A BEAR boasted very much of his philanthropy, saying that of all animals he was the most tender in his regard for man, for he had such respect for him that he would not even touch his dead body. A Fox hearing these words said with a smile to the Bear, "Oh! that you would eat the dead and not the living."
The Swallow and the Crow
THE SWALLOW and the Crow had a contention about their plumage. The Crow put an end to the dispute by saying, "Your feathers are all very well in the spring, but mine protect me against the winter."
Fair weather friends are not worth much.
The Mountain in Labor
A MOUNTAIN was once greatly agitated. Loud groans and noises were heard, and crowds of people came from all parts to see what was the matter. While they were assembled in anxious expectation of some terrible calamity, out came a Mouse.
Don't make much ado about nothing.
The Ass, the Fox, and the Lion
THE ASS and the Fox, having entered into partnership together for their mutual protection, went out into the forest to hunt. They had not proceeded far when they met a Lion. The Fox, seeing imminent danger, approached the Lion and promised to contrive for him the capture of the Ass if the Lion would pledge his word not to harm the Fox. Then, upon assuring the Ass that he would not be injured, the Fox led him to a deep pit and arranged that he should fall into it. The Lion, seeing that the Ass was secured, immediately clutched the Fox, and attacked the Ass at his leisure.
The Tortoise and the Eagle
A TORTOISE, lazily basking in the sun, complained to the sea-birds of her hard fate, that no one would teach her to fly. An Eagle, hovering near, heard her lamentation and demanded what reward she would give him if he would take her aloft and float her in the air. "I will give you," she said, "all the riches of the Red Sea." "I will teach you to fly then," said the Eagle; and taking her up in his talons he carried her almost to the clouds suddenly he let her go, and she fell on a lofty mountain, dashing her shell to pieces. The Tortoise exclaimed in the moment of death: "I have deserved my present fate; for what had I to do with wings and clouds, who can with difficulty move about on the earth?'
If men had all they wished, they would be often ruined.
Library #2 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
`Here!' cried Alice, quite forgetting in the flurry of the moment how large she had grown in the last few minutes, and she jumped up in such a hurry that she tipped over the jury-box with the edge of her skirt, upsetting all the jurymen on to the heads of the crowd below, and there they lay sprawling about, reminding her very much of a globe of goldfish she had accidentally upset the week before.
`Oh, I beg your pardon!' she exclaimed in a tone of great dismay, and began picking them up again as quickly as she could, for the accident of the goldfish kept running in her head, and she had a vague sort of idea that they must be collected at once and put back into the jury-box, or they would die.
`The trial cannot proceed,' said the King in a very grave voice, `until all the jurymen are back in their proper places-- all,' he repeated with great emphasis, looking hard at Alice as he said do.
Alice looked at the jury-box, and saw that, in her haste, she had put the Lizard in head downwards, and the poor little thing was waving its tail about in a melancholy way, being quite unable to move. She soon got it out again, and put it right; `not that it signifies much,' she said to herself; `I should think it would be quite as much use in the trial one way up as the other.'
As soon as the jury had a little recovered from the shock of being upset, and their slates and pencils had been found and handed back to them, they set to work very diligently to write out a history of the accident, all except the Lizard, who seemed too much overcome to do anything but sit with its mouth open, gazing up into the roof of the court.
`What do you know about this business?' the King said to Alice.
`Nothing,' said Alice.
`Nothing whatever?' persisted the King.
`Nothing whatever,' said Alice.
`That's very important,' the King said, turning to the jury. They were just beginning to write this down on their slates, when the White Rabbit interrupted: `Unimportant, your Majesty means, of course,' he said in a very respectful tone, but frowning and making faces at him as he spoke.
`Unimportant, of course, I meant,' the King hastily said, and went on to himself in an undertone, `important--unimportant-- unimportant--important--' as if he were trying which word sounded best.
Some of the jury wrote it down `important,' and some `unimportant.' Alice could see this, as she was near enough to look over their slates; `but it doesn't matter a bit,' she thought to herself. At this moment the King, who had been for some time busily writing in his note-book, cackled out `Silence!' and read out from his book, `Rule Forty-two. All persons more than a mile high to leave the court.'
Everybody looked at Alice.
`I'm not a mile high,' said Alice.
Library #3 Beauty and the Beast
All the nobility, for fifty versts around, including Prince Paul and the chief families of Kostroma, were invited. Simon Petrovitch had been so carefully guarded that his work was actually completed and the parts distributed; his superintendence of the performance, however, was still a matter of doubt, as it was necessary to release him from the tower, and after several days of forced abstinence he always manifested a raging appetite. Prince Alexis, in spite of this doubt, had been assured by Boris that the dramatic part of the entertainment would not be a failure. When he questioned Sasha, the poet's strong-shouldered guard, the latter winked familiarly and answered with a proverb, - "I sit on the shore and wait for the wind,"--which was as much as to say that Sasha had little fear of the result. The tables were spread in the great hall, where places for one hundred chosen guests were arranged on the floor, while the three or four hundred of minor importance were provided for in the galleries above. By noon the whole party was assembled. The halls and passages of the castle were already permeated with rich and unctuous smells, and a delicate nose might have picked out and arranged, by their finer or coarser vapors, the dishes preparing for the upper and lower tables. One of the parasites of Prince Alexis, a dilapidated nobleman, officiated as Grand Marshal, - an office which more than compensated for the savage charity he received, for it was performed in continual fear and trembling. The Prince had felt the stick of the Great Peter upon his own back, and was ready enough to imitate any custom of the famous monarch. An orchestra, composed principally of horns and brass instruments, occupied a separate gallery at one end of the dining-hall. The guests were assembled in the adjoining apartments, according to their rank; and when the first loud blast of the instruments announced the beginning of the banquet, two very differently attired and freighted processions of servants made their appearance at the same time. Those intended for the princely table numbered two hundred,--two for each guest. They were the handsomest young men among the ten thousand serfs, clothed in loose white trousers and shirts of pink or lilac silk; their soft golden hair, parted in the middle, fell upon their shoulders, and a band of gold-thread about the brow prevented it from sweeping the dishes they carried. They entered the reception-room, bearing huge trays of sculptured silver, upon which were anchovies, the finest Finnish caviar, sliced oranges, cheese, and crystal flagons of Cognac, rum, and kummel. There were fewer servants for the remaining guests, who were gathered in a separate chamber, and regaled with the common black caviar, onions, bread, and vodka. At the second blast of trumpets, the two companies set themselves in motion and entered the dining-hall at opposite ends. Our business, however, is only with the principal personages, so we will allow the common crowd quietly to mount to the galleries and satisfy their senses with the coarser viands, while their imagination is stimulated by the sight of the splendor and luxury below.
Library #4 Black Beauty
While I was young I lived upon my mother's milk, as I could not eat grass. In the daytime I ran by her side, and at night I lay down close by her. When it was hot we used to stand by the pond in the shade of the trees, and when it was cold we had a nice warm shed near the grove.
As soon as I was old enough to eat grass my mother used to go out to work in the daytime, and come back in the evening.
There were six young colts in the meadow besides me; they were older than I was; some were nearly as large as grown-up horses. I used to run with them, and had great fun; we used to gallop all together round and round the field as hard as we could go. Sometimes we had rather rough play, for they would frequently bite and kick as well as gallop. One day, when there was a good deal of kicking, my mother whinnied to me to come to her, and then she said:
"I wish you to pay attention to what I am going to say to you. The colts who live here are very good colts, but they are cart-horse colts, and of course they have not learned manners. You have been well-bred and well-born; your father has a great name in these parts, and your grandfather won the cup two years at the Newmarket races; your grandmother had the sweetest temper of any horse I ever knew, and I think you have never seen me kick or bite. I hope you will grow up gentle and good, and never learn bad ways; do your work with a good will, lift your feet up well when you trot, and never bite or kick even in play." I have never forgotten my mother's advice; I knew she was a wise old horse, and our master thought a great deal of her. Her name was Duchess, but he often called her Pet.
Our master was a good, kind man. He gave us good food, good lodging, and kind words; he spoke as kindly to us as he did to his little children. We were all fond of him, and my mother loved him very much. When she saw him at the gate she would neigh with joy, and trot up to him. He would pat and stroke her and say, "Well, old Pet, and how is your little Darkie?" I was a dull black, so he called me Darkie; then he would give me a piece of bread, which was very good, and sometimes he brought a carrot for my mother. All the horses would come to him, but I think we were his favorites. My mother always took him to the town on a market day in a light gig.
Library #5 Gulliver's Travels
The frequent Labours I underwent every Day made in a few Weeks a very considerable change in my Health: The more my Master got by me, the more unsatiable he grew. I had quite lost my Stomach, and was almost reduced to a Skeleton. The Farmer observed it, and concluding I soon must dye, resolved to make as good a Hand of me as he could. While he was thus reasoning and resolving with himself, a Slardral, or Gentleman Usher came from Court, commanding my Master to carry me immediately thither for the Diversion of the Queen and her Ladies. Some of the latter had already been to see me, and reported strange Things of my Beauty, Behaviour, and good Sense. Her Majesty and those who attended her were beyond Measure delighted with my Demeanor. I fell on my Knees, and begged the Honour of kissing her Imperial foot; but this gracious Princess held out her little Finger towards me (after I was set on a Table) which I embraced in both my Arms, and put the tip of it, with the utmost respect, to my Lip. She made me some general Questions about my Country and my Travels, which I answer'd as distinctly and in as few Words as I could. She asked whether I would be content to live at Court. I bowed down to the board of the Table, and humbly answered, that I was my Master's Slave, but if I were at my own Disposal, I should be proud to devote my Life to her Majesty's Service. She then asked my Master whether he were willing to sell me at a good Price. He who apprehended I could not live a Month, was ready enough to part with me, and demanded a thousand pieces of Gold, which were ordered him on the spot, each piece being about the bigness of eight hundred Moydores; but, allowing for the proportion of all Things between that Country and Europe, and the high Price of Gold among them, was hardly so great a sum as a thousand Guineas would be in England. I then said to the Queen, since I was now her Majesty's most humble Creature and Vassal, I must beg the favour, that Glumdalclitch, who had always tended me with so much care and kindness, and understood to do it so well, might be admitted into her Service, and continue to be my Nurse and Instructor. Her Majesty agreed to my Petition, and easily got the Farmer's consent, who was glad enough to have his Daughter preferred at Court: and the poor Girl herself was not able to hide her Joy: My late Master withdrew, bidding me farewell, and saying he had left me in a good Service; to which I replied not a Word, only making him a slight bow.
Library #6 Little Women
`Jo! Jo! where are you?' cried Meg, at the foot of the garret stairs.
`Here!' answered a husky voice from above; and, running up, Meg found her sister eating apples and crying over the Heir of Redclyffe, wrapped up in a comforter on an old three-legged sofa by the sunny window. This was Jo's favourite refuge; and here she loved to retire with half a dozen russets and a nice book, to enjoy the quiet and the society of a pet rat who lived near by, and didn't mind her a particle. As Meg appeared, Scrabble whisked into his hole. Jo shook the tears off her cheeks, and waited to hear the news.
`Such fun! only see! a regular note of invitation from Mrs. Gardiner for tomorrow night!' cried Meg, waving the precious paper, and then proceeding to read it, with girlish delight.
`"Mrs. Gardiner would be happy to see Miss March and Miss Josephine at a little party on New Year's Eve." Marmee is willing we should go; now what shall we wear?'
`What's the use of asking that, when you know we shall wear our poplins because we haven't got anything else?' answered Jo, with her mouth full.
`If I only had a silk!' sighed Meg. `Mother says I may when I'm eighteen, perhaps; but two years is an everlasting time to wait.'
`I'm sure our pops look like silk, and they are nice enough for us. Yours is as good as new, but I forgot the burn and the tear in mine. Whatever shall I do? The burn shows badly and I can't take any out.'
`You must sit still all you can, and keep your back out of sight; the front is all right. I shall have a new ribbon for my hair, and Marmee will lend me her little pearl pin, and my new slippers are lovely, and my gloves will do, though they aren't as nice as I'd like.'
`Mine are spoilt with lemonade, and I can't get any new ones, so I shall have to go without,' said Jo, who never troubled herself much about dress.
`You must have gloves, or I won't go,' cried Meg decidedly, `gloves are more important than anything else. I should be so mortified if you didn't have them.'
`Then I'll stay where I am.'
`You can't ask Mother for new ones, they are so expensive, and you are so careless. She said, when you spoilt the others, that she shouldn't get you any more this winter. Can't you make them do?' asked Meg anxiously.
`I can hold them crumpled up in my hand, so no one will know how stained they are; that's all I can do. No, I'll tell you how we can manage-each wear one good one and carry a bad one; don't you see?'
`Your hands are bigger than mine, and you will stretch my glove dreadfully,' began Meg, whose gloves were a tender point with her.
Library #7 Merlin
"Gawaine, Gawaine, what look ye for to see, So far beyond the faint edge of the world? D'ye look to see the lady Vivian, Pursued by divers ominous vile demons That have another king more fierce than ours? Or think ye that if ye look far enough And hard enough into the feathery west Ye'll have a glimmer of the Grail itself? And if ye look for neither Grail nor lady, What look ye for to see, Gawaine, Gawaine?" So Dagonet, whom Arthur made a knight Because he loved him as he laughed at him, Intoned his idle presence on a day To Gawaine, who had thought himself alone, Had there been in him thought of anything Save what was murmured now in Camelot Of Merlin's hushed and all but unconfirmed Appearance out of Brittany. It was heard At first there was a ghost in Arthur's palace, But soon among the scullions and anon Among the knights a firmer credit held All tongues from uttering what all glances told--Though not for long. Gawaine, this afternoon, Fearing he might say more to Lancelot Of Merlin's rumor-laden resurrection Than Lancelot would have an ear to cherish, Had sauntered off with his imagination To Merlin's Rock, where now there was no Merlin To meditate upon a whispering town Below him in the silence.--Once he said To Gawaine: "You are young; and that being so, Behold the shining city of our dreams And of our King."--"Long live the King," said Gawaine.--"Long live the King," said Merlin after him; "Better for me that I shall not be King; Wherefore I say again, Long live the King, And add, God save him, also, and all kings--All kings and queens. I speak in general. Kings have I known that were but weary men With no stout appetite for more than peace That was not made for them. "--"Nor were they made For kings," Gawaine said, laughing.--"You are young, Gawaine, and you may one day hold the world Between your fingers, knowing not what it is That you are holding. Better for you and me, I think, that we shall not be kings." Gawaine, Remembering Merlin's words of long ago, Frowned as he thought, and having frowned again, He smiled and threw an acorn at a lizard: "There's more afoot and in the air to-day Than what is good for Camelot. Merlin May or may not know all, but he said well To say to me that he would not be King. Nor more would I be King. "Far down he gazed On Camelot, until he made of it A phantom town of many stillnesses, Not reared for men to dwell in, or for kings To reign in, without omens and obscure Familiars to bring terror to their days; For though a knight, and one as hard at arms As any, save the fate-begotten few That all acknowledged or in envy loathed, He felt a foreign sort of creeping up And down him, as of moist things in the dark,--When Dagonet, coming on him unawares, Presuming on his title of Sir Fool, Addressed him and crooned on till he was done: "What look ye for to see, Gawaine, Gawaine?"
Library #8 Myth's & Legends of the Sioux
THE FORGOTTEN EAR OF CORN An Arikara woman was once gathering corn from the field to store away for winter use. She passed from stalk to stalk, tearing off the ears and dropping them into her folded robe. When all was gathered she started to go, when she heard a faint voice, like a child's, weeping and calling: "Oh, do not leave me! Do not go away without me." The woman was astonished. "What child can that be?" she asked herself. "What babe can be lost in the cornfield?" She set down her robe in which she had tied up her corn, and went back to search; but she found nothing . As she started away she heard the voice again: "Oh, do not leave me. Do not go away without me." She searched for a long time. At last in one corner of the field, hidden under the leaves of the stalks, she found one little ear of corn. This it was that had been crying, and this is why all Indian women have since garnered their corn crop very carefully, so that the succulent food product should not even to the last small nubbin be neglected or wasted, and thus displease the Great Mystery. THE LITTLE MICE Once upon a time a prairie mouse busied herself all fall storing away a cache of beans. Every morning she was out early with her empty cast-off snake skin, which she filled with ground beans and dragged home with her teeth. The little mouse had a cousin who was fond of dancing and talk, but who did not like to work. She was not careful to get her cache of beans and the season was already well gone before she thought to bestir herself. When she came to realize her need, she found she had no packing bag . So she went to her hardworking cousin and said: "Cousin, I have no beans stored for winter and the season is nearly gone. But I have no snake skin to gather the beans in. Will you lend me one?" "But why have you no packing bag? Where were you in the moon when the snakes cast off their skins?" "I was here." "What were you doing?" "I was busy talking and dancing." "And now you are punished," said the other. "It is always so with lazy, careless people. But I will let you have the snake skin. And now go, and by hard work and industry, try to recover your wasted time."
Library #9 Pride & Prejudice
IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters. "My dear Mr. Bennet," said his lady to him one day, "have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last? "Mr. Bennet replied that he had not. "But it is," returned she; "for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it. "Mr. Bennet made no answer. "Do not you want to know who has taken it?" cried his wife impatiently." You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it. "This was invitation enough. "Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Netherfield is taken by a young man of large fortune from the north of England; that he came down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the place, and was so much delighted with it that he agreed with Mr. Morris immediately; that he is to take possession before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to be in the house by the end of next week." "What is his name?" "Bingley." " Is he married or single?" "Oh! single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!" "How so? how can it affect them?" "My dear Mr. Bennet," replied his wife, "how can you be so tiresome! You must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them." "Is that his design in settling here?" "Design! nonsense, how can you talk so! But it is very likely that he may fall in love with one of them, and therefore you must visit him as soon as he comes." "I see no occasion for that. You and the girls may go, or you may send them by themselves, which perhaps will be still better; for, as you are as handsome as any of them, Mr. Bingley might like you the best of the party." "My dear, you flatter me. I certainly have had my share of beauty, but I do not pretend to be any thing extraordinary now. When a woman has five grown up daughters, she ought to give over thinking of her own beauty." "In such cases, a woman has not often much beauty to think of." "But, my dear, you must indeed go and see Mr. Bingley when he comes into the neighbourhood." "It is more than I engage for, I assure you."
