Quick Excerpts, from a Library of 492 Titles

Generated 2022-07-28 13:26:23

Excerpt #1, from Why Men Fight: A method of abolishing the international duel, by Bertrand Russell

…Much of what is to be said against militarism in the State is also to be said against capitalism in the economic sphere. Economic organizations, in the pursuit of efficiency, grow larger and larger, and there is no possibility of reversing this process. The causes of their growth are technical, and large organizations must be accepted as an essential part of civilized society. But there is no reason why their government should be centralized and monarchical. The present economic system, by robbing most men of initiative, is one of the causes of the universal weariness which devitalizes urban and industrial populations, making them perpetually seek excitement, and leading them to welcome even the outbreak of war as a relief from the dreary monotony of their daily lives. If the vigor of the nation is to be preserved, if we are to retain any capacity for new ideas, if we are not to sink into a Chinese condition of stereotyped immobility, the monarchical organization of industry must be swept away. All large businesses must become democratic and federal in their government. The whole wage-earning system is an abomination, not only because of the social injustice which it causes and perpetuates, but also because it separates the man who does the work from the purpose for which the work is done. The whole of the controlling purpose is concentrated in the capitalist; the purpose of…

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Excerpt #2, from Seven O’Clock Stories, by Robert Gordon Anderson

…And it fell around that wicked tiger’s head and neck, just as he was finishing his dinner. Then the circus men came with big steel forks, and they ran at that tiger, and they tied him all up in that rope very tight, and put him back in the cage on the wagon, while he growled and growled and growled. So the parade started again and all of the people came out of their hiding-places, all but the fat men who hurried off home, as soon as they found their breath, and the old ladies who said they guessed they’d go to missionary meeting after all. A circus parade was too heathenish. Soon it was all over, and the rest of the people hurried off to the field with the big white tents. And what they saw there we will tell you tomorrow night. EIGHTEENTH NIGHT THE JOLLY CLOWN Marmaduke was lost. There was such a crowd around those tents! He wriggled between lots of pairs of legs, but nowhere could he find the Toyman’s. Near the door of the tent stood a man with a big black moustache, and a silk hat on his head. He was selling tickets. The Toyman went up to him. “Howdy,” said the Toyman. “Howdy, pardner,” replied he. "I’d like four tickets. Here is the money. One whole ticket and three half…

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Excerpt #3, from The White Company, by Arthur Conan Doyle

…his shoulder, and found a young page by his side. “The Lord Loring commands,” said the boy, “that you will follow me to the great chamber, and await him there.” “But my comrades?” “His commands were for you alone.” Alleyne followed the messenger to the east end of the courtyard, where a broad flight of steps led up to the doorway of the main hall, the outer wall of which is washed by the waters of the Avon. As designed at first, no dwelling had been allotted to the lord of the castle and his family but the dark and dismal basement story of the keep. A more civilized or more effeminate generation, however, had refused to be pent up in such a cellar, and the hall with its neighboring chambers had been added for their accommodation. Up the broad steps Alleyne went, still following his boyish guide, until at the folding oak doors the latter paused, and ushered him into the main hall of the castle. On entering the room the clerk looked round; but, seeing no one, he continued to stand, his cap in his hand, examining with the greatest interest a chamber which was so different to any to which he was accustomed. The days had gone by when a nobleman’s hall was but a barn-like, rush-strewn enclosure, the common lounge and eating-room of every inmate of the castle. The Crusaders had brought back with them…

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Excerpt #4, from A Smaller Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, by William Smith

…libertini to attend to the religions rites connected with the worship of the Lares, which that emperor was said to have put up in places where two or more ways met; but there are good reasons for thinking that they were instituted in imitation of the Augustales at Rome, and for the same object, namely, to attend to the worship of Augustus. They formed a collegium and were appointed by the decuriones, or senate of the municipia. The six principal members of the college were called Seviri, a title which seems to have been imitated from the Seviri in the equestrian order at Rome. AUGUSTUS, a name bestowed upon Octavianus in B.C. 27, by the senate and the Roman people. It was a word used in connection with religion, and designated a person as sacred and worthy of worship; hence the Greek writers translate it by Σεβαστός. It was adopted by all succeeding emperors, as if descended, either by birth or adoption, from the first emperor of the Roman world. The name of Augusta was frequently bestowed upon females of the imperial family; but Augustus belonged exclusively to the reigning emperor till towards the end of the second century of the Christian aera, when M. Aurelius and L. Verus both received this surname. From this time we frequently find two or even a greater number of Augusti. From the time of Probus the title became perpetuus Augustus, and from Philippus or…

