Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:26:29

Excerpt #1, from Black Beauty, by Anna Sewell

…and that won’t suit me.” He spoke as if he was in a strong passion. He was a builder who had often been to the park on business. “And do you think,” said master sternly, “that treatment like this will make him fond of your will?” “He had no business to make that turn; his road was straight on!” said the man roughly. “You have often driven that pony up to my place,” said master; “it only shows the creature’s memory and intelligence; how did he know that you were not going there again? But that has little to do with it. I must say, Mr. Sawyer, that a more unmanly, brutal treatment of a little pony it was never my painful lot to witness, and by giving way to such passion you injure your own character as much, nay more, than you injure your horse; and remember, we shall all have to be judged according to our works, whether they be toward man or toward beast.” Master rode me home slowly, and I could tell by his voice how the thing had grieved him. He was just as free to speak to gentlemen of his own rank as to those below him; for another day, when we were out, we met a Captain Langley, a friend of our master’s; he was driving a splendid pair of grays in a kind of break. After a little conversation the captain said: “What do you think of my new team, Mr. Douglas? You know, you are the…

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Excerpt #2, 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 #3, from In the Sargasso Sea, by Thomas A. Janvier

…jug on the floor at my side. For a while I was almost comfortable. Then the fever came back, and the visions with it–but no longer so painful as those which had been begotten of my thirst. I seemed to be in a region dreamy and unreal. Sometimes I would see far stretches of mountain peaks, and sometimes the crowded streets of cities; but for the most part my visions were of the sea–tall ships sailing, and little boats drifting over calm water in moonlight, and black steamers gliding quickly past me; and still more frequently, but always in a calm sea, the broken hulks of wrecked ships with shattered masts and tangled rigging and with dead men lying about their decks, and sometimes with a dead man hanging across the wheel and moving a little with the hulk’s motion so that in a horrible sort of way he seemed to be half alive. Night came again, bringing me more pain and the burning of a stronger fever; and then another day, in which the fever rose still higher and the visions became almost intolerable–because of their intense reality, and of my conviction all the while that they were unreal and that I must be well on the way toward a raving madness in which I would die. It was at the end of this day–or it may have been at the end of still another day, for I have no clear reckoning of how the time…

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Excerpt #4, from Astounding Stories, May, 1931, by Various

…grew dimly bluish-green around the edge. It ceased to grow. Their ship, Harkness knew, was speeding beside it some hundreds of miles away. But they were within its gravitational pull, and were falling toward it. And he aimed his ship bow-on to make the forward blast a check upon their falling speed. The circle broadened; became a sphere; and then they were plunging through clouds more tenuous than any vapors of Earth–thick layers of gas that reflected no rays from the distant sun. Beside them a sinuous form showed where a serpent of space was trying to match their speed. Harkness saw it twisting convulsively in the stratum of gas; it was falling, lifeless, beside them as they sped on and away. Here was something the beasts could not combat. He made a mental note of the fact, but his thoughts flashed again to what lay ahead. Every eye was held close to the lookouts that faced forward. The three were breathless, wordless; the hand of Harkness that held the tiny ball was all that moved. Ahead of them was their goal, the Dark Moon! And they were prepared for Stygian darkness and a land of perpetual night. The almost invisible gas-clouds thinned; there was a glow ahead that grew brilliant as they watched; and then, with a blinding suddenness that…

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Excerpt #5, from Famous Adventures and Prison Escapes of the Civil War, by Basil Wilson Duke et al.

…A few more obstructions were dropped on the track, and our own speed increased so that we soon forged a considerable distance ahead. The side and end boards of the last car were torn into shreds, all available fuel was piled upon it, and blazing brands were brought back from the engine. By the time we approached a long, covered bridge a fire in the car was fairly started. We uncoupled it in the middle of the bridge, and with painful suspense waited the issue. Oh for a few minutes till the work of conflagration was fairly begun! There was still steam pressure enough in our boiler to carry us to the next wood-yard, where we could have replenished our fuel by force, if necessary, so as to run as near to Chattanooga as was deemed prudent. We did not know of the telegraph message which the pursuers had sent ahead. But, alas! the minutes were not given. Before the bridge was extensively fired the enemy was upon us, and we moved slowly onward, looking back to see what they would do next. We had not long to conjecture. The Confederates pushed right into the smoke, and drove the burning car before them to the next side-track. With no car left, and no fuel, the last scrap having thrown into the engine or upon the burning car, and with no obstruction to drop on the track, our situation was indeed desperate. A few minutes only remained until our steed of iron which had so well served us would be powerless. But it might still be possible to save ourselves. If we left the train…

