Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:26:50

Excerpt #1, from Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy, by Anonymous

…had a dead calm.–We endeavored to row, but our strength was exhausted. A fourth and last distribution was made, and in the twinkling of an eye, our last resources were consumed. We were forty-two people who had to feed upon six biscuits and about four pints of water, with no hope of a farther supply. Then came the moment for deciding whether we were to perish among the breakers, which defended the approach to the shores of the Desert, or to die of famine in continuing our route.–The majority preferred the last species of misery. We continued our progress along the shore, painfully pulling our oars. Upon the beach were distinguished several downs of white sand and some small trees. We were thus creeping along the coast, observing a mournful silence, when a sailor suddenly exclaimed, behold the Moors! We did, in fact, see various individuals upon the rising ground, walking at a quick pace, and whom we took to be the Arabs of the Desert. As we were very near the shore, we stood farther out to sea, fearing that these pretended Moors, or Arabs, would throw themselves into the sea, swim out, and take us. Some hours after, we observed several people upon an eminence, who seemed to make signals for us. We examined them attentively, and soon recognized them to be our companions in misfortune. We replied to them by attaching a white…

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Excerpt #2, from An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, by David Hume

…with stories of centaurs and dragons, miracles and prodigies. And if we would explode any forgery in history, we cannot make use of a more convincing argument, than to prove, that the actions ascribed to any person are directly contrary to the course of nature, and that no human motives, in such circumstances, could ever induce him to such a conduct. The veracity of Quintus Curtius is as much to be suspected, when he describes the supernatural courage of Alexander, by which he was hurried on singly to attack multitudes, as when he describes his supernatural force and activity, by which he was able to resist them. So readily and universally do we acknowledge a uniformity in human motives and actions as well as in the operations of body. Hence likewise the benefit of that experience, acquired by long life and a variety of business and company, in order to instruct us in the principles of human nature, and regulate our future conduct, as well as speculation. By means of this guide, we mount up to the knowledge of men’s inclinations and motives, from their actions, expressions, and even gestures; and again descend to the interpretation of their actions from our knowledge of their motives and inclinations. The general observations treasured up by a course of experience, give us the clue of human nature, and teach us to unravel all its intricacies. Pretexts and appearances no longer deceive us. Public declarations pass for the…

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Excerpt #3, from Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde, by Oscar Wilde

…him; and he went up on to a mountain and sat down on a rock that was on the mountain, and his disciples stood round him, and the multitude knelt in the valley. And he bowed his head on his hands and wept, and said to his Soul, ‘Why is it that I am full of sorrow and fear, and that each of my disciples is an enemy that walks in the noonday?’ And his Soul answered him and said, ‘God filled thee with the perfect knowledge of Himself, and thou hast given this knowledge away to others. The pearl of great price thou hast divided, and the vesture without seam thou hast parted asunder. He who giveth away wisdom robbeth himself. He is as one who giveth his treasure to a robber. Is not God wiser than thou art? Who art thou to give away the secret that God hath told thee? I was rich once, and thou hast made me poor. Once I saw God, and now thou hast hidden Him from me.’ And he wept again, for he knew that his Soul spake truth to him, and that he had given to others the perfect knowledge of God, and that he was as one clinging to the skirts of God, and that his faith was leaving him by reason of the number of those who believed in him. And he said to himself, ‘I will talk no more about God. He who giveth away wisdom robbeth himself.’ And after the space of some hours his disciples came near him and bowed themselves to the ground and said, ’Master, talk to us about God, for…

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Excerpt #4, from Anne of Green Gables, by L. M. Montgomery

…CHAPTER XIV. Anne’s Confession ON the Monday evening before the picnic Marilla came down from her room with a troubled face. “Anne,” she said to that small personage, who was shelling peas by the spotless table and singing, “Nelly of the Hazel Dell” with a vigor and expression that did credit to Diana’s teaching, “did you see anything of my amethyst brooch? I thought I stuck it in my pincushion when I came home from church yesterday evening, but I can’t find it anywhere.” “I–I saw it this afternoon when you were away at the Aid Society,” said Anne, a little slowly. “I was passing your door when I saw it on the cushion, so I went in to look at it.” “Did you touch it?” said Marilla sternly. “Y-e-e-s,” admitted Anne, “I took it up and I pinned it on my breast just to see how it would look.” “You had no business to do anything of the sort. It’s very wrong in a little girl to meddle. You shouldn’t have gone into my room in the first place and you shouldn’t have touched a brooch that didn’t belong to you in the second. Where did you put it?” “Oh, I put it back on the bureau. I hadn’t it on a minute. Truly, I didn’t mean to meddle, Marilla. I didn’t think about its being wrong to go in and try on the brooch; but I see now that it was and I’ll never…