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Excerpt #5, from Appletons’ Popular Science Monthly, March 1899, by Various

…the military establishment.[3] All the rest is expenditure that should no more be intrusted to the Government–that is, subject to the application of political instead of business methods–than the expenditure of a household, or a farm, or a cotton mill, or an iron foundry. Even if it were a legitimate expenditure of the Government, it could not be collected nor expended without injustice. Tax laws have never been and never will be framed that will not permit some one to escape his share of the burdens of the community; and the heavier those burdens are, as they are constantly becoming to an alarming degree, the more desperate will be the effort to shirk them–the more lightly will they rest upon the dishonest and unworthy, and the more heavily upon the honest and worthy. Moreover, it has never been possible, and it never will be possible, to expend money by political methods without either waste or fraud, and most usually without both. Such a volume of legislation and taxation permits of the easy detection of the vital difference between the theory and practice of politics. According to the text-books and professors, politics is the science of government. In countries like the United States, where popular institutions prevail, the purpose of its study is the discovery and the application of the methods that shall enable all citizens, rich and poor, to share alike in the inestimable privilege…

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Excerpt #6, from The History of the Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides

…ditch rise, so that they could scarcely breast it as they crossed. However, it was mainly the violence of the storm that enabled them to effect their escape at all. Starting from the ditch, the Plataeans went all together along the road leading to Thebes, keeping the chapel of the hero Androcrates upon their right; considering that the last road which the Peloponnesians would suspect them of having taken would be that towards their enemies’ country. Indeed they could see them pursuing with torches upon the Athens road towards Cithaeron and Druoskephalai or Oakheads. After going for rather more than half a mile upon the road to Thebes, the Plataeans turned off and took that leading to the mountain, to Erythrae and Hysiae, and reaching the hills, made good their escape to Athens, two hundred and twelve men in all; some of their number having turned back into the town before getting over the wall, and one archer having been taken prisoner at the outer ditch. Meanwhile the Peloponnesians gave up the pursuit and returned to their posts; and the Plataeans in the town, knowing nothing of what had passed, and informed by those who had turned back that not a man had escaped, sent out a herald as soon as it was day to make a truce for the recovery of the dead bodies, and then, learning the truth, desisted. In this way the Plataean party got over and were saved….

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Excerpt #7, from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, by Mark Twain

…smileless; there was not a face among all these half a hundred people but was cast down, and bore that set expression of hopelessness which is bred of long and hard trials and old acquaintance with despair. They were slaves. Chains led from their fettered feet and their manacled hands to a sole-leather belt about their waists; and all except the children were also linked together in a file six feet apart, by a single chain which led from collar to collar all down the line. They were on foot, and had tramped three hundred miles in eighteen days, upon the cheapest odds and ends of food, and stingy rations of that. They had slept in these chains every night, bundled together like swine. They had upon their bodies some poor rags, but they could not be said to be clothed. Their irons had chafed the skin from their ankles and made sores which were ulcerated and wormy. Their naked feet were torn, and none walked without a limp. Originally there had been a hundred of these unfortunates, but about half had been sold on the trip. The trader in charge of them rode a horse and carried a whip with a short handle and a long heavy lash divided into several knotted tails at the end. With this whip he cut the shoulders of any that tottered from weariness and pain, and straightened them up. He did not speak; the whip conveyed his…

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Excerpt #8, from Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, by Lewis Carroll

…my dear paws! oh my fur and whiskers! She’ll have me executed, as sure as ferrets are ferrets! Where can I have dropped them, I wonder?" Alice guessed in a moment that it was looking for the nosegay and the pair of white kid gloves, and she began hunting for them, but they were now nowhere to be seen–everything seemed to have changed since her swim in the pool, and her walk along the river-bank with its fringe of rushes and forget-me-nots, and the glass table and the little door had vanished. Soon the rabbit noticed Alice, as she stood looking curiously about her, and at once said in a quick angry tone, “why, Mary Ann! what are you doing out here? Go home this moment, and look on my dressing-table for my gloves and nosegay, and fetch them here, as quick as you can run, do you hear?” and Alice was so much frightened that she ran off at once, without saying a word, in the direction which the rabbit had pointed out. She soon found herself in front of a neat little house, on the door of which was a bright brass plate with the name W. RABBIT, ESQ. She went in, and hurried upstairs, for fear she should meet the real Mary Ann and be turned out of the house before she had found the gloves: she knew that one pair had been lost in the hall, “but of course,” thought Alice, "it has plenty more of them…

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Excerpt #9, from 13 Days: The Chronicle of an Escape from a German Prison, by John Alan Lyde Caunter

