when any moron would know they were impossible.” Grampa squinted at her sagely. “That’s what they said about the gravity polarizer before I invented it.” “But you don’t really know why it works,” Junior persisted. “Well, no,” Grampa admitted. "Actually I was just fiddling around with…

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Excerpt #5, from The Collected Works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 10 (of 12), by William Hazlitt

…contradictions, staring one another in the face, and quarrelling for the precedence. Mr. Landor’s book is a perfect ‘institute and digest’ of inconsistency: it is made up of mere antipathies in nature and in reasoning. It is a chef-d’œuvre of self-opinion and self-will, strangling whatever is otherwise sound and excellent in principle, defacing whatever is beautiful in style and matter. If it be true (as has been said) that ‘Great wits to madness nearly are allied,’ we know few writers that have higher or more unequivocal pretensions in this way than the author of the ‘Imaginary Conversations.’ Would it be believed, that, trampling manfully on all history and tradition, he speaks of Tiberius as a man of sentiment, who retired to Capri merely to indulge a tender melancholy on the death of a beloved wife: and will have it that Nero was a most humane, amiable, and deservedly popular character—not arguing the points as doubtful or susceptible of question, but assuming them, en passant, as most absolute and peremptory conclusions—as if whatever was contrary to common sense and common feeling carried conviction on the face of it? In the same page he assures us, with the same oracular tranquillity, that the conflagration of Rome, and the great fire of London, were both wise and voluntary measures, arising from the necessity of purifying the cities after…

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Excerpt #6, from Investigation of Communist activities in Seattle, Wash., area. Hearings, Part 3

…Mr. TAVENNER. Are you now aware that the American Friends of the Chinese People has been cited by this committee as a Communist-front organization? Mr. O’CONNELL. No; I am not aware of that even now. Mr. TAVENNER. It was so cited on March 29, 1944. Mr. O’CONNELL. I never got copies of the hearings or deliberations or decisions of the committee. Out there our press, unless it is specifically related to something out there, rarely carries any of this material. Mr. TAVENNER. The November 1948 issue of the Far East Spotlight reflects that you sent greetings to the Communist, Madame Sun Yat-Sen under auspices of the Committee for a Democratic Far Eastern Policy. Do you recall having done that? Mr. O’CONNELL. No; I really don’t recall having done it, but I don’t deny that I did. I have tremendous respect for Madame Sun Yat-Sen. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. Mr. TAVENNER. Will you tell the committee whether or not you were affiliated with the Committee for a Democratic Far Eastern Policy? Mr. O’CONNELL. Affiliated with it? Mr. TAVENNER. In any way; yes. Mr. WILLIS. What is the name of that committee?…

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Excerpt #7, from Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post, by Thomas Rainey

…requires that the steamer shall be docked, however great the expense; and as these accidents are constantly occurring in even the best constructed and best regulated propellers, it follows that they must be constantly on the docks. This species of vessel being built necessarily narrower than the side-wheel, it rolls more, and is found to be an exceedingly disagreeable passenger vessel. Propellers have become deservedly unpopular the world over; and if it were possible for them to be faster than the side-wheel, it is hardly probable that first-class passengers would even then go by them, as they are known to be so exceedingly uncomfortable. The propeller, I have before said, is erroneously supposed to run more cheaply than the side-wheel. I think that I have shown that as a mail packet it will cost more to run it at a given speed. But there are certain cases in which it does run more cheaply; these are, however, only where the speed is low, and the machinery not geared, and where, as a consequence, sail can be used to more advantage than on a side-wheel. The economy is not the result of the application of the power by the screw, as compared with the side-wheel, but of the sail alone; and this economy is more or less, just as canvas is employed more or less in the propulsion. The screw is the better form of steamer for using sail; and the low speed at which propellers…

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Excerpt #8, from Phrases and Names, Their Origins and Meanings, by Trench H. Johnson

…Dinner.” =Picts.= The Lowlanders of Scotland, called by the Romans picti, or painted men, because, they stained their skins with woad. =Pie Corner.= It has been considered curious that the Great Fire of London should have broken out in “Pudding Lane” and ended at Pie Corner. Scarcely less curious was it that this Pie Corner was an eating-house. Its sign was “The Pie,” a corruption of “Magpie.” =Piedmont.= Expresses the French for “mountain foot.” =Pierrot.= French for “Little Peter.” =Pig and Whistle.= A tavern sign corrupted from “Piggen Wassail.” Piggen expressed the Anglo-Saxon for a milking pail, of which pig was the diminutive. When a large party frequented the alehouse the liquor was set before them in a piggen, each helping himself from it with his pig, or mug. “Wassail” was, of course, the Anglo-Saxon Was hæl (“Be in health”). See “Hail.” =Pigeon English.= That employed by the Chinese in their commercial relations with Europeans. The word pigeon is a native corruption of “business,” which it seems impossible for a Chinaman to pronounce correctly. Their business English is therefore a jargon of many languages heard by him in the “Open Ports.” =Pig in a Poke.= See “Buy a Pig in a Poke” and “Let the Cat out of the…