Library #10 Robinson Crusoe
I had two elder brothers, one of which was lieutenant-colonel to an English regiment of foot in Flanders, formerly commanded by the famous Colonel Lockhart, and was killed at the battle near Dunkirk against the Spaniards; what became of my second brother I never knew, any more than my father and mother did know what was become of me.
Being the third son of the family, and not bred to any trade, my head began to be filled very early with rambling thoughts. My father, who was very ancient, had given me a competent share of learning, as far as house-education and a country free school generally goes, and designed me for the law, but I would be satisfied with nothing but going to sea; and my inclination to this led me so strongly against the will, nay, the commands, of my father, and against all the entreaties and persuasions of my mother and other friends, that there seemed to be something fatal in that propension of nature tending directly to the life of misery which was to befall me.
My father, a wise and grave man, gave me serious and excellent counsel against what he foresaw was my design. He called me one morning into his chamber, where he was confined by the gout, and expostulated very warmly with me upon this subject. He asked me what reasons more than a mere wandering inclination I had for leaving my father's house and my native country, where I might be well introduced, and had a prospect of raising my fortunes by application and industry, with a life of ease and pleasure. He told me it was for men of desperate fortunes on one hand, or of aspiring, superior fortunes on the other, who went abroad upon adventures, to rise by enterprise, and make themselves famous in undertakings of a nature out of the common road; that these things were all either too far above me, or too far below me; that mine was the middle state, or what might be called the upper station of low life, which he had found by long experience was the best state in the world, the most suited to human happiness, not exposed to the miseries and hardships, the labor and sufferings, of the mechanic part of mankind, and not embarrassed with the pride, luxury, ambition, and envy of the upper part of mankind. He told me I might judge of the happiness of this state by one thing, viz., that this was the state of life which all other people envied; that kings have frequently lamented the miserable consequences of being born to great things, and wished they had been placed in the middle of the two extremes, between the mean and the great; that the wise man gave his testimony to this as the just standard of true felicity, when he prayed to have neither poverty nor riches.
Library #11 Tarzan of the Apes
As it was now quite light, the party, none of whom had eaten or slept since the previous morning, began to bestir themselves to prepare food.
The mutineers of the Arrow had landed a small supply of dried meats, canned soups and vegetables, crackers, flour, tea, and coffee for the five they had marooned, and these were hurriedly drawn upon to satisfy the craving of long-famished appetites.
The next task was to make the cabin habitable, and to this end it was decided to at once remove the gruesome relics of the tragedy which had taken place there on some bygone day.
Professor Porter and Mr. Philander were deeply interested in examining the skeletons. The two larger, they stated, had belonged to a male and female of one of the higher white races.
The smallest skeleton was given but passing attention, as its location, in the crib, left no doubt as to its having been the infant offspring of this unhappy couple.
As they were preparing the skeleton of the man for burial, Clayton discovered a massive ring which had evidently encircled the man's finger at the time of his death, for one of the slender bones of the hand still lay within the golden bauble.
Picking it up to examine it, Clayton gave a cry of astonishment, for the ring bore the crest of the house of Greystoke.
At the same time, Jane discovered the books in the cupboard, and on opening the fly-leaf of one of them saw the name, John Clayton, London. In a second book which she hurriedly examined was the single name, Greystoke.
"Why, Mr. Clayton," she cried, "what does this mean? Here are the names of some of your own people in these books."
"And here," he replied gravely, "is the great ring of the house of Greystoke which has been lost since my uncle, John Clayton, the former Lord Greystoke, disappeared, presumably lost at sea."
"But how do you account for these things being here, in this savage African jungle?" exclaimed the girl.
"There is but one way to account for it, Miss Porter," said Clayton. "The late Lord Greystoke was not drowned. He died here in this cabin and this poor thing upon the floor is all that is mortal of him."
"Then this must have been Lady Greystoke," said Jane reverently, indicating the poor mass of bones upon the bed.
"The beautiful Lady Alice," replied Clayton, "of whose many virtues and remarkable personal charms I often have heard my mother and father speak. Poor woman," he murmured sadly.
With deep reverence and solemnity the bodies of the late Lord and Lady Greystoke were buried beside their little African cabin, and between them was placed the tiny skeleton of the baby of Kala, the ape.
As Mr. Philander was placing the frail bones of the infant in a bit of sail cloth, he examined the skull minutely. Then he called Professor Porter to his side, and the two argued in low tones for several minutes.
Library #12 The Adventures of Pinocchio
Centuries ago there lived--
"A king!" my little readers will say immediately. No, children, you are mistaken. Once upon a time there was a piece of wood. It was not an expensive piece of wood. Far from it. Just a common block of firewood, one of those thick, solid logs that are put on the fire in winter to make cold rooms cozy and warm.
I do not know how this really happened, yet the fact remains that one fine day this piece of wood found itself in the shop of an old carpenter. His real name was Mastro Antonio, but everyone called him Mastro Cherry, for the tip of his nose was so round and red and shiny that it looked like a ripe cherry.
As soon as he saw that piece of wood, Mastro Cherry was filled with joy. Rubbing his hands together happily, he mumbled half to himself:
"This has come in the nick of time. I shall use it to make the leg of a table."
He grasped the hatchet quickly to peel off the bark and shape the wood. But as he was about to give it the first blow, he stood still with arm uplifted, for he had heard a wee, little voice say in a beseeching tone: "Please be careful! Do not hit me so hard!"
What a look of surprise shone on Mastro Cherry's face! His funny face became still funnier.
He turned frightened eyes about the room to find out where that wee, little voice had come from and he saw no one! He looked under the bench--no one! He peeped inside the closet--no one! He searched among the shavings -- no one! He opened the door to look up and down the street--and still no one!
"Oh, I see!" he then said, laughing and scratching his Wig. "It can easily be seen that I only thought I heard the tiny voice say the words! Well, well--to work once more." He struck a most solemn blow upon the piece of wood.
"Oh, oh! You hurt!" cried the same far-away little voice.
Mastro Cherry grew dumb, his eyes popped out of his head, his mouth opened wide, and his tongue hung down on his chin.
As soon as he regained the use of his senses, he said, trembling and stuttering from fright:
"Where did that voice come from, when there is no one around? Might it be that this piece of wood has learned to weep and cry like a child? I can hardly believe it. Here it is--a piece of common firewood, good only to burn in the stove, the same as any other. Yet--might someone be hidden in it? If so, the worse for him. I'll fix him!"
Library #13 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
After dinner all the gang turned out to hunt for turtle eggs on the bar. They went about poking sticks into the sand, and when they found a soft place they went down on their knees and dug with their hands. Sometimes they would take fifty or sixty eggs out of one hole. They were perfectly round white things a trifle smaller than an English walnut. They had a famous fried-egg feast that night, and another on Friday morning. After breakfast they went whooping and prancing out on the bar, and chased each other round and round, shedding clothes as they went, until they were naked, and then continued the frolic far away up the shoal water of the bar, against the stiff current, which latter tripped their legs from under them from time to time and greatly increased the fun. And now and then they stooped in a group and splashed water in each other's faces with their palms, gradually approaching each other, with averted faces to avoid the strangling sprays, and finally gripping and struggling till the best man ducked his neighbor, and then they all went under in a tangle of white legs and arms and came up blowing, sputtering, laughing, and gasping for breath at one and the same time. When they were well exhausted, they would run out and sprawl on the dry, hot sand, and lie there and cover themselves up with it, and by and by break for the water again and go through the original performance once more. Finally it occurred to them that their naked skin represented flesh-colored "tights" very fairly; so they drew a ring in the sand and had a circus -- with three clowns in it, for none would yield this proudest post to his neighbor. Next they got their marbles and played "knucks" and "ring-taw" and "keeps" till that amusement grew stale. Then Joe and Huck had another swim, but Tom would not venture, because he found that in kicking off his trousers he had kicked his string of rattlesnake rattles off his ankle, and he wondered how he had escaped cramp so long without the protection of this mysterious charm. He did not venture again until he had found it, and by that time the other boys were tired and ready to rest. They gradually wandered apart, dropped into the "dumps," and fell to gazing longingly across the wide river to where the village lay drowsing in the sun. Tom found himself writing "Becky" in the sand with his big toe; he scratched it out, and was angry with himself for his weakness. But he wrote it again, nevertheless; he could not help it. He erased it once more and then took himself out of temptation by driving the other boys together and joining them.
Library #14 The Arabian Nights
When they had drawn their two rings from their hands and given them to her, she said to them: "Of a truth this Ifrit bore me off on my bride night, and put me into a casket and set the casket in a coffer, and to the coffer he affixed seven strong padlocks of steel and deposited me on the deep bottom of the sea that raves, dashing and clashing with waves, and guarded me so that I might remain chaste and honest, quotha! that none save himself might have connection with me. But I have lain under as many of my kind as I please, and this wretched Jinni wotteth not that Destiny may not be averted nor hindered by aught, and that whatso woman willeth, the same she fulfilleth however man nilleth. Even so saith one of them:
"Rely not on women,
Trust not to their hearts,
Whose joys and whose sorrows
Are hung to their parts!
Lying love they will swear thee
Whence guile ne'er departs.
Take Yusuf for sample,
'Ware sleights and 'ware smarts!
Iblis ousted Adam
(See ye not?) thro' their arts."
Hearing these words, they marveled with exceeding marvel, and she went from them to the Ifrit, and taking up his head on her thigh as before, said to them softly, "Now wend your ways and bear yourselves beyond the bounds of his malice." So they fared forth saying either to other, "Allah! Allah!" and: "There be no Majesty and there be no Might save in Allah, the Glorious, the Great, and with Him we seek refuge from women's malice and sleight, for of a truth it hath no mate in might. Consider, O my brother, the ways of this marvelous lady with an Ifrit, who is so much more powerful than we are. Now since there hath happened to him a greater mishap than that which befell us and which should bear us abundant consolation, so return we to our countries and capitals, and let us decide never to intermarry with womankind, and presently we will show them what will be our action."
Thereupon they rode back to the tents of King Shahryar, which they reached on the morning of the third day. And having mustered the wazirs and emirs, the chamberlains and high officials, he gave a robe of honor to his Viceroy and issued orders for an immediate return to the city. There he sat him upon his throne and, sending for the Chief Minister, the father of the two damsels who (Inshallah!) will presently be mentioned, he said, "I command thee to take my wife and smite her to death, for she hath broken her plight and her faith."
So he carried her to the place of execution and did her die. Then King Shahryar took brand in hand and, repairing to the seraglio, slew all the concubines and their Mamelukes. He also sware himself by a binding oath that whatever wife he married he would abate her maidenhead at night and slay her next morning, to make sure of his honor. "For," said he, "there never was nor is there one chaste woman upon the face of earth."
Library #15 The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter
THE TALE OF PETER RABBIT Once upon a time there were four little Rabbits, and their names were-- Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail, and Peter. They lived with their Mother in a sand-bank, underneath the root of a very big fir-tree. "Now, my dears," said old Mrs. Rabbit one morning, "you may go into the fields or down the lane, but don't go into Mr. McGregor's garden: your Father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor." "Now run along, and don't get into mischief. I am going out." Then old Mrs. Rabbit took a basket and her umbrella, and went through the wood to the baker's. She bought a loaf of brown bread and five currant buns. Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail, who were good little bunnies, went down the lane to gather black berries; But Peter, who was very naughty, ran straight away to Mr. McGregor's garden, and squeezed under the gate! First he ate some lettuces and some French beans; and then he ate some radishes; And then, feeling rather sick, he went to look for some parsley. But round the end of a cucumber frame, whom should he meet but Mr. McGregor! Mr. McGregor was on his hand sand knees planting out young cabbages, but he jumped up and ran after Peter, waving a rake and calling out, "Stop thief." Peter was most dreadfully frightened; he rushed all over the garden, for he had forgotten the way back to the gate. He lost one of his shoes among the cabbages, and the other shoe amongst the potatoes. After losing them, he ran on four, legs and went faster, so that I think he might have got away altogether if he had not unfortunately run into a gooseberry net, and got caught by the large buttons on his jacket. It was a blue jacket with brass buttons, quite new. Peter gave himself up for lost, and shed big tears; but his sobs were overheard by some friendly sparrows, who flew to him in great excitement, and implored him to exert himself. Mr. McGregor came up with a sieve, which he intended to pop upon the top of Peter; but Peter wriggled out just in time, leaving his jacket behind him. And rushed into the tool shed, and jumped into a can. It would have been a beautiful thing to hide in, if it had not had so much water in it. Mr. McGregor was quite sure that Peter was somewhere in the tool shed, perhaps hidden underneath a flower-pot. He began to turn them over carefully, looking under each. Presently Peter sneezed--"Kertyschoo!" Mr. McGregor was after him in no time, And tried to put his foot upon Peter, who jumped out of a window, upsetting three plants. The window was too small for Mr. McGregor, and he was tired of running after Peter. He went back to his work.
Library #16 The Jungle Book
IT WAS seven o'clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day's rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in the tips. Mother Wolf lay with her big gray nose dropped across her four tumbling, squealing cubs, and the moon shone into the mouth of the cave where they all lived. "Augrh!" said Father Wolf, "it is time to hunt again"; and he was going to spring downhill when a little shadow with a bushy tail crossed the threshold and whined: "Good luck go with you, O Chief of the Wolves; and good luck and strong white teeth go with the noble children, that they may never forget the hungry in this world." It was the jackal -- Tabaqui, the Dish-licker -- and the wolves of India despise Tabaqui because he runs about making mischief, and telling tales, and eating rags and pieces of leather from the village rubbish-heaps. They are afraid of him too, because Tabaqui, more than any one else in the jungle, is apt to go mad, and then he forgets that he was ever afraid of any one, and runs through the forest biting everything in his way. Even the tiger hides when little Tabaqui goes mad, for madness is the most disgraceful thing that can overtake a wild creature. We call it hydrophobia, but they call it dewanee --the madness -- and run. "Enter, then, and look," said Father Wolf, stiffly; "but there is no food here." "For a wolf, no," said Tabaqui; "but for so mean a personas myself a dry bone is a good feast. Who are we, the Gidur-log [the Jackal People], to pick and choose?" He scuttled to the back of the cave, where he found the bone of a buck with some meat on it, and sat cracking the end merrily. "All thanks for this good meal," he said, licking his lips." How beautiful are the noble children! How large are their eyes! And so young too! Indeed, indeed, I might have remembered that the children of kings are men from the beginning." Now, Tabaqui knew as well as any one else that there is nothing so unlucky as to compliment children to their faces; and it pleased him to see other and Father Wolf look uncomfortable. Tabaqui sat still, rejoicing in the mischief that he had made, and then he said spitefully: "Shere Khan, the Big One, has shifted his hunting-grounds. He will hunt among these hills during the next moon, so he has told me." Shere Khan was the tiger who lived near the Waingunga River, twenty miles away. "He has no right!" Father Wolf began angrily. "By the Law of the Jungle he has no right to change his quarters without fair warning. He will frighten every head of game within ten miles; and I -- I have to kill for two, these days."
Library #17 The Quest of Merlin
Interior of a cavern in the bowels of the earth, beneath Mount Hecla. Huge rock-fragments, amid which twists tortuously a great root of the tree Yggdrasil. A flickering flame, by the light of which are seen the NORNS, colossal but shadowy shapes, about a gigantic but indistinct Loom. Dull, heavy sounds, out of which arises a strange music, which resolves itself continually into imperfect harmonies, which leave the heart in unrest. A sense of striving and struggle beats through the music.
THE NORNS. We are the Recorders!
We are the Finishers!
Nothing we initiate;
All things we fulfil.
Odin initiates
And Freyja and Loki,
Divine Balder and the other Immortals.
Whatsoever they begin,
Relentlessly we fulfil.
Ye, too, O men, are as gods;
Ye are free and the free create;
Ye have part in the Imperishable.
Ever as ye follow the Beautiful,
Shall the worm transfigure itself
And the new-born god appear.
But over your destinies we sit in doom;
Whatsoever ye begin,
Relentlessly we fulfil.
Think and we seize the thought;
Act and the deed once done
Sinks into our iron hands.
Only the unthought thought, O man,
Is thine own and the deed forborne.
Thou canst neither love nor doubt
But the doubt and the love alike
Pass into the infrangible weft of the world
That we weave with inexorable fingers.
We are the Queens of Time,
And, while Time is, we endure.
With the calm of the Empyrean
We mix not, neither dwell we therein;
But over the shifting
Our shuttles are inflexible.
God having given us Time,
Over Time we are greater than God.
We are the Finishers.
[A low, foreboding roll of thunder.--MERLIN appears on a jutting crag in the cave, with a forked wand in his hand.--The flame flashes into sudden brilliancy, sharply defining the rocky walls of the cavern, but at once sinks back into its former weak and flickering indistinctness.--The NORNS remain motionless, noting none of these things, nor do they actually perceive MERLIN at any time.]
MERLIN. Hail!
Ye monstrous Glooms!
Formless Forms!
Known and Unknown!
To what avail
Through strifes and storms,
Athwart the Sea that bellows and booms
In the ear
With the threatening of dire dooms,
Strove I once alone
In the starless vast of the night of fear,
Dread Queens, to behold your throne?