…did not bring one to light, so there was nothing for it but to get wet. However, Fox had a plan whereby two of us might be saved a wetting. He being the heaviest was to strip and stand in the middle of the stream while we crossed over, using his shoulders as a stepping-stone. When he got into the stream he found the bottom very muddy and the water came up to his chest. I was to try the ‘stunt’ first. All the food bags, etc., were carried across, and then Fox stood ready to do his part. Stepping well out from the bank and placing one foot on his shoulder I reached down until I could catch hold of his hands and waited for his signal. At the word, I sprang, he simultaneously throwing me, and before I had time to realise anything, I found myself rolling over and over on the other side. The timing had been perfect and I had landed completely dry. Blank was also got across successfully, and then the two of us pulled Fox out. But not without an effort, as one of his feet had got well embedded in the mud. He told us then that a large stone had prevented the other from getting similarly stuck. Rapid marching was the order after this episode, and we covered a great distance in an extraordinarily short space of time. We had omitted to fill our water-bottles at the last stream, and this…

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Excerpt #10, from The Fifth Ace, by Isabel Ostrander

…hiring others to do it for him." Gentleman Geoff’s fists clenched and he drew a deep breath. “That’s it!” he cried. “You’ve struck it, Mr. Thode! Unless I’m mistaken, he’s dealing the biggest, crookedest hand of his life right now, but we’ll get him, Sir. We’ll show him what fair play is below the border–” He broke off and for a minute the two men sat in silence, straining their ears. Above the click of glasses and sound of many voices in the gambling-rooms had come the sharp, staccato clatter of a horse’s hoofs upon the hard-packed road. It was not unusual in a land where hooch was cheap and stimulating and every drunken roysterer celebrated in the saddle, but there was an ominous, tragic suggestion in the irregularity of the hoof-beats as of an exhausted, failing beast urged on by grim and vital need. The young engineer leaped to his feet as the clatter ceased in a harsh scraping thud, and with Gentleman Geoff beside him, he crossed the patio and re-entered the gambling-room. The voices had hushed as if by magic, and every motionless figure was turned toward the entrance door. It was flung open and a man staggered blindly over the sill, reeling and clutching at his breast with both gnarled, sinewy hands….

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Excerpt #11, from Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War, by Frederick Arthur Ambrose Talbot

…The advantage of this delusion is obvious when a retreat is being made. It enables the enemy to withdraw his forces deliberately and in perfect order, and to assume another and stronger position comparatively at leisure. The difficulty of detecting the dummies is emphasised, inasmuch as now, whenever the sound of an aeroplane is heard, or a glimpse thereof is obtained, the men keep well down and out of sight. Not a sign of movement is observable. For all the airman may know to the contrary, the trenches may be completely empty, whereas, as a matter of fact, they are throbbing with alert infantry, anxious for a struggle with the enemy. This is one instance where the dirigible is superior to the aeroplane. The latter can only keep circling round and round over the suspicious position; the movement through the air interferes with close continuous observation. On the other hand, the dirigible can maintain a stationary position aloft for hours on end. Then the issue is resolved into a contest of patience, with the advantage to the airman. The soldiers in the trenches fret and fume under cover; confined concealment is irksome and is a supreme test of the nerves. Unless the soldiers are made of very stern stuff, physical endurance succumbs. Some rash act–apparently very trivial–may be committed; it suffices for the vigilant sentinel overhead. He detects the slender sign of life, forms his own…

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Excerpt #12, from The Sign of the Four, by Arthur Conan Doyle

…away together.” That was enough to decide me. If my own servant could not believe my innocence, how could I hope to make it good before twelve foolish tradesmen in a jury-box? Lal Chowdar and I disposed of the body that night, and within a few days the London papers were full of the mysterious disappearance of Captain Morstan. You will see from what I say that I can hardly be blamed in the matter. My fault lies in the fact that we concealed not only the body, but also the treasure, and that I have clung to Morstan’s share as well as to my own. I wish you, therefore, to make restitution. Put your ears down to my mouth. The treasure is hidden in—’ “At this instant a horrible change came over his expression; his eyes stared wildly, his jaw dropped, and he yelled, in a voice which I can never forget, ‘Keep him out! For Christ’s sake keep him out!’ We both stared round at the window behind us upon which his gaze was fixed. A face was looking in at us out of the darkness. We could see the whitening of the nose where it was pressed against the glass. It was a bearded, hairy face, with wild cruel eyes and an expression of concentrated malevolence. My brother and I rushed towards the window, but the man was gone. When we returned to my father his head had dropped and his pulse had ceased to beat. “We searched the garden that night, but found no sign of the intruder,…

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