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Excerpt #5, from The Knights of the Round Table: Stories of King Arthur and the Holy Grail, by Frost

…they went to the cathedral together and they saw an old man kneeling at the altar. He was the same old man whom they had seen so many times before, who had been made to live so far beyond his time by the power of the Holy Grail, Joseph of Arimathæa. On the altar before him lay the spear with the drops of blood flowing from its point. The three knights knelt before the altar, Galahad nearer to it than the others, and they were there for a long time. Then the old man rose and came to the chest where the Grail was and took it out and held it up before them, and the light that shone from the blood that was in it, through the crystal of the cup, was greater and stronger than ever. The whole cathedral was bright with it. It streamed up among the arches of the roof and lighted old pictures that were painted there. For years before they had scarcely been seen, they were so dim with time and with dust and with the smoke of incense. Now, with the light of the Holy Grail upon it, the place was again a piece of Heaven, filled with wonderful forms. There was Elijah, in his chariot of fire; there were saints and angels; and all about them and among them there were little stars of gold, that glowed and twinkled in the new brightness like the stars of the real Heaven. The old man set the Grail upon the altar and came to Galahad and touched his hand and kissed him. Then all at once the church grew dark and…

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Excerpt #6, from The Swedish Fairy Book, by Klara Stroebe, George Hood, and Frederick Herman Martens

…The two foster-brethren now wandered out into the world. After they had gone a while, they came to a dark forest. And in this forest they met a man, strange-looking and very tall. He wore two swords at his side, and was accompanied by six great dogs. He gave them a friendly greeting: “Good-day, little fellows, whence do you come and whither do you go?” The boys told him they came from a high tower, and were going out into the world to seek their fortune. The man replied: “If such be the case, I know more about your origin than any one else. And that you may have something by which to remember your father, I will give each of you a sword and three dogs. But you must promise me one thing, that you will never part from your dogs; but take them with you wherever you go.” The boys thanked the man for his kind gifts, and promised to do as he had told them. Then they bade him farewell and went their way. When they had traveled for some time they reached a cross-road. Then Silverwhite said: “It seems to me that it would be the best for us to try our luck singly, so let us part.” Lillwacker answered: “Your advice is good; but how am I to know whether or not you are doing well out in the world?”…

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Excerpt #7, from Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, by Peter Mark Roget

…resumption, resumption; sanativeness^. recurrence &c (repetition) 104; rechauffe [Fr.], rifacimento [It]. cure, recure^, sanation^; healing &c v.; redintegration^; rectification; instauration^. repair, reparation, remanufacture; recruiting &c v.; cicatrization; disinfection; tinkering. reaction; redemption &c (deliverance) 672; restitution &c 790; relief &c 834. tinker, cobbler; vis medicatrix &c (remedy) 662 [Obs.]. curableness. V. return to the original state; recover, rally, revive; come come to, come round, come to oneself; pull through, weather the storm, be oneself again; get well, get round, get the better of, get over, get about; rise from one’s ashes, rise from the grave; survive &c (outlive) 110; resume, reappear; come to, come to life again; live again, rise again. heal, skin over, cicatrize; right itself. restore, put back, place in statu quo [Lat.]; reinstate, replace, reseat, rehabilitate, reestablish, reestate^, reinstall. reconstruct, rebuild, reorganize, reconstitute; reconvert; renew, renovate; regenerate; rejuvenate….

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Excerpt #8, from At the Earth’s Core, by Edgar Rice Burroughs

…for at best I could make but slow progress with my unfamiliar craft, which nosed stubbornly in every direction but that which I desired to follow, so that fully half my energy was expended in turning its blunt prow back into the course. I had covered some hundred yards from shore when it became evident that my pursuer must grasp the stern of the skiff within the next half-dozen strokes. In a frenzy of despair, I bent to the grandfather of all paddles in a hopeless effort to escape, and still the copper giant behind me gained and gained. His hand was reaching upward for the stern when I saw a sleek, sinuous body shoot from the depths below. The man saw it too, and the look of terror that overspread his face assured me that I need have no further concern as to him, for the fear of certain death was in his look. And then about him coiled the great, slimy folds of a hideous monster of that prehistoric deep–a mighty serpent of the sea, with fanged jaws, and darting forked tongue, with bulging eyes, and bony protuberances upon head and snout that formed short, stout horns. As I looked at that hopeless struggle my eyes met those of the doomed man, and I could have sworn that in his I saw an expression of hopeless appeal. But whether I did or not there swept through me a sudden compassion for the fellow. He was indeed a brother-man, and that he…