Lo, all that passes
From your touch takes shape,
Yet in you I find not any shape at all.
Dimly the dusk glasses
To the view
Shadows that fall
Into the Void; the Verities escape.
Without you seeing is not nor thought,
But you--
Woe! I discern you not.
URD. Sisters, how should a man's eyes see the Void?
VERDANDE. Shadows of clouds he scans on a searchless sea.
SKULD. Between two Deeps a film of mist that shifts!
MERLIN. Shadowy ones!
Ye whom my eyes have seemed to see
Many times in the weary years!
Deeper and darker the riddle appears;
Muddier the river runs.
What are ye, Darknesses? Whence have ye risen?
Are ye or seem ye? What is it to seem or to be?
With the same awe I re-behold you
As when I first clave o'er the unroadwayed sea
And through the cavernous darks of Hecla's womb
The way to Odin's tomb--
To your earth-bound prison.
Library #18 The Red Badge of Courage
A sputtering of musketry was always to be heard. Later, the cannon had entered the dispute. In the fog-filled air their voices made a thudding sound. The reverberations were continual. This part of the world led a strange, battleful existence.
The youth's regiment was marched to relieve a command that had lain long in some damp trenches. The men took positions behind a curving line of rifle pits that had been turned up, like a large furrow, along the line of woods. Before them was a level stretch, peopled with short, deformed stumps. From the woods beyond came the dull popping of the skirmishers and pickets, firing in the fog. From the right came the noise of a terrific fracas.
The men cuddled behind the small embankment and sat in easy attitudes awaiting their turn. Many had their backs to the firing. The youth's friend lay down, buried his face in his arms, and almost instantly, it seemed, he was in a deep sleep.
The youth leaned his breast against the brown dirt and peered over at the woods and up and down the line. Curtains of trees interfered with his ways of vision. He could see the low line of trenches but for a short distance. A few idle flags were perched on the dirt hills. Behind them were rows of dark bodies with a few heads sticking curiously over the top.
Always the noise of skirmishers came from the woods on the front and left, and the din on the right had grown to frightful proportions. The guns were roaring without an instant's pause for breath. It seemed that the cannon had come from all parts and were engaged in a stupendous wrangle. It became impossible to make a sentence heard.
The youth wished to launch a joke--a quotation from newspapers. He desired to say, "All quiet on the Rappahannock," but the guns refused to permit even a comment upon their uproar. He never successfully concluded the sentence. But at last the guns stopped, and among the men in the rifle pits rumors again flew, like birds, but they were now for the most part black creatures who flapped their wings drearily near to the ground and refused to rise on any wings of hope. The men's faces grew doleful from the interpreting of omens. Tales of hesitation and uncertainty on the part of those high in place and responsibility came to their ears. Stories of disaster were borne into their minds with many proofs. This din of musketry on the right, growing like a released genie of sound, expressed and emphasized the army's plight.
The men were disheartened and began to mutter. They made gestures expressive of the sentence: "Ah, what more can we do?" And it could always be seen that they were bewildered by the alleged news and could not fully comprehend a defeat.
Library #19 The story of Doctor Dolittle
ONCE upon a time, many years ago when our grandfathers were little children--there was a doctor; and his name was Dolittle--John Dolittle, M.D. "M.D." means that he was a proper doctor and knew a whole lot. He lived in a little town called, Puddle by-on-the-Marsh. All the folks, young and old, knew him well by sight. And whenever he walked down the street in his high hat everyone would say, "There goes the Doctor!--He's a clever man." And the dogs and the children would all run up and follow behind him; and even the crows that lived in the church-tower would caw and nod their heads. The house he lived in, on the edge of the town, was quite small; but his garden was very large and had a wide lawn and stone seats and weeping-willows hanging over. His sister, Sarah Dolittle, was housekeeper for him; but the Doctor looked after the garden himself. He was very fond of animals and kept many kinds of pets. Besides the gold-fish in the pond at the bottom of his garden, he had rabbits in the pantry, white mice in his piano, a squirrel in the linen closet and a hedgehog in the cellar. He had a cow with a calf too, and an old lame horse-twenty-five years of age--and chickens, and pigeons, and two lambs, and many other animals. But his favorite pets were Dab-Dab the duck, Jip the dog, Gub-Gub the baby pig, Polynesia the parrot, and the owl Too-Too. His sister used to grumble about all these animals and said they made the house untidy. And one day when an old lady with rheumatism came to see the Doctor, she sat on the hedge hog who was sleeping on the sofa and never came to see him any more, but drove every Saturday all the way to Oxenthorpe, another town ten miles off, to see a different doctor. Then his sister, Sarah Dolittle, came to him and said, "John, how can you expect sick people to come and see you when you keep all these animals in the house? It's a fine doctor would have his parlor full of hedgehogs and mice! That's the fourth personage these animals have driven away. Squire Jenkins and the Parson say they wouldn't come near your house again--no matter how sick they are. We are getting poorer every day. If you go on like this, none of the best people will have you for a doctor." "But I like the animals better than the `best people'," said the Doctor. "You are ridiculous," said his sister, and walked out of the room. So, as time went on, the Doctor got more and more animals; and the people who came to see him got less and less. Till at last he had no one left--except the Cat's-meat-Man, who didn't mind any kind of animals. But the Cat's-meat Man wasn't very rich and he only got sick once a year--at Christmas-time, when he used to give the Doctor sixpence for a bottle of medicine.
Library #20 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
She was awakened by a shock, so sudden and severe that if Dorothy had not been lying on the soft bed she might have been hurt. As it was, the jar made her catch her breath and wonder what had happened; and Toto put his cold little nose into her face and whined dismally. Dorothy sat up and noticed that the house was not moving; nor was it dark, for the bright sunshine came in at the window, flooding the little room. She sprang from her bed and with Toto at her heels ran and opened the door.
The little girl gave a cry of amazement and looked about her, her eyes growing bigger and bigger at the wonderful sights she saw.
The cyclone had set the house down very gently--for a cyclone--in the midst of a country of marvelous beauty. There were lovely patches of greensward all about, with stately trees bearing rich and luscious fruits. Banks of gorgeous flowers were on every hand, and birds with rare and brilliant plumage sang and fluttered in the trees and bushes. A little way off was a small brook, rushing and sparkling along between green banks, and murmuring in a voice very grateful to a little girl who had lived so long on the dry, gray prairies.
While she stood looking eagerly at the strange and beautiful sights, she noticed coming toward her a group of the queerest people she had ever seen. They were not as big as the grown folk she had always been used to; but neither were they very small. In fact, they seemed about as tall as Dorothy, who was a well-grown child for her age, although they were, so far as looks go, many years older.
Three were men and one a woman, and all were oddly dressed. They wore round hats that rose to a small point a foot above their heads, with little bells around the brims that tinkled sweetly as they moved. The hats of the men were blue; the little woman's hat was white, and she wore a white gown that hung in pleats from her shoulders. Over it were sprinkled little stars that glistened in the sun like diamonds. The men were dressed in blue, of the same shade as their hats, and wore well-polished boots with a deep roll of blue at the tops. The men, Dorothy thought, were about as old as Uncle Henry, for two of them had beards. But the little woman was doubtless much older. Her face was covered with wrinkles, her hair was nearly white, and she walked rather stiffly.
When these people drew near the house where Dorothy was standing in the doorway, they paused and whispered among themselves, as if afraid to come farther. But the little old woman walked up to Dorothy, made a low bow and said, in a sweet voice:
"You are welcome, most noble Sorceress, to the land of the Munchkins. We are so grateful to you for having killed the Wicked Witch of the East, and for setting our people free from bondage."
Library #21 Treasure Island
SQUIRE TRELAWNEY, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure no tyet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17 and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof. I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow--a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulder of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white. I remember him looking round the cover and whistling to himself as he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang so often afterwards: "Fifteen men on the dead man's chest - Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!" in the high, old tottering voice that seemed to have been tuned and broken at the capstan bars. Then he rapped on the door with a bit of stick like a hand spike that he carried, and when my father appeared, called roughly for a glass of rum. This, when it was brought to him, he drank slowly, like a connoisseur, lingering on the taste and still looking about him at the cliffs and up at our signboard. "This is a handy cove," says he at length; "and a pleasant sit tyated grog-shop. Much company, mate?" My father told him no, very little company, the more was the pity. "Well, then," said he, "this is the berth for me. Here you, matey," he cried to the man who trundled the barrow; "bring up alongside and help up my chest. I'll stay here a bit," he continued. "I'm a plain man; rum and bacon and eggs is what I want, and that head up there for to watch ships off. What you mought call me? You mought call me captain. Oh, I see what you're at--there"; and he threw down three or four gold pieces on the threshold. "You can tell me when I've worked through that," says he, looking as fierce as a commander. And indeed bad as his clothes were and coarsely as he spoke, he had none of the appearance of a man who sailed before the mast, but seemed like a mate or skipper accustomed to be obeyed or to strike. The man who came with the barrow told us the mail had set him down the morning before at the Royal George, that he had inquired what inns there were along the coast, and hearing ours well spoken of, I suppose, and described as lonely, had chosen it from the others for his place of residence. And that was all we could learn of our guest.
Library #22 The Confessions of Nat Turner
Nat Turner
Sir,-You have asked me to give a history of the motives which induced me to undertake the late insurrection, as you call it - To do so I must go back to the days of my infancy, and even before I was born. I was thirty-one years of age the 2d of October last, and born the property of Benj. Turner, of this county. In my childhood a circumstance occurred which made an indelible impression on my mind, and laid the ground work of that enthusiasm, which has terminated so fatally to many both white and black, and for which I am about to atone at the gallows. It is here, necessary to relate this circumstance - trifling as it may seem, it was the commencement of that belief which has grown with time, and even now, sir, in this dungeon, helpless and forsaken as I am, I cannot divest myself of. Being at play with other children, when three or four years old, I was telling them something, which my mother overhearing, said it had happened before I was born - I stuck to my story, however, and related some things which went in her opinion to confirm it - others being called on were greatly astonished, knowing that these things had happened, and caused them to say in my hearing, I surely would be a prophet, as the Lord had shown me things that had happened before my birth. And my father and mother strengthened me in this my first impression, saying in my presence, I was intended for some great purpose, which they had always thought from certain marks on my head and breast-[a pracel of excrescences which I believe are not at all uncommon, particularly among negroes, as I have seen several with the same. In this case he has either cut them off, or they have nearly disappeared] - My grand mother, who was very religious, and to whom I was much attached - my master, who belonged to the church, and other religious persons who visited the house, and whom I often saw at prayers, noticing the singularity of my manners, I suppose, and my uncommon intelligence for a child, remarked I had too much sense to be raised - and if I was, I would never be of any service to any one - as a slave - To a mind like mine, restless, inquisitive and observant of every thing that was passing, it is easy to suppose that religion was the subject to which it would be directed, and although this subject principally occupied my thoughts, there was nothing that I saw or heard of to which my attention was not directed - The manner in which I learned to read and write, not only had great influence on my own mind, as I acquired it with the most perfect ease, so much so, that I have no recollection whatever of learning the alphabet - but to the astonishment of the family, one day, when a book was shewn me to keep me from crying, I began spelling the names of different objects - this was a source of wonder to all in the neighborhood, particularly the blacks - and this learning was constantly improved at all opportunities - when I got large enough to go to work, while employed, I was reflecting on many things that would present themselves to my imagination, and whenever an opportunity occurred of looking at a book, when the school children were getting their lessons, I would find many things that the fertility of my own imagination had depicted to me before; all my time, not devoted to my master's service, was spent either in prayer, or in making experiments in casting different things in moulds made of earth, in attempting to make paper, gunpowder, and many other experiments, that although I could not perfect, yet convinced me of its practicability if I had the means.
Library #23 The Great Learning
by Confucious
In the Announcement to K'ang, it is said, "He was able to make his virtue illustrious." In the Tai Chia, it is said, "He contemplated and studied the illustrious decrees of Heaven." In the Canon of the emperor (Yao), it is said, "He was able to make illustrious his lofty virtue." These passages all show how those sovereigns made themselves illustrious. On the bathing tub of T'ang, the following words were engraved: "If you can one day renovate yourself, do so from day to day. Yea, let there be daily renovation." In the Announcement to K'ang, it is said, "To stir up the new people." In the Book of Poetry, it is said, "Although Chau was an ancient state the ordinance which lighted on it was new." Therefore, the superior man in everything uses his utmost endeavors. In the Book of Poetry, it is said, "The royal domain of a thousand li is where the people rest." In the Book of Poetry, it is said, "The twittering yellow bird rests on a corner of the mound." The Master said, "When it rests, it knows where to rest. Is it possible that a man should not be equal to this bird?" In the Book of Poetry, it is said, "Profound was King Wan. With how bright and unceasing a feeling of reverence did he regard his resting places!" As a sovereign, he rested in benevolence. As a minister, he rested in reverence. As a son, he rested in filial piety. As a father, he rested in kindness. In communication with his subjects, he rested in good faith. In the Book of Poetry, it is said, "Look at that winding course of the Ch'i, with the green bamboos so luxuriant! Here is our elegant and accomplished prince! As we cut and then file; as we chisel and then grind: so has he cultivated himself. How grave is he and dignified! How majestic and distinguished! Our elegant and accomplished prince never can be forgotten." That expression-"As we cut and then file," the work of learning. "As we chisel and then grind," indicates that of self-culture. "How grave is he and dignified!" indicates the feeling of cautious reverence. "How commanding and distinguished!" indicates an awe-inspiring deportment. "Our elegant and accomplished prince never can be forgotten," indicates how, when virtue is complete and excellence extreme, the people cannot forget them. In the Book of Poetry, it is said, "Ah! the former kings are not forgotten." Future princes deem worthy what they deemed worthy, and love what they loved. The common people delight in what delighted them, and are benefited by their beneficial arrangements. It is on this account that the former kings, after they have quitted the world, are not forgotten. The Master said, "In hearing litigations, I am like any other body. What is necessary is to cause the people to have no litigations." So, those who are devoid of principle find it impossible to carry out their speeches, and a great awe would be struck into men's minds; - this is called knowing the root. This is called the perfecting of knowledge.
Library #24 The Scarlett Letter
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The eloquent voice, on which the souls of the listening audience had been borne aloft, as on the swelling waves of the sea, at length came to a pause. There was a momentary silence, profound as what should follow the utterance of oracles. Then ensued a murmur and half-hushed tumult, as if the auditors, released from the high spell that had transported them into the region of another's mind, were returning into themselves, with all their awe and wonder still heavy on them. In a moment more, the crowd began to gush forth from the doors of the church. Now that there was an end, they needed other breath, more fit to support the gross and earthly life into which they relapsed, than that atmosphere which the preacher had converted into words of flame, and had burdened with the rich fragrance of his thought.
In the open air their rapture broke into speech. The street and the market-place absolutely babbled, from side to side, with applauses of the minister. His hearers could not rest until they had told one another of what each knew better than he could tell or hear. According to their united testimony, never had man spoken in so wise, so high, and so holy a spirit, as he that spake this day; nor had inspiration ever breathed through mortal lips more evidently than it did through his. Its influence could be seen, as it were, descending upon him, and possessing him, and continually lifting him out of the written discourse that lay before him, and filling him with ideas that must have been as marvellous to himself as to his audience. His subject, it appeared, had been the relation between the Deity and the communities of mankind, with a special reference to the New England which they were here planting in the wilderness. And, as he drew towards the close, a spirit as of prophecy had come upon him, constraining him to its purpose as mightily as the old prophets of Israel were constrained; only with this difference, that, whereas the Jewish seers had denounced judgments and ruin on their country, it was his mission to foretell a high and glorious destiny for the newly gathered people of the Lord. But, throughout it all, and through the whole discourse, there had been a certain deep, sad undertone of pathos, which could not be interpreted otherwise than as the natural regret of one soon to pass away. Yes; their minister whom they so loved-and who so loved them all, that he could not depart heavenward without a sigh--had the foreboding of untimely death upon him, and would soon leave them in their tears! This idea of his transitory stay on earth gave the last emphasis to the effect which the preacher had produced; it was if an angel, in his passage to the skies, had shaken his bright wings over the people for an instant,--at once a shadow and a splendor,--and had shed down a shower of golden truths upon them.
Library #25 Another View of Stalin
by Ludo Martens
Hence, the day after the October Revolution, the `socialists' had already called for the perpetration of imperialist war and they were already accusing the Bolsheviks of provoking civil war and bringing violence and slavery!
Immediately, the bourgeois forces, the old Tsarist forces, in fact all the reactionary forces, sought to regroup and reorganize under the `socialist' vanguard. As early as 1918, anti-Bolshevik insurrections took place. Early in 1918, Plekhanov, an eminent leader of the Menshevik party, formed, along with Socialist Revolutionaries and Popular Socialists, as well as with the chiefs of the bourgeois Cadet (Constitutional Democrats) party, the `Union for the Resurrection of Russia'. `They believed,' wrote Kerensky, `that a national government had to be created on democratic principles in the broadest possible sense, and that the front against Germany had to be restored in cooperation with Russia's western Allies'.
On June 20, 1918, Kerensky showed up in London, representing this Union, to negotiate with the Allies. He announced to the Prime Minister, Lloyd George:
`It was the aim of the government now being formed ... to continue the war alongside the Allies, to free Russia from Bolshevik tyranny, and to restore a democratic system.'
Hence, more than seventy years ago, the bloodthirsty and reactionary bourgeoisie was already using the word `democracy' to cover up its barbaric domination.
In the name of the Union, Kerensky asked for an Allied `intervention' in Russia. Soon after, a Directorate was set up in Siberia, consisting of Socialist Revolutionaries, Popular Socialists, the Cadet bourgeois party and the Tsarist generals Alekseyev and Boldyrev. The British and French governments almost recognized it as the legal government before deciding to play the card of Tsarist general Kolchak.