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Excerpt #6, from Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post, by Thomas Rainey

…Great Britain, and see the gradual, unfaltering progress that she has made from year to year, since 1833; increasing the mail facilities and the sums paid for them by constant accretion based on system, rather than by any spasmodic legislation, or the ruling caprices of the moment. These improvements have not come all in a mass, or in any one year. Neither have they been abandoned at times of financial embarrassment, or commercial depression. At such periods they have been as regularly fostered as in the times of the most flush prosperity; and have ever been properly considered one of the prime agents and necessities for restoring commerce to its normal condition and a safe equilibrium. The transmarine service, which cost but £583,793, or $2,918,965, per annum until 1850,[G] now costs £1,062,797, or $5,333,985; within a fraction of double the sum. While the increase has not been slow, it has been steady and systematic, just as it was necessary to meet the wants of British commerce throughout the world. The language of the Hon. Senator Rusk on this subject, in his Report made to the Senate, Sep. 18th, 1850, found in Senate Ex. Doc. No. 50, 1st Session of 32d Congress, in Special Rep. Secretary of the Navy, 1852, is forcible and worthy of remembrance. He says: [G] See Second Report, Steam Communication with India, 1851. Appendix,…

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Excerpt #7, from Pygmalion, by Bernard Shaw

…PICKERING [much alarmed] Oh! but you’re coming back to Wimpole Street, aren’t you? You’ll forgive Higgins? HIGGINS [rising] Forgive! Will she, by George! Let her go. Let her find out how she can get on without us. She will relapse into the gutter in three weeks without me at her elbow. Doolittle appears at the centre window. With a look of dignified reproach at Higgins, he comes slowly and silently to his daughter, who, with her back to the window, is unconscious of his approach. PICKERING. He’s incorrigible, Eliza. You won’t relapse, will you? LIZA. No: Not now. Never again. I have learnt my lesson. I don’t believe I could utter one of the old sounds if I tried. [Doolittle touches her on her left shoulder. She drops her work, losing her self-possession utterly at the spectacle of her father’s splendor] A—a—a—a—a—ah—ow—ooh! HIGGINS [with a crow of triumph] Aha! Just so. A—a—a—a—ahowooh! A—a—a—a—ahowooh ! A—a—a—a—ahowooh! Victory! Victory! [He throws himself on the divan, folding his arms, and spraddling arrogantly]. DOOLITTLE. Can you blame the girl? Don’t look at me like that, Eliza. It ain’t my fault. I’ve come into money. LIZA. You must have touched a millionaire this time, dad. DOOLITTLE. I have. But I’m dressed something special today. I’m going…

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Excerpt #8, from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography, by Charlotte Brontë

…night—in the morning she is calmer.” I rose. “Stop!” exclaimed Mrs. Reed, “there is another thing I wished to say. He threatens me—he continually threatens me with his own death, or mine: and I dream sometimes that I see him laid out with a great wound in his throat, or with a swollen and blackened face. I am come to a strange pass: I have heavy troubles. What is to be done? How is the money to be had?” Bessie now endeavoured to persuade her to take a sedative draught: she succeeded with difficulty. Soon after, Mrs. Reed grew more composed, and sank into a dozing state. I then left her. More than ten days elapsed before I had again any conversation with her. She continued either delirious or lethargic; and the doctor forbade everything which could painfully excite her. Meantime, I got on as well as I could with Georgiana and Eliza. They were very cold, indeed, at first. Eliza would sit half the day sewing, reading, or writing, and scarcely utter a word either to me or her sister. Georgiana would chatter nonsense to her canary bird by the hour, and take no notice of me. But I was determined not to seem at a loss for occupation or amusement: I had brought my drawing materials with me, and they served me for both. Provided with a case of pencils, and some sheets of paper, I used to…

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Excerpt #9, from Astounding Stories, August, 1931, by Various