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Excerpt #9, from With Lawrence in Arabia, by Lowell Thomas

…the columns of which still remain one of the wonders of the world. Still unsatisfied, Allenby’s armored cars and Feisal’s racing camelmen under the dashing Arab general, Nuri Said, swept on north until they had driven the Turks out of Aleppo, one of the most important strategical points in the East, so far as the Great War was concerned. And then, if the Turks had not put down their arms, they would have been driven north into the Golden Horn. When Allenby and Lawrence captured Damascus and Aleppo and then cut the Berlin-to-Bagdad Railway, the dream of the kaiser and the Junkers for a Mitteleuropa reaching from the Baltic to the Persian Gulf vanished into thin air! When Turkey threw in her lot with the kaiser, she asserted that she could mobilize an army of over a million men. But of that million some fifty per cent were of Arab stock, and from the outbreak of the Arabian revolution to the final collapse of Turkey it is estimated that approximately four hundred thousand of them deserted! The phenomenal number of desertions was due mainly to two factors: the Arab Nationalist propaganda which Lawrence and his associates had spread throughout the Near East, and the brilliant success of the Arabian revolution. In fact, the desertions alone more than repaid the Allies for backing the Shereefian cause….

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Excerpt #10, from King’s Cutters and Smugglers 1700

…the further statement that “some of the commanders of the cruisers in the service of the Revenue endeavour to shun these ships, and thereby avoid attending them through their station.” On Christmas Eve of 1784 the Customs Commissioners sent word to all the ports saying that they suspected that there were a good many vessels and boats employed in smuggling which were thus liable to forfeiture. Therefore, within forty-eight hours from the receipt of this information sent by letter, a close and vigorous search was to be made by the most active and trusty officers at each port into every bay, river, creek, and inlet within the district of each port, as well as all along the coast, so as to discover and seize such illegal vessels and boats. And if there were any boats quartered within the neighbourhood of each port, timely notice of the day and hour of the intended search was to be sent by the Collector and Controller in confidence to the commanding officer only, that he might hold his soldiers in readiness. Yet, again the Board exhorted the Revenue officers "to exert yourselves to the utmost of your power … and as it is very probable that the places where such boats and vessels are kept may be known to the officers who have long resided at your port, you are to acquaint such officers that if they value their characters or employments, or have any regard to the solemn oath they took at…

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Excerpt #11, from Contemporary One

…the animate dream that you are– I must cease. SHE. Manikin! HE. And even were she so beautiful as thou, she couldn’t stay beautiful. SHE. Stay beautiful? HE. Humans change with each going moment. That is a gray-haired platitude. Just as I can see that creature only when she touches my vision, so I could only see her once, were she beautiful– at best, twice or thrice– you’re more precious than when you came! SHE. And you! HE. Human pathos penetrates still deeper when one determines their inner life, as we’ve pondered their outer. Their inner changes far more desperately. SHE. How so, wise Manikin? HE. They have what philosophy terms moods, and moods are more pervious to modulation…

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Excerpt #12, from Great Britain and the American Civil War, by Ephraim Douglass Adams

…342.) It was not until September, 1863, that Stoeckl ventured to hope for a Northern reconquest of the South. I am indebted to Dr. Frank A. Golder, of Stanford University, for the use of his notes and transcripts covering all of the Russian diplomatic correspondence with the United States, 1860-1865. In the occasional use made of this material the English translation is mine.] [Footnote 72: Stoeckl reported that at a dinner with Lyons, at which he, Mercier and Seward were the guests, Seward had asserted that if Civil War came all foreign commerce with the South would be interrupted. To this Lyons protested that England could not get along without cotton and that she would secure it in one way or another. Seward made no reply. (Ibid., March 25-April 9, 1861, No. 810.)] [Footnote 73: Economist, January 12, 1861.] [Footnote 74: Ibid., February 23, 1861.] [Footnote 75: London Press, March 23, 1861. Cited in Littell’s Living Age, Vol. LXIX, p. 438.] [Footnote 76: Before Adams’ selection as Minister to England was decided upon, Sumner’s Massachusetts friends were urging him for the place. Longfellow was active in this interest. H.W. Longfellow, by Samuel Longfellow, Vol. II, pp. 412-13.] [Footnote 77: John Bright later declared "his conviction that the…

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