Hence the forces that had defended Tsarist reaction and the bourgeoisie during the civil war in Russia were all regrouped: the Tsarist forces, all of the bourgeoisie's forces, from the Cadets to the socialists, along with the invading foreign troops.
Sidney and Beatrice Webb wrote:
`In 1918 the authority of the Soviet Government was far from being firmly established. Even in Petrograd and Moscow, there was the very smallest security of life and property .... The deliberate and long-continued blockade maintained by the British fleet, and supported by the other hostile governments, kept out alike food and clothing, and the sorely needed medicines and anaesthetics .... Presently came the armies of the governments of Great Britain, France, Japan, Italy and the United States, without any declaration of war, actually invading, at half a dozen points from Vladivostok and Batoum to Murmansk and Archangel, the territory of what had never ceased to be technically a ``friendly power''. The same governments, moreover, freely supplied officers, equipment and munitions to the mixed forces raised by Denikin, Kolchak, Jedenich (Yudenich) and Wrangle, who took up arms against the Soviet Government. Incidentally, the Germans and Poles ravaged the western provinces, whilst the army formed out of the Czecho-Slovakian prisoners of war held an equivocal position in its protracted passage through Siberia to the Pacific Ocean.'
Library #26 Autobiography by Thomas Jefferson
by Thomas Jefferson
My father's education had been quite neglected; but being of a strong mind, sound judgment and eager after information, he read much and improved himself insomuch that he was chosen with Joshua Fry professor of Mathem in W. & M. college to continue the boundary line between Virginia & N. Caroline which had been begun by Colo Byrd, and was afterwards employed with the same Mr. Fry to make the 1st map of Virginia which had ever been made, that of Captain Smith being merely a conjectural sketch. They possessed excellent materials for so much of the country as is below the blue ridge; little being then known beyond that ridge. He was the 3rd or 4th settler of the part of the country in which I live, which was about 1737. He died Aug. 17, 1757, leaving my mother a widow who lived till 1776, with 6 daughters & 2 sons, myself the elder. To my younger brother he left his estate on James river called Snowden after the supposed birth-place of the family. To myself the lands on which I was born & live. He placed me at the English school at 5 years of age and at the Latin at 9 where I continued until his death. My teacher Mr. Douglas a clergyman from Scotland was but a superficial Latinist, less instructed in Greek, but with the rudiments of these languages he taught me French, and on the death of my father I went to the Reverend Mr. Maury a correct classical scholar, with whom I continued two years, and then went to Wm. and Mary college, to wit in the spring of 1760, where I continued 2 years. It was my great good fortune, and what probably fixed the destinies of my life that Dr. Wm. Small of Scotland was then professor of Mathematics, a man profound in most of the useful branches of science, with a happy talent of communication, correct and gentlemanly manners, & an enlarged & liberal mind. He, most happily for me, became soon attached to me & made me his daily companion when not engaged in the school; and from his conversation I got my first views of the expansion of science & of the system of things in which we are placed. Fortunately the Philosophical chair became vacant soon after my arrival at college, and he was appointed to fill it per interim: and he was the first who ever gave in that college regular lectures in Ethics, Rhetoric & Belles lettres. He returned to Europe in 1762, having previously filled up the measure of his goodness to me, by procuring for me, from his most intimate friend G. Wythe, a reception as a student of law, under his
direction, and introduced me to the acquaintance and familiar table of Governor Fauquier, the ablest man who had ever filled that office. With him, and at his table, Dr. Small & Mr. Wythe, his amici omnium
horarum, & myself, formed a partie quarree, & to the habitual conversations on these occasions I owed much instruction. Mr. Wythe continued to be my faithful and beloved Mentor in youth, and my most
affectionate friend through life. In 1767, he led me into the practice of the law at the bar of the General court, at which I continued until the revolution shut up the courts of justice.
Library #27 Karl Marx and Fredich Engels: An Introduction to Their Lives and Work
by Julian Hawthorne
We shall now proceed to examine the extent to which Marx took part in the organization of the
Communist League at the request of which the Communist Manifesto was written. After
examining all the data obtainable from the writings of Marx and Engels pertaining to this question,
one must conclude that their account regarding the origin of the League is not entirely correct. Marx
had occasion to touch upon this episode only once in one of his works that is read very little, Herr
Vogt, published in 1860. He allowed a great number of errors to creep into that book. The history
of the Communist League is usually learned through the account written by Engels in 1885. Engels'
story can be summarised as follows:
Once there lived Marx and Engels, two German philosophers and politicians, who were forced to
abandon their native land. They lived in France and they lived in Belgium. They wrote learned
books, which first attracted the attention of the intelligentsia, and then fell into the hands of the
workers. One fine morning the workers turned to these two savants who had been sitting in their
cloisters remote from the loathsome business of practical activity and, as was proper for guardians
of scientific thought, had been proudly awaiting the coming of the workers. And the day arrived;
the workers came and invited Marx and Engels to enter their League. But Marx and Engels
declared that they would join the League only on condition that the League accept their
programme. The workers agreed, they organized the Communist League and forthwith proceeded
to authorise Marx and Engels to prepare the Communist Manifesto.
The workers who did this had belonged to the League of the Just which was mentioned in
connection with the history of the labour movement in France and England. It was l pointed out that
this League of the Just had been formed in Paris and that it had suffered serious reverses after the
unsuccessful uprising of the Blanquists on May 12, 1839. It was also reported that after the defeat,
the members of the League went to London. Among them was Schapper who organised the
Workers' Educational Society in February, 1840.
U. Steklov, in his book on Marx, gives a similar account of the origin of the Communist League.
"While living in Paris, Marx was keeping in personal touch with the leaders of the League of
the Just which consisted of German political emigrants and artisans. He did not join this
League because its programme was too greatly coloured with an idealistic and conspiratory
spirit which could not appeal to Marx. The rank and file of the League, however, gradually
came to a position approaching that of Marx and Engels. The latter through personal and
written contact, as well as through the press, influenced the political views of the members of
the League. On some occasions the two friends transmitted their views to their
correspondents through printed circulars. After the breach with the rebel Weitling, after the
systematically 'severe criticism of the useless theoreticians,' the soil was fully prepared for
Marx and Engels to join the League. At the first congress of the League, which had now
assumed the name of the Communist League, Engels and Wilhelm Wolff were present; at the
second convention, at the end of November, 1847, Marx, too, was present. The
convention, after having heard Marx's address in which he expounded the new socialist
philosophy, commissioned him and Engels to prepare the programme of the League. This
was how the famous Communist Manifesto came to be written."
Library #28 Madame Butterfly
by John Luther Long
BUT his wife's family (the word has a more important application there than here) held a solemn
conference, and, as the result of it, certain of them waited upon Lieutenant Pinkerton, and, with
elaborate politeness, intimated that his course had theretofore been quite unknown in Japan. This
was their oblique way of saying that it was unsatisfactory. They pointed out with patient gravity that
he would thus limit his wife's opportunities of reappearing on earth in a higher form of life.
Pinkerton smilingly remarked that he was not sure that it would be best for his wife to reappear on
earth in a higher form. She would probably accomplish mischief enough in this very charming one
as she was in fact doing. "Do you know," he continued to the spokesman, "that you look exactly like a lacquered tragedy mask I have hanging over my desk?" One must have seen one of these masks to appreciate this.
But they all laughed good-naturedly, as their host had designed, and quite forgot their errand. And
Pinkerton labored that they should remember it no more. This was quite Japanese. In the politest
way possible he made them drink his liquors and smoke his tobacco (in the generous Western
fashion), either of which operations was certain to make a Japanese very ill. This was thoroughly
like Pinkerton.
They protested a deal of friendship for Pinkerton that night; but at the final conference, where
Cho-Cho-San was solemnly disowned, none were more gloomily unfriendly than they who had
eaten and drunken with him. "I did the very best I could for you, little moon-goddess," said Pinkerton to his wife; "but they were proof against my best wine and tobacco." She bent her head in reflection a moment. "Ah, you mean I begin learn you, Mr. B. F. Pikkerton! You mean they not proof. Aha!" And Pinkerton delightedly embraced her. "You are no longer a back number," he said. "Aha ! Tha' 's what I thing. Now I bed you I know what is that bag nomber !" "Well ?" "People lig I was." "Exactly." "But not people lig I am?" "No; you are up-to-date." "I egspeg I ought be sawry?" She sighed hypocritically. "Exactly why, my moon-maid ?" "Account they outcasting me. Aeverybody thing me mos' bes' wicked in all Japan. Nobody speak to me no more they all outcast me aexcep' jus' you; tha' 's why I ought be sawry." She burst into a reckless laugh, and threw herself like a child upon him. "But tha' 's ezag' why I am not! Wha' 's use lie? It is not inside me that sawry. Me? I 'm mos' bes' happy female woman in Japan mebby in that whole worl'. What you thing?" He said honestly that he thought she was, and he took honest credit for it.
Library #29 Mahatma Gandhi and His Myths
by Mark Shepard
Another myth about Gandhi is the idea that India's political leaders, beginning with Nehru, are the inheritors of his tradition and have carried it on.
I wish they had. But, really, India's leaders have rejected much more of Gandhi than they've adopted.
They abandoned nonviolent action as soon as they attained power. India now sports the world's fourth largest armed force, and the leaders haven't seemed at all reluctant to use it to settle conflicts, either inside or outside the country. No thought is given to possible Gandhi-style alternatives.
Maybe even worse, India's leaders have done their best to imitate Western countries by building an economy based on large-scale industry and large-scale agriculture.
Gandhi fought this kind of development. He warned that it would economically ruin India's villages, where 80% of India's people lived and still live. And Gandhi has proved correct.
Yes, India is now overall a much richer country -- but it has more desperately poor people than ever. As many as half of its people can't afford enough food to sustain health. India prides itself now on growing enough grain so it doesn't need to import any -- but the surplus rots in storage
while people starve who can't afford to buy it!
Gandhi promoted a different kind of development. He stressed efforts based right in the villages,
building on the villagers' own strengths and resources. Not many people here realize it, but Gandhi
may be this century's greatest advocate of decentralism -- basing economic and political power at
the local level.
You may remember in the movie Gandhi seeing Gandhi spin cotton yarn on a compact spinning
wheel. Gandhi and his colleagues were the ones who developed this wheel and introduced it into
the villages. It's the first case of what's now called "appropriate technology" or "intermediate
technology." Of course, E. F. Schumacher, the author of Small is Beautiful, later introduced the
terms themselves. Schumacher was strongly influenced by Gandhi, calling him "the most important
economic teacher today."
Gandhi set up a number of organizations to help carry out village development. He sent many
workers to live in and among the villages.
Since his death, thousands have carried on this work. Now, though, the workers often combine
development with campaigns against local injustice. Probably the closest thing in the United States
to what they are doing is what we call "community organizing."
The people carrying on this work in India are among the true successors of Gandhi. Other
modern-day Gandhians are in programs like the Chipko -- "Hug the Trees" -- Movement, which
blocks irresponsible logging in the Himalayas; or Shanti Sena, the "Peace Army," which intervenes
nonviolently in urban riots. My book Gandhi Today describes a number of the Gandhians'
programs.
By the way, here's a quick bust of another myth concerning Gandhi and India's leaders: Indira
Gandhi and her son Rajiv, the current prime minister, are no relation to the Mahatma. Indira Gandhi
was the daughter of Nehru. The name "Gandhi" is common in India, and came to her by marriage.
The name means "grocer."
Library #30 Nathanial Hawthorne and His Wife: A Biography
by Nathanial Hawthorne
"IN 1811 and onwards," writes Miss E. P. Peabody, "when we lived in Herbert Street, Salem, we used to play with the Hawthorne children, who lived in Union Street,--their yard stretching between the two streets. Elizabeth Hawthorne, the eldest of the children, used to do her lessons with me. I vividly remember her; she was a brilliant little girl, and I thought her a great genius. Nathaniel Hawthorne I remember as a broad-shouldered little boy, with clustering locks, springing about the yard. Madame Hawthorne was a recluse, and was not in the habit of receiving her husband's relations, or many of her own; it was considered, at that time, a mark of piety and good taste for a widow to withdraw herself from the world. About 1816 to 1820 the Hawthornes were, most of the time, living in Raymond, Maine, and we lost sight of them. But in the latter year I heard that they had returned to Salem, and that Miss Elizabeth now secluded herself in like manner as her mother did, spending most of her time in reading and in solitary walks. People said it was a love-disappointment; but that was merely hearsay.
"Between 1830 and 1836 some stories in the 'New England Magazine' arrested my attention. I thought they were probably written by some 'new-light' Quaker, who had outgrown his sectarianism; arid I actually
wrote (but never sent) a letter to the supposed old man, asking him how he knew that 'sensitive natures are especially apt to be malicious.' It was not until 1837 that I discovered that these stories were the work of Madame Hawthorne's son. It was a difficult matter to establish visiting relations with so eccentric a household; and another year passed away before Mr. Hawthorne and his sisters called on us. It was in the evening. I was alone in the drawing-room; but Sophia, who was still an invalid, was in her chamber. As soon as I could, I ran upstairs to her and said, 'O Sophia, you must get up and dress and come down! The
Hawthornes are here, and you never saw anything so splendid as he is,--he is handsomer than Lord Byron!' She laughed, but refused to come, remarking that since he had called once, he would call again. So I went down to them again, and we passed a very pleasant evening. Elizabeth, with her black hair in beautiful natural curls, her bright, rather shy eyes, and a rather excited, frequent, low laugh, looked full of wit and keenness, as if she were experienced in the world; there was not the least bit of sentiment about her, but she was strongly intellectual. There was nothing peculiar about Louisa; she seemed like other people. Mr. Hawthorne was very nicely dressed; but he looked, at first, almost fierce with his determination not to betray his sensitive shyness, which he always recognized as a weakness. But as he became interested in conversation, his nervousness passed away; and the beauty of the outline of his features, the pure complexion, the wonderful eyes, like mountain lakes reflecting the sky,--were quite in keeping with the 'Twice-Told Tales.'
Library #31 The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
by Benjamin Franklin
That felicity, when I reflected on it, has induced me sometimes to say, that were it offered to my
choice, I should have no objection to a repetition of the same life from its beginning, only asking the
advantages authors have in a second edition to correct some faults of the first. So I might, besides correcting the faults, change some sinister accidents and events of it for others more favorable. But though this were denied, I should still accept the offer. Since such a repetition is not to be expected, the next thing most like living one's life over again seems to be a recollection of that life, and to make that recollection as durable as possible by putting it down in writing.
Hereby, too, I shall indulge the inclination so natural in old men, to be talking of themselves and their own past actions; and I shall indulge it without being tiresome to others, who, through respect to age, might conceive themselves obliged to give me a hearing, since this may be read or not as any one pleases. And, lastly (I may as well confess it, since my denial of it will be believed by nobody), perhaps I shall a good deal gratify my own vanity. Indeed, I scarce ever heard or saw the introductory words,"Without vanity I may say," but some vain thing immediately followed. Most people dislike vanity in others, whatever share they have of it themselves; but I give it fair quarter wherever I meet with it, being persuaded that it is often productive of good to the possessor, and to others that are within his sphere of action; and therefore, in many cases, it would not be altogether absurd if a man were to thank God for his vanity among the other comforts of life.
And now I speak of thanking God, I desire with all humility to acknowledge that I owe the mentioned happiness of my past life to His kind providence, which lead me to the means I used and gave them success. My belief of this induces me to hope, though I must not presume, that the same goodness will still be exercised toward me, in continuing that happiness, or enabling me to bear a fatal reverse, which I may experience as others have done: the complexion of my future fortune being known to Him only in whose power it is to bless to us even our afflictions.
Library #32 A Tale of Two Cities
France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to death, already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to comedown and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable frame work with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of the Revolution. But that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they went about with muffled tread: the rather, for as much as to entertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to be atheistical and traitorous. In England, there was scarcely an amount of order and protection to justify much national boasting. Daring burglaries by armed men, and highway robberies, took place in the capital itself every night; families were publicly cautioned not to go out of town without removing their furniture to upholsterers' warehouses for security; the highwayman in the dark was a City tradesman in the light, and, being recognised and challenged by his fellow-tradesman whom he stopped in his character of "the Captain," gallantly shot him through the head and rode away; the mall was way laid by seven robbers, and the guard shot three dead, and then got shot dead himself by the other four, "in consequence of the failure of his ammunition:" after which the mall was robbed in peace; that magnificent potentate, the Lord Mayor of London, was made to stand and deliver on Turnham Green, by one highway man, who despoiled the illustrious creature in sight of all his retinue; prisoners in London gaols fought battles with their turnkeys, and the majesty of the law fired blunderbusses in among them, loaded with rounds of shot and ball; thieves snipped off diamond crosses from the necks of noble lords at Court drawing-rooms; musketeers went into St. Giles's, to search for contraband goods, and the mob fired on the musketeers, and the musketeers fired on the mob, and nobody thought any of these occurrences much out of the common way. In the midst of them, the hangman, ever busy and ever worse than useless, was in constant requisition; now, stringing up long rows of miscellaneous criminals; now, hanging a housebreaker on Saturday who had been taken on Tuesday; now, burning people in the hand at Newgate bythe dozen, and now burning pamphlets at the door of Westminster Hall; to-day, taking the life of an atrocious murderer, and tomorrow of a wretched pilferer who had robbed a farmer's boy of sixpence.