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Excerpt #9, from The Open Boat and Other Stories, by Stephen Crane

…Peza," he said simply. A strange smile passed over the soldier’s face. There was pity and pride–the vanity of experience–and contempt in it. “Very well,” he said, returning the bow. “If my company is in the middle of the fight I shall be glad for the honour of your companionship. If my company is not in the middle of the fight–I will make other arrangements for you.” Peza bowed once more, very stiffly, and correctly spoke his thanks. On the edge of what he took to be a great venture toward death, he discovered that he was annoyed at something in the lieutenant’s tone. Things immediately assumed new and extraordinary proportions. The battle, the great carnival of woe, was sunk at once to an equation with a vexation by a stranger. He wanted to ask the lieutenant what was his meaning. He bowed again majestically; the lieutenant bowed. They flung a shadow of manners, of capering tinsel ceremony across a land that groaned, and it satisfied something within themselves completely. In the meantime, the river of fleeing villagers had changed to simply a last dropping of belated creatures, who fled past stammering and flinging their hands high. The two men had come to the top of the great hill. Before them was a green plain as level as an inland sea. It swept northward, and merged finally into a length of silvery mist. Upon the near part of this plain, and upon two grey treeless mountains at the…

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Excerpt #10, from The School for Scandal, by Richard Brinsley Sheridan

…me–but the Tenderness you express’d for me, when I am sure you could not think I was a witness to it, has penetrated so to my Heart that had I left the Place without the Shame of this discovery–my future life should have spoken the sincerity of my Gratitude–as for that smooth-tongued Hypocrite–who would have seduced the wife of his too credulous Friend while he pretended honourable addresses to his ward–I behold him now in a light so truly despicable that I shall never again Respect myself for having Listened to him. [Exit.] SURFACE. Notwithstanding all this Sir Peter–Heaven knows—- SIR PETER. That you are a Villain!–and so I leave you to your conscience– SURFACE. You are too Rash Sir Peter–you SHALL hear me–The man who shuts out conviction by refusing to—- [Exeunt, SURFACE following and speaking.] END OF THE FOURTH ACT V SCENE I.–The Library Enter SURFACE and SERVANT SURFACE. Mr. Stanley! and why should you think I would see him?–you must know he came to ask something!…

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Excerpt #11, from You no longer count, by René Boylesve

…paper—-" “Do you believe in such a thing, yourself?” “I believe in the word as I believe in all words. It is a mistake to disdain the old-fashioned verbalism–rhetoric, eloquence. The majority of words are hollow–yes, but they are hollow like bells whose sonorousness may by itself shake the whole world. Those who use words are inspired by various things, and generally by sentiments that they cannot acknowledge; yet the word touches the finest chords in the soul of men whom one wants to win over. ‘Democracy’ has a tone—-” “Which will work good?–or evil?” "Alas! The popular instinct and an inevitable necessity urge men, in spite of words, to enslave themselves, and they will of their own accord submit to the tyranny of new leaders, new groups representing interests of which the crowd will know nothing. Almost all my pessimism is founded on the irresistible character of this law. Men must be commanded, and no one can be sure that those who command will not abuse their authority or the confidence which is freely granted to them. However, the official programme of democracy will be to devote all its effort to the well-being of poor humans who have not an average of fifty years to live in this world, who no longer believe in another world, and who in truth have some legitimate aspirations to live their few years for their own…

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Excerpt #12, from The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne

…were beaming from it!—must see my flock hungry for the truth, and listening to my words as if a tongue of Pentecost were speaking!—and then look inward, and discern the black reality of what they idolize? I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am! And Satan laughs at it!” “You wrong yourself in this,” said Hester, gently. “You have deeply and sorely repented. Your sin is left behind you, in the days long past. Your present life is not less holy, in very truth, than it seems in people’s eyes. Is there no reality in the penitence thus sealed and witnessed by good works? And wherefore should it not bring you peace?” “No, Hester, no!” replied the clergyman. “There is no substance in it! It is cold and dead, and can do nothing for me! Of penance, I have had enough! Of penitence, there has been none! Else, I should long ago have thrown off these garments of mock holiness, and have shown myself to mankind as they will see me at the judgment-seat. Happy are you, Hester, that wear the scarlet letter openly upon your bosom! Mine burns in secret! Thou little knowest what a relief it is, after the torment of a seven years’ cheat, to look into an eye that recognizes me for what I am! Had I one friend,—or were it my worst enemy!—to whom, when sickened with the praises of all other men, I could daily betake myself, and be known as the vilest of all sinners, methinks my…

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