…winging away in fright, and the night and the forest echoed with the roar of a wrathful, impatient human voice. “You hear me, wherever you are! And hear this: I leave you now, but in ten minutes I have you! You little fool–you think you can get free? It is only by minutes you delay me!” Snarling a curse, the treacherous giant turned and crashed through the bush and took his huge form striding back towards the cabin. * * * * * Garth was thinking of many things as he scrambled back wearily from his refuge to the trail. He was cursing the unwanted publicity which prying reporters had given his work in Detroit, and which had led him to lease the lonely island and build a laboratory in the wilderness. Had it not been for that publicity, he would never have needed an assistant, and the vision of fame would never have come to delude Hagendorff and turn his thoughts towards murder. His position seemed a horrible delirium from which he must presently awake. Naked, dwarfed by each ordinary forest weed, unarmed, and trembling from the wind-sharpened night, he hardly knew which way to turn. His body was blotched with blood and mud, and under it the ragged gashes made by glass and bush stung painfully; he was hungry and stiff and tired and miserable. He remembered Hagendorff’s threat…

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Excerpt #10, from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll

…curious song about the whiting!” “Oh, as to the whiting,” said the Mock Turtle, “they—you’ve seen them, of course?” “Yes,” said Alice, “I’ve often seen them at dinn—” she checked herself hastily. “I don’t know where Dinn may be,” said the Mock Turtle, “but if you’ve seen them so often, of course you know what they’re like.” “I believe so,” Alice replied thoughtfully. “They have their tails in their mouths—and they’re all over crumbs.” “You’re wrong about the crumbs,” said the Mock Turtle: “crumbs would all wash off in the sea. But they have their tails in their mouths; and the reason is—” here the Mock Turtle yawned and shut his eyes.—“Tell her about the reason and all that,” he said to the Gryphon. “The reason is,” said the Gryphon, “that they would go with the lobsters to the dance. So they got thrown out to sea. So they had to fall a long way. So they got their tails fast in their mouths. So they couldn’t get them out again. That’s all.” “Thank you,” said Alice, “it’s very interesting. I never knew so much about a whiting before.” “I can tell you more than that, if you like,” said the Gryphon. “Do you know why it’s called a whiting?”…

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Excerpt #11, from A Tall Ship, by Bartimeus

…Indiarubber Man dreamily. We thought of them, but with the vision came one of cyclists of the grey-sweater variety, and motorists filling the air with petrol fumes and dust. There was the river: woodland paths skirting in the evening a world of silver and grey, across which bats sketched zigzag flights. Very nice in the dimpsey light, but stuffy in the daytime. So the moor had it in the end. We would trudge the moor from north to south, never seeing a soul, and, aided by map and compass, learn the peace of a day spent off the beaten tracks of man. We had been in the train some time before the Indiarubber Man made his electrifying discovery. “Where’s the map?” We eyed one another severely and searched our pockets. “We were looking at it before I went to get the tickets,” he pursued. “I gave it to you to fold up.” So he had. I left it on the station seat. At a wayside station bookstall we managed to unearth an alleged reproduction of the fair face of South Devon to replace the lost map. The Indiarubber Man traced the writhings of several caterpillars with his pipe-stem. “These are tors,” he explained generously. After this we studied the map in silence, vainly attempting to confirm our recollections of a course marked out the previous evening on an…

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Excerpt #12, from Middlemarch, by George Eliot

…vaults where he walked taper in hand. He did not confess to himself, still less could he have breathed to another, his surprise that though he had won a lovely and noble-hearted girl he had not won delight,—which he had also regarded as an object to be found by search. It is true that he knew all the classical passages implying the contrary; but knowing classical passages, we find, is a mode of motion, which explains why they leave so little extra force for their personal application. Poor Mr. Casaubon had imagined that his long studious bachelorhood had stored up for him a compound interest of enjoyment, and that large drafts on his affections would not fail to be honored; for we all of us, grave or light, get our thoughts entangled in metaphors, and act fatally on the strength of them. And now he was in danger of being saddened by the very conviction that his circumstances were unusually happy: there was nothing external by which he could account for a certain blankness of sensibility which came over him just when his expectant gladness should have been most lively, just when he exchanged the accustomed dulness of his Lowick library for his visits to the Grange. Here was a weary experience in which he was as utterly condemned to loneliness as in the despair which sometimes threatened him while toiling in the morass of authorship without seeming nearer to…

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