Library #33 Crime and Punishment
This was not because he was cowardly and abject, quite the contrary; but for some time past he had been in an overstrained irritable condition, verging on hypochondria. He had become so completely absorbed in himself, and isolated from his fellows that he dreaded meeting, not only his landlady, but any one at all. He was crushed by poverty, but the anxieties of his position had of late ceased to weigh upon him. He had given up attending to matters of practical importance; he had lost all desire to do so. Nothing that any landlady could do had a real terror for him. But to be stopped on the stairs, to be forced to listen to her trivial, irrelevant gossip, to pestering demands for payment, threats and complaints, and to rack his brains for excuses, to prevaricate, to lie- no, rather than that, he would creep down the stairs like a cat and slip out unseen. This evening, however, on coming out into the street, he became acutely aware of his fears. "I want to attempt a thing like that and am frightened by these trifles," he thought, with an odd smile. "Hm... yes, all is in a man's hands and he lets it all slip from cowardice, that's an axiom. It would be interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of. Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear most.... But I am talking too much. It's because I chatter that I do nothing. Or perhaps it is that I chatter because I do nothing. I've learned to chatter this last month, lying for days together in my den thinking... of Jack the Giant-killer. Why am I going there now? Am I capable of that? Is that serious? It is not serious at all. It's simply a fantasy to amuse myself; a plaything! Yes, maybe it is a plaything." The heat in the street was terrible: and the airlessness, the bustle and the plaster, scaffolding, bricks, and dust all about him, and that special Petersburg stench, so familiar to all who are unable to get out of town in summer- all worked painfully upon the young man's already overwrought nerves. The insufferable stench from the pot-houses, which are particularly numerous in that part of the town, and the drunken men whom he met continually, although it was a working day, completed the revolting misery of the picture. An expression of the profoundest disgust gleamed for a moment in the young man's refined face. He was, by the way, exceptionally handsome, above the average in height, slim, well-built, with beautiful dark eyes and dark brown hair. Soon he sank into deep thought, or more accurately speaking into a complete blankness of mind; he walked along not observing what was about him and not caring to observe it. From time to time, he would mutter something, from the habit of talking to himself, to which he had just confessed. At these moments he would become conscious that his ideas were sometimes in a tangle and that he was very weak; for two days he had scarcely tasted food.
Library #34 The Haunted Man & the Ghost's Bargain
Who could have observed his manner, taciturn, thoughtful, gloomy, shadowed by habitual reserve, retiring always and jocund never, with a distraught air of reverting to a bygone place and time, or of listening to some old echoes in his mind, but might have said it was the manner of a haunted man? Who could have heard his voice, slow-speaking, deep, and grave, with a natural fulness and melody in it which he seemed to set himself against and stop, but might have said it was the voice of a haunted man? Who that had seen him in his inner chamber, part library and part laboratory, - for he was, as the world knew, far and wide, a learned man in chemistry, and a teacher on whose lips and hands a crowd of aspiring ears and eyes hung daily, - who that had seen him there, upon a winter night, alone, surrounded by his drugs and instruments and books; the shadow of his shaded lamp a monstrous beetle on the wall, motionless among a crowd of spectral shapes raised there by the flickering of the fire upon the quaint objects around him; some of these phantoms (the reflection of glass vessels that held liquids), trembling at heart like things that knew his power to uncombine them, and to give back their component parts to fire and vapour; - who that had seen him then, his work done, and he pondering in his chair before the rusted grate and red flame, moving his thin mouth as if in speech, but silent as the dead, would not have said that the man seemed haunted and the chamber too? Who might not, by a very easy flight of fancy, have believed that everything about him took this haunted tone, and that he lived on haunted ground? His dwelling was so solitary and vault-like, - an old, retired part of an ancient endowment for students, once a brave edifice, planted in an open place, but now the obsolete whim of forgotten architects; smoke-age-and-weather-darkened, squeezed on every side by the overgrowing of the great city, and choked, like an old well, with stones and bricks; its small quadrangles, lying down in very pits formed by the streets and buildings, which, in course of time, had been constructed above its heavy chimney stalks; its old trees, insulted by the neighbouring smoke, which deigned to droop so low when it was very feeble and the weather very moody; its grass-plots, struggling with the mildewed earth to be grass, or to win any show of compromise; its silent pavements, unaccustomed to the tread of feet, and even to the observation of eyes, except when a stray face looked down from the upper world, wondering what nook it was; its sun-dial in a little bricked-up corner, where no sun had straggled for a hundred years, but where, in compensation for the sun's neglect, the snow would lie for weeks when it lay nowhere else, and the black east wind would spin like a huge humming-top, when in all other places it was silent and still.
Library #35 The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu
"A GENTLEMAN to see you, Doctor." From across the common a clock sounded the half-hour. "Ten-thirty!" I said. "A late visitor. Show him up, if you please." I pushed my writing aside and tilted the lamp-shade, as foot steps sounded on the landing. The next moment I had jumped to my feet, for a tall, lean man, with his square-cut, clean-shaven face sun-baked to the hue of coffee, entered and extended both hands, with a cry: "Good old Petrie! Didn't expect me, I'll swear!" It was Nayland Smith--whom I had thought to be in Burma! "Smith," I said, and gripped his hands hard, "this is a delightful surprise! Whatever--however--""Excuse me, Petrie!" he broke in. "Don't put it down to the sun!" And he put out the lamp, plunging the room into darkness. I was too surprised to speak. "No doubt you will think me mad," he continued, and, dimly, I could see him at the window, peering out into the road, "but before you are many hours older you will know that I have good reason to be cautious. Ah, nothing suspicious! Perhaps I am first this time. "And, stepping back to the writing-table he relighted the lamp. "Mysterious enough for you?" he laughed, and glanced at my unfinished MS." A story, eh? From which I gather that the district is beastly healthy--what, Petrie? Well, I can put some material in your way that, if sheer uncanny mystery is a marketable commodity, ought to make you independent of influenza and broken legs and shattered nerves and all the rest." I surveyed him doubtfully, but there was nothing in his appearance to justify me in supposing him to suffer from delusions. His eyes were too bright, certainly, and a hardness now had crept over his face. I got out the whisky and siphon, saying: "You have taken your leave early?" "I am not on leave," he replied, and slowly filled his pipe. "I am on duty." "On duty!" I exclaimed. "What, are you moved to London or something?" "I have got a roving commission, Petrie, and it doesn't rest with me where I am to-day nor where I shall be to-morrow." There was something ominous in the words, and, putting down my glass, its contents untasted, I faced round and looked him squarely in the eyes. "Out with it!" I said. "What is it all about?" Smith suddenly stood up and stripped off his coat. Rolling back his left shirt-sleeve he revealed a wicked-looking wound in the fleshy part of the forearm. It was quite healed, but curiously striated for an inch or so around. "Ever seen one like it?" he asked. "Not exactly," I confessed. "It appears to have been deeply cauterized." "Right! Very deeply!" he rapped. "A barb steeped in the venom of a ham a dryad went in there!"
Library #36 The Last of the Mohicans
The scout, to whom alone, of all the white men, the words were intelligible, suffered himself to be a little aroused from his meditative posture, and bent his face aside, to catch their meaning, as the girls proceeded. But when they spoke of the future prospects of Cora and Uncas, he shook his head, like one who knew the error of their simple creed, and resuming his reclining attitude, he maintained it until the ceremony, if that might be called a ceremony, in which feeling was so deeply imbued, was finished. Happily for the self-command of both Heyward and Munro, they knew not the meaning of the wild sounds they heard. Chingachgook was a solitary exception to the interest manifested by the native part of the audience. His look never changed throughout the whole of the scene, nor did a muscle move in his rigid countenance, even at the wildest or the most pathetic parts of the lamentation. The cold and senseless remains of his son was all to him, and every other sense but that of sight seemed frozen, in order that his eyes might take their final gaze at those lineaments he had so long loved, and which were now about to be closed forever from his view. In this stage of the obsequies, a warrior much renowned for deed in arms, and more especially for services in the recent combat, a man of stern and grave demeanor, advanced slowly from the crowd, and placed himself nigh the person of the dead. "Why hast thou left us, pride of the Wapanachki?" he said, addressing himself to the dull ears of Uncas, as if the empty clay retained the faculties of the animated man; "thy time has been like that of the sun when in the trees; they glory brighter than his light at noonday. Thou art gone, youthful warrior, but a hundred Wyandots are clearing the briers from thy path to the world of the spirits. Who that saw thee in battle would believe that thou couldst die? Who before thee has ever shown Uttawa the way into the fight? Thy feet were like the wings of eagles; thine arm heavier than falling branches from the pine; and thy voice like the Manitou when He speaks in the clouds. The tongue of Uttawa is weak," he added, looking about him with a melancholy gaze, "and his heart exceeding heavy. Pride of the Wapanachki, why hast thou left us?" He was succeeded by others, in due order, until most of the high and gifted men of the nation had sung or spoken their tribute of praise over the manes of the deceased chief. When each had ended, another deep and breathing silence reigned in all the place.
Library #37 The Pit and the Pendulum
I was sick -- sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at length unbound me, and I
was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me. The sentence -- the dread sentence of
death -- was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears. After that, the sound of the
inquisitorial voices seemed merged in one dreamy indeterminate hum. It conveyed to my soul the
idea of revolution -- perhaps from its association in fancy with the burr of a mill-wheel. This only
for a brief period; for presently I heard no more. Yet, for a while, I saw; but with how terrible an
exaggeration! I saw the lips of the black-robed judges. They appeared to me white -- whiter than
the sheet upon which I trace these words -- and thin even to grotesqueness; thin with the intensity
of their expression of firmness -- of immoveable resolution -- of stern contempt of human torture. I saw that the decrees of what to me was Fate, were still issuing from those lips. I saw them writhe with a deadly
locution. I saw them fashion the syllables of my name; and I shuddered because no sound
succeeded. I saw, too, for a few moments of delirious horror, the soft and nearly imperceptible
waving of the sable draperies which enwrapped the walls of the apartment. And then my vision fell
upon the seven tall candles upon the table. At first they wore the aspect of charity, and seemed
white slender angels who would save me; but then, all at once, there came a most deadly nausea
over my spirit, and I felt every fibre in my frame thrill as if I had touched the wire of a galvanic
battery, while the angel forms became meaningless spectres, with heads of flame, and I saw that
from them there would be no help. And there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the
thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave. The thought came gently and stealthily, and
it seemed long before it attained full appreciation; but just as my spirit came at length properly to
feel and entertain it, the figures of the judges vanished, as if magically, from before me; the tall
candles sank into nothingness; their flames went out utterly; the blackness of darkness
supervened; all sensation appeared swallowed up in that mad rushing descent as of the soul into
Hades. Then silence, and stillness, and night were the universe.
Library #38 Wuthering Heights
l80l.---I have just returned from a visit to my landlord---the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with. This is certainly a beautiful country. In all England I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society---a perfect misanthropist's heaven; and Mr. Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us. A capital fellow! He little imagined how my heart warmed towards him when I beheld his black eyes withdraw so suspiciously under their brows, as I rode up, and when his fingers sheltered themselves, with a jealous resolution, still further in his waistcoat, as I announced my name. "Mr. Heathcliff?" I said. A nod was the answer. "Mr. Lockwood, your new tenant, sir. I do myself the honour of calling as soon as possible after my arrival, to express the hope that I have not inconvenienced you by my perseverance in soliciting the occupation of Thrushcross Grange. I heard yesterday you had had some thoughts------" "Thrushcross Grange is my own, sir," he interrupted, wincing. "I should not allow any one to inconvenience me, if I could hinder it. Walk in!" The "walk in" was uttered with closed teeth, and expressed the sentiment, "Go to the deuce." Even the gate over which he leant manifested no sympathizing movement to the words; and I think that circumstance determined me to accept the invitation. I felt interested in a man who seemed more exaggeratedly reserved than myself. When he saw my horse's breast fairly pushing the barrier, he did put out his hand to unchain it, and then sullenly preceded me up the causeway, calling, as we entered the court, "Joseph, take Mr. Lockwood's horse, and bring up some wine." "Here we have the whole establishment of domestics, I suppose," was the reflection suggested by this compound order. "No wonder the grass grows up between the flags, and cattle are the only hedge-cutters." Joseph was an elderly, nay, an old man---very old, perhaps, though hale and sinewy. "The Lord help us!" he soliloquized in an undertone of peevish displeasure, while relieving me of my horse, looking, meantime, in my face so sourly that I charitably conjectured he must have need of divine aid to digest his dinner, and his pious ejaculation had no reference to my unexpected advent. Wuthering Heights is the name of Mr. Heathcliff's dwelling, "wuthering" being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather. Pure, bracing ventilation they must have up there at all times, indeed. One may guess the power of the north wind blowing over the edge by the excessive slant of a few stunted firs at the end of the house, and by a range of gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs one way, as if craving alms of the sun. Happily the architect had foresight to build it strong. The narrow windows are deeply set in the wall, and the corners defended with large jutting stones.
Library #39 A Room with a View
The society out of which Cecil proposed to rescue Lucy was perhaps no very splendid affair, yet it was more splendid than her antecedents entitled her to. Her father, a prosperous local solicitor, had built Windy Corner, as a speculation at the time the district was opening up, and, falling in love with his own creation, had ended by living there himself. Soon after his marriage, the social, atmosphere began to alter. Other houses were built on the brow of that steep southern slope, and others, again, among the pine-trees behind, and northward on the chalk barrier of the downs. Most of these houses were larger than Windy Corner, and were filled by people who came, not from the district, but from London, and who mistook the Honeychurches for the remnants of an indigenous aristocracy. He was inclined to be frightened, but his wife accepted the situation without either pride or humility. "I cannot think what people are doing," she would say, "but it is extremely fortunate for the children." She called everywhere; her calls were returned with enthusiasm, and by the time people found out that she was not exactly of their milieu, they liked her, and it did not seem to matter. When Mr. Honeychurch died, he had the satisfaction - which few honest solicitors despise -- of leaving his family rooted in the best society obtainable. The best obtainable. Certainly many of the immigrants were rather dull, and Lucy realized this more vividly since her return from Italy. Hitherto she had accepted their ideals without questioning-- their kindly affluence, their in explosive religion, their dislike of paper-bags, orange-peel, and broken bottles. A Radical out and out, she learnt to speak with horror of Suburbia. Life, so far as she troubled to conceive it, was a circle of rich, pleasant people, with identical interests and identical foes. In this circle, one thought, married, and died. Outside it were poverty and vulgarity for ever trying to enter, just as the London fog tries to enter the pine-woods pouring through the gaps in the northern hills. But, in Italy, where any one who chooses may warm himself in equality, as in the sun, this conception of life vanished. Her senses expanded; she felt that there was no one whom she might not get to like, that social barriers were irremovable, doubtless, but not particularly high. You jump over them just as you jump into a peasant's olive-yard in the Apennines, and he is glad to see you. She returned with new eyes.
Library #40 The Last Days of Pompeii
by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
'What, Clodius! and how have you slept on your good fortune?' cried, in a pleasant and musical voice, a young man, in a chariot of the most fastidious and graceful fashion. Upon its surface of bronze were elaborately wrought, in the still exquisite workmanship of Greece, reliefs of the Olympian games; the two horses that drew the car were of the rarest breed of Parthia; their slender limbs seemed to disdain the ground and court the air, and yet at the slightest touch of the charioteer, who stood behind the young owner of the equipage, they paused motionless, as if suddenly transformed into stone-lifeless, but lifelike, as one of the breathing wonders of Praxiteles. The owner himself was of that slender and beautiful symmetry from which the sculptors of Athens drew their models; his Grecian origin betrayed itself in his light but clustering locks, and the perfect harmony of his features. He wore no toga, which in the time of the emperors had indeed ceased to be the general distinction of the Romans, and was especially ridiculed by the pretenders to fashion; but his tunic glowed in the richest hues of the Tyrian dye, and the fibulae, or buckles, by which it was fastened, sparkled with emeralds: around his neck was a chain of gold, which in the middle of his breast twisted itself into the form of a serpent's head, from the mouth of which hung pendent a large signet ring of elaborate and most exquisite workmanship; the sleeves of the tunic were loose, and fringed at the hand with gold: and across the waist a girdle wrought in arabesque designs, and of the same material as the fringe, served in lieu of pockets for the receptacle of the handkerchief and the purse, the stilus and the tablets. 'My dear Glaucus!' said Clodius, 'I rejoice to see that your
losses have so little affected your mien. Why, you seem as if you had been inspired by Apollo, and your face shines with happiness like a glory; any one might take you for the winner, and me for the loser.'
'And what is there in the loss or gain of those dull pieces of metal that should change our spirit, my Clodius? By Venus, while yet young, we can cover our full locks with chaplets- while yet the cithara sounds on unsated ears- while yet the smile of Lydia or of Chloe flashes over our veins in which the blood runs so swiftly, so long shall we find delight in the sunny air, and make bald time itself but the treasurer of our joys. You sup with me to-night, you know.' 'Who ever forgets the invitation of Glaucus!' 'But which way go you now?' 'Why, I thought of visiting the baths: but it wants yet an hour to the usual time.'
'Well, I will dismiss my chariot, and go with you. So, so, my Phylias,' stroking the horse nearest to him, which by a low neigh and with backward ears playfully acknowledged the courtesy: 'a holiday for you to-day. Is he not handsome, Clodius?'
Library #41 Up from Slavery
by Booker T. Washington
The cabin was not only our living-place, but was also used as the kitchen for the plantation. My mother was the plantation cook. The cabin was without glass windows; it had only openings in the side
which let in the light, and also the cold, chilly air of winter. There was a door to the cabin -- that is, something that was called a door -- but the uncertain hinges by which it was hung, and the large cracks in it, to say nothing of the fact that it was too small, made the room a very uncomfortable one. In addition to these openings there was, in the lower right-hand corner of the room, the "cat-hole," -- a contrivance which almost every mansion or cabin in Virginia possessed during the ante-bellum period. The "cat-hole" was a square opening, about seven by eight inches, provided for the purpose of letting the cat pass in and out of the house at will during the night. In the case of our particular cabin I could never understand the necessity for this convenience, since there were at least a half-dozen other places in the cabin that would have accommodated the cats. There was no wooden floor in our cabin, the naked earth being used as a floor. In the center of the earthen floor there was a large, deep opening covered with boards, which was used as a place in which to store sweet potatoes during the winter. An impression of this potato-hole is very distinctly engraved upon my memory, because I recall that
during the process of putting the potatoes in or taking them out I would often come into possession of one or two, which I roasted and thoroughly enjoyed. There was no cooking-stove on our plantation, and
all the cooking for the whites and slaves my mother had to do over an open fireplace, mostly in pots and "skillets." While the poorly built cabin caused us to suffer with cold in the winter, the heat from the
open fireplace in summer was equally trying. The early years of my life, which were spent in the little cabin, were not very different from those of thousands of other slaves. My mother, of course, had little time in which to give attention to the training of her children during the day. She snatched a few moments
for our care in the early morning before her work began, and at night after the day's work was done. One of my earliest recollections is that of my mother cooking a chicken late at night, and awakening her
children for the purpose of feeding them. How or where she got it I do not know. I presume, however, it was procured from our owner's farm. Some people may call this theft. If such a thing were to
happen now, I should condemn it as theft myself. But taking place at the time it did, and for the reason that it did, no one could ever make me believe that my mother was guilty of thieving. She was simply
a victim of the system of slavery. I cannot remember having slept in a bed until after our family was declared free by the Emancipation Proclamation. Three children -- John, my older brother, Amanda, my
sister, and myself -- had a pallet on the dirt floor, or, to be more correct, we slept in and on a bundle of filthy rags laid upon the dirt floor.
Library #42 A History of San Francisco
by Frank Norris
Maria Macapa, the Mexican woman who took care of the lodgers' rooms, had been the first to call the flat's
attention to the affair, spreading the news of it from room to room, from floor to floor. Of late she had made a great discovery; all the women folk of the flat were yet vibrant with it. Old Grannis came home from his work at four o'clock, and between that time and six Miss Baker would sit in her room, her hands idle in her lap, doing nothing, listening, waiting. Old Grannis did the same, drawing his arm-chair near to the wall, knowing that Miss Baker was upon the other side, conscious, perhaps, that she was thinking of him; and there the two would sit through the hours of the afternoon, listening and waiting, they did not know exactly for what, but near to each other, separated only by the thin partition of their rooms. They had come to know each other's habits. Old Grannis knew that at quarter of five precisely Miss Baker made a cup of tea over the oil stove on the stand between the bureau and the window. Miss Baker felt instinctively the exact moment when Old Grannis took down his little binding apparatus from the second shelf of his clothes closet and began his favorite occupation of binding pamphlets--pamphlets that he never read, for all that.
In his "Parlors" McTeague began his week's work. He glanced in the glass saucer in which he kept his sponge-gold, and noticing that he had used up all his pellets, set about making some more. In examining Miss Baker's teeth at the preliminary sitting he had found a cavity in one of the incisors. Miss Baker had decided to have it filled with gold. McTeague remembered now that it was what is called a "proximate case," where there is not sufficient room to fill with large pieces of gold. He told himself that he should have to use "mats" in the filling. He made some dozen of these "mats" from his tape of non-cohesive gold, cutting it transversely into small pieces that could be inserted edgewise between the teeth and consolidated by packing. After he had made his "mats" he continued with the other kind of gold fillings, such as he would have occasion to use during the week; "blocks" to be used in large proximal cavities, made by folding the tape on itself a number of times and then shaping it with the soldering pliers; "cylinders" for commencing fillings, which he formed by rolling the tape around a needle called a "broach," cutting it afterwards into different lengths. He worked slowly, mechanically, turning the foil between his fingers with the manual dexterity that one sometimes sees in stupid persons. His head was quite empty of all thought, and he did not whistle over his work as another man might have done. The canary made up for his silence, trilling and chittering continually, splashing about in its morning bath, keeping up an incessant noise and movement that would have been maddening to any one but McTeague, who seemed to have no nerves at all.
Library #43 Groton in the Witchcraft Times
by Samuel Green
During the witchcraft excitement at Salem, in the year 1692, no man of that day did more to
expose the wicked character of the examinations and convictions than Thomas Brattle, of Boston.
His good sense, and regard for truth and justice, are shown in a letter written at that time, though
not published for more than a century later. It is found in the fifth volume of the Collections of the
Massachusetts Historical Society, and the writer thus mentions Elizabeth Knapp's case: -
I cannot but admire [wonder] that these afflicted persons should be so much countenanced and encouraged in their accusations as they are: I often think of the Groton woman, that was afflicted, an account of which we have in print [in Mr. Willard's sermon], and is a (22)most certain truth, not to be doubted of. I shall only say, that there was as much ground, in the hour of it, to countenance the said Groton woman, and to apprehend and imprison, on her accusations, as there is now to countenance these afflicted persons, and to apprehend and imprison on their accusations. But furthermore, it is worthy of our deepest consideration, that in the conclusion, (after multitudes have been imprisoned, and many have been put to death), these afflicted persons should own that all was a mere fancy and delusion of the devil's, as the Groton woman did own and acknowledge with respect to herself; if, I say, in after times, this be acknowledged by them, how can the justices, judges, or any else concerned in these matters, look back upon these things without the greatest of sorrow and grief imaginable? I confess to you, it makes me tremble when I seriously consider of this thing. I have heard that the chief judge has expressed himself very hardly of the accused woman at Groton, as though he believed her to be a witch to this day: but by such as knew the said woman, this is judged a very uncharitable opinion of the said judge, and I do not understand that any are proselyted thereto.
Thomas Hutchinson, in the "History of the Province of Massachusetts Bay" (Boston, 1767), refers
to this case and says: -
In 1671, Elizabeth Knapp, another ventriloqua, alarmed the people of Groton in much the same manner as Ann Cole had done those of Hartford; but her daemon was not so cunning, for instead of confining himself to old women, he rail'd at the good minister of the town and other persons of good character, and the people could not then be prevailed on to believe him, but believed the girl, when she confessed she had
been deluded, and that the devil had tormented her in the shape of good persons; and so she escaped the punishment due to her fraud and imposture.
Library #44 Indian Heroes and Great chieftans
by Charles Alexander Eastman
EVERY age, every race, has its leaders and heroes. There were over sixty distinct tribes of Indians on this continent, each of which boasted its notable men. The names and deeds of some of these men will live in American history, yet in the true sense they are unknown, because misunderstood. I should like to present some of the greatest chiefs of modern times in the light of the native character and ideals, believing that the American people will gladly do them tardy justice.
It is matter of history that the Sioux nation, to which I belong, was originally friendly to the Caucasian peoples which it met in succession-first, to the south the Spaniards; then the French, on the Mississippi River and along the Great Lakes; later the English, and finally the Americans. This powerful tribe then
roamed over the whole extent of the Mississippi valley, between that river and the Rockies. Their usages and government united the various bands more closely than was the case with many of the neighboring tribes.
During the early part of the nineteenth century, chiefs such as Wabashaw, Redwing, and Little Six among the eastern Sioux, Conquering Bear, Man-Afraid-of-His-Horse, and Hump of the western bands, were the last of the old type. After these, we have a coterie of new leaders, products of the new conditions brought about by close contact with the conquering race.
This distinction must be borne in mind -- that while the early chiefs were spokesmen and leaders in the simplest sense, possessing no real authority, those who headed their tribes during the transition period were more or less rulers and more or less politicians. It is a singular fact that many of the "chiefs", well known as such to the American public, were not chiefs at all according to the accepted usages of their tribesmen. Their prominence was simply the result of an abnormal situation, in which representatives of the United States Government made use of them for a definite purpose. In a few cases, where a chief met with a violent death, some ambitious man has taken advantage of the confusion to thrust himself upon the tribe and, perhaps with outside help, has succeeded in usurping the leadership.
Red Cloud was born about 1820 near the forks of the Platte River. He was one of a family of nine children whose father, an able and respected warrior, reared his son under the old Spartan regime. The young Red Cloud is said to have been a fine horseman, able to swim across the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers, of high bearing and unquestionable courage, yet invariably gentle and courteous in everyday life. This last trait, together with a singularly musical and agreeable voice, has always been characteristic of the man.
When he was about six years old, his father gave him a spirited colt, and said to him: "My son, when you are able to sit quietly upon the back of this colt without saddle or bridle, I shall be glad, for the boy who can win a wild creature and learn to use it will as a man be able to win and rule men."
Library #45 Letters of a Woman Homesteader
by Elinore Pruitt Stewart
DEAR MRS. CONEY, --
Are you thinking I am lost, like the Babes in the Wood? Well, I am not and I'm sure the robins would have the time of their lives getting leaves to cover me out here. I am 'way up close to the Forest Reserve of Utah, within half a mile of the line, sixty miles from the railroad. I was twenty-four hours on the train and two days on the stage, and oh, those two days! The snow was just be-ginning to melt and the mud was about the worst I ever heard of.
The first stage we tackled was just about as rickety as it could very well be and I had to sit with the driver, who was a Mormon and so handsome that I was not a bit offended when he insisted on making love all the way, especially after he told me that he was a widower Mormon. But, of course, as I had no chaperone I looked very fierce (not that that was very difficult with the wind and mud as allies) and told him my actual
opinion of Mormons in general and particular.
Meantime my new employer, Mr. Stewart, sat upon a stack of baggage and was dreadfully concerned about something he calls his "Tookie," but I am unable to tell you what that is. The road, being so muddy, was full of ruts and the stage acted as if it had the hiccoughs and made us all talk as though we were affected in the same way. Once Mr. Stewart asked me if I did not think it a "gey duir trip." I told him he could call it gay if he wanted to, but it didn't seem very hilarious to me. Every time the stage struck a rock or a rut Mr. Stewart would "hoot," until I began to wish we would come to a hollow tree or a hole in the ground so he could go in with the rest of the owls.
At last we "arriv," and everything is just lovely for me. I have a very, very comfortable situation and Mr. Stewart is absolutely no trouble, for as soon as he has his meals he retires to his room and plays on his bagpipe, only he calls it his "bugpeep." It is "The Campbells are Coming," without variations, at intervals all day long and from seven till eleven at night. Sometimes I wish they would make haste and get here.
There is a saddle horse especially for me and a little shotgun with which I am to kill sage chickens. We are between two trout streams, so you can think of me as being happy when the snow is through melting and the water gets clear. We have the finest flock of Plymouth Rocks and get so many nice eggs. It sure seems fine to have all the cream I want after my town experiences. Jerrine is making good use of all the good
things we are having. She rides the pony to water every day.
Library #46 Six Historic Americans
by John Rimsberg
The President of the United States, Mr. Roosevelt, has characterized Thomas Paine as an Atheist.
"Strong religious minds are not likely to be affected by the Atheism of Paine," recently wrote a
Western journalist. Another writer, discussing the authorship of the Declaration of Independence,
contended that Paine could not have written that document because it acknowledged the existence
of a Creator. Ask almost any orthodox Christian if Paine believed in a Supreme Being and he will
tell you that he did not.
Now could these persons overcome their prejudice so far as to read a single page of Paine's
theological writings they would be ashamed of their ignorance (I use the word not in reproach, but
in charity) and amazed at the dishonesty of their religious teachers who are responsible for this
ignorance. A more devout believer in God and immortality never lived than Thomas Paine. In no
other works are the terms God and Creator used more frequently, or in a more reverential manner,
than in his. In his "Age of Reason," the work that brought down upon his devoted head the wrath of
almost the entire Christian priesthood, the recognition of a Supreme Being is made, more than two
hundred times.
On the first page of this book appears his creed, and his creed begins with these words: "I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life." In summing up his arguments in the first part of this work, he says: "The moral duty of man consists in imitating the moral goodness and beneficence of God manifested in the creation toward all his creatures. That seeing, as we daily do, the goodness of
God to all men, it is an example calling upon all men to practice the same toward each other."
A concluding paragraph of the second part reads as follows: "Were man impressed as fully and as strongly as he ought to be with the belief of a God, his moral life would be regulated by the force of that belief; he would stand in awe of God and of himself, and would not do the thing that could not be concealed from either. This is Deism."
When Paine commenced his "Age of Reason," he was fiftysix. The first great product of his brain,
"Common Sense," was written when he was thirty-eight. In this work a recognition of God is
expressed on almost every page. He died at the age of seventytwo. His will begins with these
words: "Reposing confidence in my Creator, God." It ends as follow: "I die in perfect composure
and resignation to the will of my Creator, God."
Respecting a future existence, he says: "I trouble not myself about the manner of future existence. I content myself with believing, even to positive conviction, that the power that gave me existence is able to continue it in any form and manner he pleases, either with or without this body" (Age of Reason).
Library #47 The History of Rome
by Titus Livius
Little attention had been paid to affairs in Greece for the last two years. As a result, Philip, finding
that the Aetolians had been abandoned by the Romans to whom alone they looked for help,
compelled them to sue for peace and accept whatever terms he chose. Had he not devoted all his
strength to secure this result as soon as possible, his operations against them would have been
interrupted by the proconsul P. Sempronius who had succeeded Sulpicius and commanded a force
of 10,000 infantry, 1000 cavalry and 35 ships of war, a considerable force to bring to the
assistance of our allies. Hardly had the peace been concluded when news reached the king that the
Romans were at Dyrrachium and that the Parthini and neighbouring tribes had risen and were
besieging Dimallum. The Romans had diverted their force to this place, for as the Aetolians had
concluded the treaty with the king without their consent, they showed their resentment by refusing
the help which they were sent to give them. On receiving this intelligence Philip, anxious to prevent
the movement from spreading, hastened to Apollonia. Sempronius had withdrawn to this place
after sending Laetorius with a portion of his force and fifteen ships to Aetolia to see how matters
stood there and, if possible, upset the peace. Philip ravaged the country round Apollonia, and
brought his forces up to the city in order to give the Romans an opportunity of fighting. As,
however, he saw that they kept within their walls, and feeling doubtful as to his ability to attack the
place, he withdrew into his kingdom. An additional motive for his retirement was his desire to
establish peace with them as he had with the Aetolians, or if not peace at all events a truce, and
consequently he avoided irritating them by further hostilities.
The Epirotes were by this time tired of the long-continued war and after sounding the Romans sent
envoys to Philip with proposals for a general settlement and assuring him that there was no doubt
as to its being arranged if he would confer with Sempronius. The king was by no means averse
from the proposal, and readily consented to visit Epirus. Phoenice, an important city in Epirus, was
chosen as the place of meeting, and there the king, after a preliminary interview with Aeropus,
Dardas and Philip, the chief magistrates of the Epirotes, met Sempronius. There were present at the
conference Amynander, king of the Athamanians, as well as the chief magistrates of the Epirotes
and Acarnanians. The Epirote magistrate, Philip, opened the discussion by appealing to the king
and the Roman general to put a stop to the war out of consideration for the Epirotes. The
conditions of peace as stated by Sempronius were that the Parthini together with the towns of
Dimallum, Bargullum and Eugenium should belong to Rome, and Atintania should be annexed by
Macedon, if Philip obtained the sanction of the senate to the arrangement. When the terms were
settled the king included Prusias, king of Bithynia, and also the Achaeaus, the Boeotians, the
Thessalians, the Acarnanians and the Epirotes as parties to the agreement. The Romans on their
side extended its provisions to the Ilienses, King Attalus, Pleuratus, Nabis, tyrant of the
Lacedaemonians, the Eleans, the Messenians and the Athenians. The clauses were then reduced to
writing and duly sealed. A two months' armistice was agreed upon to allow of envoys being sent to
Rome to obtain from the Assembly the ratification of the treaty. All the tribes voted for it; they were
glad to be relieved for the time from the pressure of other wars now that their efforts were directed
towards Africa. After the conclusion of peace, P. Sempronius left for Rome to take up the duties of
his consulship.
Library #48 The History of the Conquest of Mexico
by William Hickling Prescott
Midway across the continent, somewhat nearer the Pacific than the Atlantic ocean, at an elevation of nearly seven thousand five hundred feet, is the celebrated Valley of Mexico. It is of an oval form, about sixty-seven leagues in circumference, and is encompassed by a towering rampart of porphyritic rock, which nature seems to have provided, though ineffectually, to protect it from invasion. The soil, once carpeted with a beautiful verdure and thickly sprinkled with stately trees, is often bare, and, in many places, white with the incrustation of salts, caused by the draining of the waters. Five lakes are spread over the Valley, occupying one tenth of its surface. On the opposite borders of the largest of these basins, much shrunk in its dimensions since the days of the Aztecs, stood the cities of Mexico and Tezcuco, the capitals of the two most potent and flourishing states of Anahuac, whose history, with that of the mysterious races that preceded them in the country, exhibits some of the nearest approaches to civilisation to be met with anciently on the North American continent. Of these races the most conspicuous were the Toltecs. Advancing from a northerly direction, but from what region is uncertain, they entered the territory of Anahuac, probably before the close of the seventh century. Of course, little can be gleaned, with certainty, respecting a people whose written records have perished, and who are known to us only through the traditionary legends of the nations that succeeded them. By the general agreement of these, however, the Toltecs were well instructed in agriculture, and many of the most useful mechanic arts; were nice workers of metals; invented the complex arrangement of time adopted by the Aztecs; and, in short, were the true fountains of the civilisation which distinguished this part of the continent in later times. They established their capital at Tula, north of the Mexican Valley, and the remains of extensive buildings were to be discerned there at the time of the Conquest. The noble ruins of religious and other edifices, still to be seen in various parts of New Spain, are referred to this people, whose name, Toltec, has passed into a synonym for architect. Their shadowy history reminds us of those primitive races, who preceded the ancient
Egyptians in the march of civilisation; fragments of whose monuments, as they are seen at this day, incorporated with the buildings of the Egyptians themselves, give to these latter the appearance of almost modern constructions. After a period of four centuries, the Toltecs, who had extended their sway over the remotest borders of Anahuac, having been greatly reduced, it is said, by famine, pestilence, and unsuccessful wars, disappeared from the land as silently and mysteriously as they had entered it. A few of them still lingered behind, but much the greater number, probably, spread over the region of Central America and the neighbouring isles; and the traveller now speculates on the majestic ruins of Mitla and Palenque as possibly the work of this extraordinary people.
Library #49 History of Animals
by Aristotle
Book VI - Part 17 Fish do not all bring forth their young at the same season nor all in like manner, neither is the period of gestation for all of the same duration. Before pairing the males and females gather together in shoals; at the time for copulation and parturition they pair off. With some fishes the time of gestation is not longer than thirty days, with others it is a lesser period; but with all it extends over a number of days divisible by seven. The longest period of gestation is that of the species which some call a marinus. The sargue conceives during the month of Poseideon (or December), and carries its spawn for thirty days; and the species of mullet named by some the chelon, and the myxon, go with spawn at the same period and over the same length of time. All fish suffer greatly during the period of gestation, and are in consequence very apt to be thrown up on shore at this time. In some cases they are driven frantic with pain and throw themselves on land. At all events they are throughout this time continually in motion until parturition is over (this being especially true of the mullet), and after parturition they are in repose. With many fish the time for parturition terminates on the appearance of grubs within the belly; for small living grubs get generated there and eat up the spawn. With shoal fishes parturition takes place in the spring, and indeed, with most fishes, about the time of the spring equinox; with others it is at different times, in summer with some, and with others about the autumn equinox. The first of shoal fishes to spawn is the atherine, and it spawns close to land; the last is the cephalus: and this is inferred from the fact that the brood of the atherine appears first of all and the brood of the cephalus last. The mullet also spawns early. The saupe spawns usually at the beginning of summer, but occasionally in the autumn. The aulopias, which some call the anthias, spawns in the summer. Next in order of spawning comes the chrysophrys or gilthead, the basse, the mormyrus, and in general such fish as are nicknamed 'runners'. Latest in order of the shoal fish come the red mullet and the coracine; these spawn in autumn. The red mullet spawns on mud, and consequently, as the mud continues cold for a long while, spawns late in the year. The coracine carries its spawn for a long time; but, as it lives usually on rocky ground, it goes to a distance and spawns in places abounding in seaweed, at a period later than the red mullet. The maenis spawns about the winter solstice. Of the others, such as are pelagic spawn for the most part in summer; which fact is proved by their not being caught by fishermen during this period.
Library #50 Struggling Upward
by Horation Alger
One Saturday afternoon in January a lively and animated group of boys were gathered on the western side of a large pond in the village of Groveton. Prominent among them was a tall, pleasant-looking young man of twenty-two, the teacher of the Center Grammar School, Frederic Hooper, A.B., a recent graduate of Yale College. Evidently there was something of importance on foot. What it was may be learned from the words of the teacher. "Now, boys," he said, holding in his hand a Waterbury watch, of neat pattern, "I offer this watch as a prize to the boy who will skate across the pond and back in the least time. You will all start together, at a given signal, and make your way to the mark which I have placed at the western end of the lake, skate around it, and return to this point. Do you fully understand?" "Yes, sir!" exclaimed the boys, unanimously. Before proceeding, it may be well to refer more particularly to some of the boys who were to engage in the contest. First, in his own estimation, came Randolph Duncan, son of Prince Duncan, president of the Groveton Bank, and a prominent town official. Prince Duncan was supposed to be a rich man, and lived in a style quite beyond that of his neighbors. Randolph was his only son, a boy of sixteen, and felt that in social position and blue blood he was without a peer in the village. He was a tall, athletic boy, and disposed to act the part of boss among the Groveton boys. Next came a boy similar in age and physical strength, but in other respects very different from the young aristocrat. This was Luke Larkin, the son of a carpenter's widow, living on narrow means, and so compelled to exercise the strictest economy. Luke worked where he could, helping the farmers in hay-time, and ready to do odd jobs for any one in the village who desired his services. He filled the position of janitor at the school which he attended, sweeping out twice a week and making the fires. He had a pleasant expression, and a bright, resolute look, a warm heart, and a clear intellect, and was probably, in spite of his poverty, the most popular boy in Groveton. In this respect he was the opposite of Randolph Duncan, whose assumption of superiority and desire to "boss" the other boys prevented him from having any real friends. He had two or three companions, who flattered him and submitted to his caprices because they thought it looked well to be on good terms with the young aristocrat. These two boys were looked upon as the chief contestants for the prize offered by their teacher. Opinions differed as to which would win. "I think Luke will get the watch," said Fred Acken, a younger boy.
Library #51 Poor Richard's Almanac
by Benjamin Franklin
It may not be improper in the first Place to inform your Readers, that I intend once a Fortnight to present them, by the Help of this Paper, with a short Epistle, which I presume will add somewhat to their Entertainment.
And since it is observed, that the Generality of People, now a days, are unwilling either to commend or dispraise what they read, until they are in some measure informed who or what the Author of it is, whether he be poor or rich, old or young, a Scholar or a Leather Apron Man, and give their Opinion of the Performance, according to the Knowledge which they have of the Author's Circumstances, it may not be amiss to begin with a short Account of my past Life and present Condition, that the Reader may not be at a
Loss to judge whether or no my Lucubrations are worth his reading.
At the time of my Birth, my Parents were on Ship-board in their Way from London to N. England. My Entrance into this troublesome World was attended with the Death of my Father, a Misfortune, which
tho' I was not then capable of knowing, I shall never be able to forget; for as he, poor Man, stood upon the Deck rejoycing at my Birth, a merciless Wave entred the Ship, and in one Moment carry'd him beyond Reprieve. Thus was the first Day which I saw, the last that was seen by my Father; and thus was my disconsolate Mother at once made both a Parent and a Widow.
When we arrived at Boston (which was not long after) I was put to Nurse in a Country Place, at a small Distance from the Town, where I went to School, and past my Infancy and Childhood in Vanity and Idleness, until I was bound out Apprentice, that I might no longer be a Charge to my Indigent Mother, who was put to hard Shifts for a Living.
My Master was a Country Minister, a pious good-natur'd young Man, & a Batchelor: He labour'd with all his Might to instil vertuous and godly Principles into my tender Soul, well knowing that it was the most suitable Time to make deep and lasting Impressions on the Mind, while it was yet untainted with Vice, free and unbiass'd. He endeavour'd that I might be instructed in all that Knowledge and Learning which is necessary for our Sex, and deny'd me no Accomplishment that could possibly be attained in a Country Place; such as all Sorts of Needle-Work, Writing, Arithmetick, and observing that I took a more than ordinary Delight in reading ingenious Books, he gave me the free Use of his Library, which tho' it was but small, yet it was well chose, to inform the Understanding rightly, and enable the Mind to frame great and noble Ideas.
Before I had liv'd quite two Years with this Reverend Gentleman, my indulgent Mother departed this Life, leaving me as it were by my self, having no Relation on Earth within my Knowledge.
Library #52 The American
James Henry
An observer with anything of an eye for national types would have had no difficulty in determining the local origin of this undeveloped connoisseur, and indeed such an observer might have felt a certain humorous relish of the almost ideal completeness with which he filled out the national mould. The gentleman on the divan was a powerful specimen of an American. But he was not only a fine American; he was in the first place, physically, a fine man. He appeared to possess that kind of health and strength which, when found in perfection, are the most impressive--the physical capital which the owner does nothing to "keep up." If he was a muscular Christian, it was quite without knowing it. If it was necessary to walk to a remote spot, he walked, but he had never known himself to "exercise." He had no theory with regard to cold bathing or the use of Indian clubs; he was neither an oarsman, a rifleman, nor a fencer--he had never had time for these amusements--and he was quite unaware that the saddle is recommended for certain forms of indigestion. He was by inclination a temperate man; but he had supped the night before his visit to the Louvre at the Cafe Anglais-some one had told him it was an experience not to be omitted--and he had slept none the less the sleep of the just. His usual attitude and carriage were of a rather relaxed and lounging kind, but when under a special inspiration, he straightened himself, he looked like a grenadier on parade. He never smoked. He had been assured--such things are said--that cigars were excellent for the health, and he was quite capable of believing it; but he knew as little about tobacco as about homeopathy. He had a very well-formed head, with a shapely, symmetrical balance
of the frontal and the occipital development, and a good deal of straight, rather dry brown hair. His complexion was brown, and his nose had a bold well-marked arch. His eye was of a clear, cold gray, and save for a rather abundant mustache he was clean-shaved. He had the flat jaw and sinewy neck which are
frequent in the American type; but the traces of national origin are a matter of expression even more than of feature, and it was in this respect that our friend's countenance was supremely eloquent. The discriminating observer we have been supposing might, however, perfectly have measured its expressiveness, and yet have been at a loss to describe it. It had that typical vagueness which is not vacuity, that blankness which is not simplicity, that look of being committed to nothing in particular, of standing in an attitude of general hospitality to the chances of life, of being very much at one's own disposal so
characteristic of many American faces. It was our friend's eye that chiefly told his story; an eye in which innocence and experience were singularly blended. It was full of contradictory suggestions, and though it was by no means the glowing orb of a hero of romance, you could find in it almost anything you looked for. Frigid and yet friendly, frank yet cautious, shrewd yet credulous, positive yet skeptical, confident yet shy, extremely intelligent and extremely good-humored, there was something vaguely defiant in its
concessions, and something profoundly reassuring in its reserve.
Library #53 The Art of War
by Tzu Sun
1. Sun Tzu said: The control of a large force is the same principle as the control of a few men: it is merely a question of dividing up their numbers.
2. Fighting with a large army under your command is nowise different from fighting with a small one: it is merely a question of instituting signs and signals.
3. To ensure that your whole host may withstand the brunt of the enemy's attack and remain unshaken - this is effected by maneuvers direct and indirect.
4. That the impact of your army may be like a grindstone dashed against an egg - this is effected by the science of weak points and strong.
5. In all fighting, the direct method may be used for joining battle, but indirect methods will be needed
in order to secure victory.
6. Indirect tactics, efficiently applied, are inexhaustible as Heaven and Earth, unending as the flow of rivers and streams; like the sun and moon, they end but to begin anew; like the four seasons, they pass away to return once more.
7. There are not more than five musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard.
8. There are not more than five primary colors (blue, yellow, red, white, and black), yet in combination they produce more hues than can ever been seen.
9. There are not more than five cardinal tastes (sour, acrid, salt, sweet, bitter), yet combinations of them yield more flavors than can ever be tasted.
10. In battle, there are not more than two methods of attack--the direct and the indirect; yet these two in combination give rise to an endless series of maneuvers.
11. The direct and the indirect lead on to each other in turn. It is like moving in a circle--you never come to an end. Who can exhaust the possibilities of their combination?
12. The onset of troops is like the rush of a torrent which will even roll stones along in its course.
13. The quality of decision is like the well-timed swoop of a falcon which enables it to strike and destroy its victim.
14. Therefore the good fighter will be terrible in his onset, and prompt in his decision.
15. Energy may be likened to the bending of a crossbow; decision, to the releasing of a trigger.
16. Amid the turmoil and tumult of battle, there may be seeming disorder and yet no real disorder at all; amid confusion and chaos, your array may be without head or tail, yet it will be proof against defeat.
18. Hiding order beneath the cloak of disorder is simply a question of subdivision; concealing courage under a show of timidity presupposes a fund of latent energy; masking strength with weakness is to be effected by tactical dispositions.
Library #54 The Canterbury Tales
by Geoffrey Chaucer
Here bygynneth the Book of the tales of Caunterbury. Whan that Aprille, with hise shoures soote, The droghte of March hath perced to the roote And bathed every veyne in swich licour, Of which vertu engendred is the flour; Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne, And smale foweles maken melodye, That slepen al the nyght with open eye-So priketh hem Nature in hir corages- Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes; And specially, from every shires ende Of Engelond, to Caunturbury they wende, The hooly blisful martir for the seke That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke. Bifil that in that seson, on a day, In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay, Redy to wenden on my pilgrymage To Caunterbury, with ful devout corage, At nyght were come into that hostelrye Wel nyne and twenty in a compaignye Of sondry folk, by aventure yfalle In felaweshipe, and pilgrimes were they alle, That toward Caunterbury wolden ryde. The chambres and the stables weren wyde, And wel we weren esed atte beste; And shortly, whan the sonne was to reste, So hadde I spoken with hem everychon That I was of hir felaweshipe anon, And made forward erly for to ryse To take our wey, ther as I yow devyse. But nathelees, whil I have tyme and space, Er that I ferther in this tale pace, Me thynketh it acordaunt to resoun To telle yow al the condicioun Of ech of hem, so as it semed me, And whiche they weren, and of what degree, And eek in what array that they were inne; And at a knyght than wol I first bigynne. A knyght ther was, and that a worthy man, That fro the tyme that he first bigan To riden out, he loved chivalrie, Trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisie. Ful worthy was he in his lordes werre, And therto hadde he riden, no man ferre, As wel in Cristendom as in Hethenesse, And evere honoured for his worthynesse. At Alisaundre he was, whan it was wonne; Ful ofte tyme he hadde the bord bigonne Aboven alle nacions in Pruce; In Lettow hadde he reysed, and in Ruce, No cristen man so ofte of his degree.In Gernade at the seege eek hadde he be Of Algezir, and riden in Belmarye; At Lyeys was he, and at Satalye, Whan they were wonne; and in the Grete See At many a noble arive hadde he be. At mortal batailles hadde he been fiftene, And foughten for oure feith at Tramyssene In lystes thries, and ay slayn his foo. This ilke worthy knyght hadde been also Somtyme with the lord of Palatye.
Library #55 The Descent of Man
Charles Darwin
HE WHO wishes to decide whether man is the modified descendant of some pre-existing form, would probably first enquire whether man varies, however slightly, in bodily structure and in mental faculties; and if so, whether the variations are transmitted to his off spring in accordance with the laws which prevail with the lower animals. Again, are the variations the result, as far as our ignorance permits us to judge, of the same general causes, and are they governed by the same general laws, as in the case of other organisms; for instance, by correlation, the inherited effects of use and disuse. Is man subject to similar malcon formations, the result of arrested development, of reduplication of parts, and does he display in any of his anomalies reversion to some former and ancient type of structure? It might also naturally be enquired whether man, like so many other animals, has given rise to varieties and sub-races, differing but slightly from each other, or to races differing so much that they must be classed as doubtful species? How are such races distributed over the world; and how, when crossed, do they react on each other in the first and succeeding generations? And so with many other points. The enquirer would next come to the important point, whether man tends to increase at so rapid a rate, as to lead to occasional severe struggles for existence; and consequently to beneficial variations, whether in body or mind, being preserved, and injurious ones eliminated. Do the races or species of men, whichever term may be applied, encroach on and replace one another, so that some finally become extinct? We shall see that all these questions, as indeed is obvious in respect to most of them, must be answered in the affirmative, in the same manner as with the lower animals. But the several considerations just referred to may be conveniently deferred for a time: and we will first see how far the bodily structure of man shows traces, more or less plain, of his descent from some lower form. In succeeding chapters the mental powers of man, in comparison with those of the lower animals, will be considered. The Bodily Structure of Man. It is notorious that man is constructed on the same general type or model as other mammals. All the bones in his skeleton can be compared with corresponding bones in a monkey, bat, or seal. So it is with his muscles, nerves, blood-vessels and internal viscera. The brain, the most important of all the organs, follows the same law, as shewn by Huxley and other anatomists. Bischoff, who is a hostile witness, admits that every chief fissureand fold in the brain of man has its analogy in that of the orange; buthe adds that at no period of development do their brains perfectly agree; nor could perfect agreement be expected, for otherwise their mental powers would have been the same. Vulpian remarks: "Les differences reelles qui existent entre l'encephale de l'homme et celuides singes superieurs, sont bien minimes. It ne faut pas se faired'illusions a cet egard. L'homme est bien plus pres des singesanthropomorphes par les caracteres anatomiques de son cerveau queceux-ci ne le sont non seulement des autres mammiferes, mais meme decertains quadrumanes, des guenons et des macaques." But it would be superfluous here to give further details on the correspondence between man and the higher mammals in the structure of the brain and all other parts of the body.
Library #56 The Phantom of the Opera
Gaston Leroux
It was the evening on which MM. Debienne and Poligny, the managers of the Opera, were giving a last gala performance to mark their retirement. Suddenly the dressing-room of La Sorelli, one of the principal dancers, was invaded by half-a-dozen young ladies of the ballet, who had come up from the stage after "dancing" Polyeucte. They rushed in amid great confusion, some giving vent to forced and unnatural laughter, others to cries of terror. Sorelli, who wished to be alone for a moment to "run through" the speech which she was to make to the resigning managers, looked around angrily at the mad and tumultuous crowd. It was little Jammes--the girl with the tip-tilted nose, the forget-me-not eyes, the rose-red cheeks and the lily-white neck and shoulders--who gave the explanation in a trembling voice: "It's the ghost!" And she locked the door.
Sorelli's dressing-room was fitted up with official, commonplace elegance. A pier-glass, a sofa, a dressing-table and a cupboard or two provided the necessary furniture. On the walls hung a few engravings, relics of the mother, who had known the glories of the old Opera in the Rue le Peletier; portraits of Vestris, Gardel, Dupont, Bigottini. But the room seemed a palace to the brats of the corps de ballet, who were lodged in common dressing-rooms where they spent their time singing, quarreling, smacking the dressers and hair-dressers and buying one another glasses of cassis, beer, or even rhum, until the call-boy's bell rang.
Sorelli was very superstitious. She shuddered when she heard little Jammes speak of the ghost, called her a "silly little fool" and then, as she was the first to believe in ghosts in general, and the Opera ghost in particular, at once asked for details: "Have you seen him?" "As plainly as I see you now!" said little Jammes, whose legs were giving way beneath her, and she dropped with a moan into a chair. Thereupon little Giry--the girl with eyes black as sloes, hair black as ink, a swarthy complexion and a poor little skin
stretched over poor little bones--little Giry added: "If that's the ghost, he's very ugly!" "Oh, yes!" cried the chorus of ballet-girls. And they all began to talk together. The ghost had appeared to them in the shape of a gentleman in dress-clothes, who had suddenly stood before them in the passage, without their knowing where he came from. He seemed to have come straight through the wall. "Pooh!" said one of them, who had more or less kept her head. "You see the ghost everywhere!"
And it was true. For several months, there had been nothing discussed at the Opera but this ghost in dress-clothes who stalked about the building, from top to bottom, like a shadow, who spoke to nobody, to whom nobody dared speak and who vanished as soon as he was seen, no one knowing how or where. As became a real ghost, he made no noise in walking. People began by laughing and making fun of this specter dressed like a man of fashion or an undertaker; but the ghost legend soon swelled to enormous proportions among the corps de ballet. All the girls pretended to have met this supernatural being more or less often. And those who laughed the loudest were not the most at ease. When he did not show himself, he betrayed his presence or his passing by accident, comic or serious, for which the general superstition held him responsible. Had any one met with a fall, or suffered a practical joke at the hands of one of the other girls,
or lost a powderpuff, it was at once the fault of the ghost, of the Opera ghost.
Library #57 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
IT is an ancient Mariner, And he stoppeth one of three. "By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stopp'st thou me? "The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide, And I am next of kin; The guests are met, the feast is set: May'st hear the merry din." He holds him with his skinny hand, "There was a ship," quoth he. "Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!" Eftsoons his hand dropt he. He holds him with his glittering eye -- The Wedding-Guest stood still, And listens like a three years child: The Mariner hath his will. The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone: He cannot chuse but hear; And thus spake on that ancient man, The bright-eyed Mariner. The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared, Merrily did we drop Below the kirk, below the hill, Below the light-house top. The Sun came up upon the left, Out of the sea came he! And he shone bright, and on the right Went down into the sea. Higher and higher every day, Till over the mast at noon -- The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast, For he heard the loud bassoon. The bride hath paced into the hall, Red as a rose is she; Nodding their heads before her goes The merry minstrelsy. The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast, Yet he cannot chuse but hear; And thus spake on that ancient man, The bright-eyed Mariner. And now the STORM-BLAST came, and he Was tyrannous and strong: He struck with his o'ertaking wings, And chased south along. With sloping masts and dipping prow, As who pursued with yell and blow Still treads the shadow of his foe And forward bends his head, The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast, And southward aye we fled. And now there came both mist and snow, And it grew wondrous cold: And ice, mast-high, came floating by, As green as emerald. And through the drifts the snowy clifts Did send a dismal sheen: Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken -- The ice was all between. The ice was here, the ice was there, The ice was all around: It cracked and growled, and roared and howled, Like noises in a swound! At length did cross an Albatross: Thorough the fog it came; As if it had been a Christian soul, We hailed it in God's name. It ate the food it ne'er had eat, And round and round it flew. The ice did split with a thunder-fit; The helmsman steered us through! And a good south wind sprung up behind; The Albatross did follow, And every day, for food or play, Came to the mariners' hollo! In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud, It perched for vespers nine; Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white, Glimmered the white Moon-shine. "God save thee, ancient Mariner! From the fiends, that plague thee thus! -- Why look'st thou so?" -- With my cross-bow I shot the ALBATROSS.
Library #58 The Soul of the Indian
by Charles Alexander Eastman
The Indian was a religious man from his mother's womb. From the moment of her recognition of the fact of conception to the end of the second year of life, which was the ordinary duration of lactation, it was supposed by us that the mother's spiritual influence counted for most. Her attitude and secret meditations must be such as to instill into the receptive soul of the unborn child the love of the "Great Mystery" and a sense of brotherhood with all creation. Silence and isolation are the rule of life for the expectant mother. She wanders prayerful in the stillness of great woods, or on the bosom of the untrodden prairie, and to her poetic mind the imminent birth of her child prefigures the advent of a master-man -- a hero, or the mother of heroes -- a thought conceived in the virgin breast of primeval nature, and dreamed out in a hush that is only broken by the sighing of the pine tree or the thrilling orchestra of a distant waterfall.
And when the day of days in her life dawns -- the day in which there is to be a new life, the miracle of whose making has been entrusted to her, she seeks no human aid. She has been trained and prepared in body and mind for this her holiest duty, ever since she can remember. The ordeal is best met alone, where no curious or pitying eyes embarrass her; where all nature says to her spirit: "'Tis love! 'tis love! the fulfilling of life!" When a sacred voice comes to her out of the silence, and a pair of eyes open upon her in the wilderness, she knows with joy that she has borne well her part in the great song of creation!
Presently she returns to the camp, carrying the mysterious, the holy, the dearest bundle! She feels the endearing warmth of it and hears its soft breathing. It is still a part of herself, since both are nourished by the same mouthful, and no look of a lover could be sweeter than its deep, trusting gaze.
She continues her spiritual teaching, at first silently -- a mere pointing of the index finger to nature; then in whispered songs, bird-like, at morning and evening. To her and to the child the birds are real people, who live very close to the "Great Mystery"; the murmuring trees breathe His presence; the falling waters chant His praise. If the child should chance to be fretful, the mother raises her hand. "Hush! hush!" she cautions it tenderly, "the spirits may be disturbed!" She bids it be still and listen to the silver voice of the aspen, or the clashing cymbals of the birch; and at night she points to the heavenly, blazed trail, through nature's galaxy of splendor to nature's God. Silence, love, reverence, -- this is the trinity of first lessons; and to these she later adds generosity, courage, and chastity.
Library #59 The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Robert Louis Stevenson
"Take a seat, and here is a glass of wine for you," said the lawyer. "Now, take your time, and tell me plainly what you want." "You know the doctor's ways, sir," replied Poole, "and how he shuts himself up. Well, he's shut up again in the cabinet; and I don't like it, sir -- I wish I may die if I like it. Mr. Utterson, sir, I'm afraid." "Now, my good man," said the lawyer, "be explicit. What are you afraid of?" "I've been afraid for about a week," returned Poole, doggedly disregarding the question, "and I can bear it no more."
The man's appearance amply bore out his words; his manner was altered for the worse; and except for the moment when he had first announced his terror, he had not once looked the lawyer in the face. Even now, he sat with the glass of wine untasted on his knee, and his eyes directed to a corner of the floor. "I can bear it no more, "he repeated. "Come," said the lawyer, "I see you have some good reason, Poole; I see there is something seriously amiss. Try to tell me what it is." "I think there's been foul play," said Poole, hoarsely. "Foul play!" cried the lawyer, a good deal frightened and rather inclined to be irritated in consequence. "What foul play! What does the man mean?" "I daren't say, sir," was the answer; "but will you come along with me and see for yourself?" Mr. Utterson's only answer was to rise and get his hat and greatcoat; but he observed with wonder the greatness of the relief that appeared upon the butler's face, and perhaps with no less, that the wine was still untasted when he set it down to follow.
It was a wild, cold, seasonable night of March, with a pale moon, lying on her back as though the wind had tilted her, and flying wrack of the most diaphanous and lawny texture. The wind made talking difficult, and flecked the blood into the face. It seemed to have swept the streets unusually bare of passengers, besides; for Mr. Utterson thought he had never seen that part of London so deserted. He could have wished it otherwise; never in his life had he been conscious of so sharp a wish to see and touch his fellow-creatures; for struggle as he might, there was borne in upon his mind a crushing anticipation of calamity. The square, when they got there, was full of wind and dust, and the thin trees in the garden were lashing themselves along the railing. Poole, who had kept all the way a pace or two ahead, now pulled up in the middle of the pavement, and in spite of the biting weather, took off his hat and mopped his brow with a red pocket-handkerchief. But for all the hurry of his coming, these were not the dews of exertion that he wiped away, but the moisture of some strangling anguish; for his face was white and his voice, when he spoke, harsh and broken.
Library #60 The Planet Mars and Its Inhabitants
J.L. Kennon
In the Spirit world we are given a name in accordance with our spiritual qualities and gifts and the kind of work we do. I came into material being as the fruit of the sacred union of my parents. It is not necessary to say aught concerning their social status, for on Mars all who unfold into a material expression of the Father are equal. Equal in rank, station, and in possession of the material fruits of earth.
After my education had been completed I was, in accordance with the Martian system of scientifically determining one's rightful vocation, assigned as overseer to a section of one of the main canals supplying water from the North Polar cap to an impounding reservoir near the city of Urid, the place of my birth.
I was in the 36th year (Martian reckoning) of my physical life on the planet when my transition occurred, which event was the result of my inability to observe, one night, warning signals sent out from a central station advising the eve of a tremendous drop in temperature. This occurred in the Martian autumn, and I succumbed to the intense cold. I was not married, so I left no immediate family except my parents, brothers and sisters.
I have come to your Earth to give your inhabitants some idea of the idealistic life lived by your more advanced brothers. I use the term idealistic in a relative way only, for in God's universe the degrees of material progress of His children are infinite in number.
In giving this information to the inhabitants of your world I have been assisted by the spirits of many former wise children of your Earth. The purpose of the information which I am about to impart to your people is mainly to stimulate and hasten into material expression the reign of God's kingdom on your Earth.
Many will reject this information, but it is God's truth nevertheless. But on the other hand, many of God's children now functioning on your planet will accept the statements as true, and they will be helped and encouraged in their hard struggle for material existence. This struggle, unequal as it is, is the result of darkness engendered by the loss of faith in God.
Man's faith in his Creator, in the ages preceding your present era of darkness, was sublime. Man's attitude towards, and his confidence in the promises of God was as the faith of a child to its parents, whom it has always trusted. But selfishness has gained the upper hand, and is now man's master on your Earth. To break the chains now binding man to self is the purpose of God's holy emissaries, who have descended from high spiritual spheres to your Earth to teach and show men the way out of bondage. They will succeed, for Omniscience has commanded it. It is under their direction that I am now contributing my little part in this movement.
Library #61 The Land That Time Forgot
Edgar Rice Burroughs
It must have been a little after three o'clock in the afternoon that it happened--the afternoon of June 3rd, 1916. It seems incredible that all that I have passed through--all those weird and terrifying experiences--should have been encompassed within so short a span as three brief months. Rather might I have experienced a cosmic cycle, with all its changes and evolutions for that which I have seen with my own eyes in this brief interval of time--things that no other mortal eye had seen before, glimpses of a world past, a world dead, a world so long dead that even in the lowest Cambrian stratum no trace of it remains. Fused with the melting inner crust, it has passed forever beyond the ken of man other than in that lost pocket of the earth whither fate has borne me and where my doom is sealed. I am here and here must remain.
After reading this far, my interest, which already had been stimulated by the finding of the manuscript, was approaching the boiling-point. I had come to Greenland for the summer, on the advice of my physician, and was slowly being bored to extinction, as I had thoughtlessly neglected to bring sufficient reading-matter. Being an indifferent fisherman, my enthusiasm for this form of sport soon waned; yet in the absence of other forms of recreation I was now risking my life in an entirely inadequate boat off Cape Farewell at the southernmost extremity of Greenland.
Greenland! As a descriptive appellation, it is a sorry joke--but my story has nothing to do with Greenland, nothing to do with me; so I shall get through with the one and the other as rapidly as possible.
The inadequate boat finally arrived at a precarious landing, the natives, waist-deep in the surf, assisting. I was carried ashore, and while the evening meal was being prepared, I wandered to and fro along the rocky, shattered shore. Bits of surf-harried beach clove the worn granite, or whatever the rocks of Cape Farewell may be composed of, and as I followed the ebbing tide down one of these soft stretches, I saw the thing. Were one to bump into a Bengal tiger in the ravine behind the Bimini Baths, one could be no more surprised than was I to see a perfectly good quart thermos bottle turning and twisting in the surf of Cape Farewell at the southern extremity of Greenland. I rescued it, but I was soaked above the knees doing it; and then I sat down in the sand and opened it, and in the long twilight read the manuscript, neatly written and tightly folded, which was its contents.
You have read the opening paragraph, and if you are an imaginative idiot like myself, you will want to read the rest of it; so I shall give it to you here, omitting quotation marks--which are difficult of remembrance. In two minutes you will forget me.
Library #62 The Island of Dr. Moreau
H.G. Wells
But in the first place I must state that there never were four men in the dingey,--the number was three. Constans, who was "seen by the captain to jump into the gig," luckily for us and unluckily for himself did not reach us. He came down out of the tangle of ropes under the stays of the smashed bowsprit, some small rope caught his heel as he let go, and he hung for a moment head downward, and then fell and struck a block or spar floating in the water. We pulled towards him, but he never came up.
I say lucky for us he did not reach us, and I might almost say luckily for himself; for we had only a small breaker of water and some soddened ship's biscuits with us, so sudden had been the alarm, so unprepared the ship for any disaster. We thought the people on the launch would be better provisioned (though it seems they were not), and we tried to hail them. They could not have heard us, and the next morning when the drizzle cleared,--which was not until past midday,--we could see nothing of them. We could not stand up to look about us, because of the pitching of the boat. The two other men who had escaped so far with me were a man named Helmar, a passenger like myself, and a seaman whose name I don't know,--a short sturdy man, with a stammer.
We drifted famishing, and, after our water had come to an end, tormented by an intolerable thirst, for eight days altogether. After the second day the sea subsided slowly to a glassy calm. It is quite impossible for the ordinary reader to imagine those eight days. He has not, luckily for himself, anything in his memory to imagine with. After the first day we said little to one another, and lay in our places in the boat and stared at the horizon, or watched, with eyes that grew larger and more haggard every day, the misery and weakness gaining upon our companions. The sun became pitiless. The water ended on the fourth day, and we were already thinking strange things and saying them with our eyes; but it was, I think, the sixth before Helmar gave voice to the thing we had all been thinking. I remember our voices were dry and thin, so that we bent towards one another and spared our words. I stood out against it with all my might, was rather for scuttling the boat and perishing together among the sharks that followed us; but when Helmar said that if his proposal was accepted we should have drink, the sailor came round to him.
Library #63 The Gods of Mars
Edgar Rice Burroughs
The confession of love which the girl's fright had wrung from her touched me deeply; but it humiliated me as well, since I felt that in some thoughtless word or act I had given her reason to believe that I reciprocated her affection.
Never have I been much of a ladies' man, being more concerned with fighting and kindred arts which have ever seemed to me more befitting a man than mooning over a scented glove four sizes too small for him, or kissing a dead flower that has begun to smell like a cabbage. So I was quite at a loss as to what to do or say. A thousand times rather face the wild hordes of the dead sea bottoms than meet the eyes of this beautiful young girl and tell her the thing that I must tell her.
But there was nothing else to be done, and so I did it. Very clumsily too, I fear. Gently I unclasped her hands from about my neck, and still holding them in mine I told her the story of my love for Dejah Thoris. That of all the women of two worlds that I had known and admired during my long life she alone had I loved.
The tale did not seem to please her. Like a tigress she sprang, panting, to her feet. Her beautiful face was distorted in an expression of horrible malevolence. Her eyes fairly blazed into mine. "Dog," she hissed. "Dog of a blasphemer! Think you that Phaidor, daughter of Matai Shang, supplicates? She commands. What to her is your puny outer world passion for the vile creature you chose in your other life?
"Phaidor has glorified you with her love, and you have spurned her. Ten thousand unthinkably atrocious deaths could not atone for the affront that you have put upon me. The thing that you call Dejah Thoris shall die the most horrible of them all. You have sealed the warrant for her doom.
"And you! You shall be the meanest slave in the service of the goddess you have attempted to humiliate. Tortures and ignominies shall be heaped upon you until you grovel at my feet asking the boon of death. "In my gracious generosity I shall at length grant your prayer, and from the high balcony of the Golden Cliffs I shall watch the great white apes tear you asunder."
She had it all fixed up. The whole lovely programme from start to finish. It amazed me to think that one so divinely beautiful could at the same time be so fiendishly vindictive. It occurred to me, however, that she had overlooked one little factor in her revenge, and so, without any intent to add to her discomfiture, but rather to permit her to rearrange her plans along more practical lines, I pointed to the nearest port-hole.
Library #64 Frankenstein
Mary Shelley
The latter part of his tale had kindled anew in me the anger that had died away while he narrated his peaceful life among the cottagers, and, as he said this, I could no longer suppress the rage that burned within me. "I do refuse it," I replied; "and no torture shall ever extort a consent from me. You may render me the most miserable of men, but you shall never make me base in my own eyes. Shall I create another like yourself, whose joint wickedness might desolate the world! Begone! I have answered you; you may torture me, but I will never consent."
"You are in the wrong," replied the fiend; "and, instead of threatening, I am content to reason with you. I am malicious because I am miserable. Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind? You, my creator, would tear me to pieces, and triumph; remember that, and tell me why I should pity man more than he pities me? You would not call it murder if you could precipitate me into one of those ice-rifts, and destroy my frame, the work of your own hands. Shall I respect man when he condemns me? Let him live with me in the interchange of kindness; and, instead of injury, I would bestow every benefit upon him with tears of gratitude at his acceptance. But that cannot be; the human senses are insurmountable barriers to our union. Yet mine shall not be the submission of abject slavery. I will revenge my injuries: if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear; and chiefly towards you my arch-enemy, because my creator, do I swear inextinguishable hatred. Have a care: I will work at your destruction, nor finish until I desolate your heart, so that you shall curse the hour of your birth."
A fiendish rage animated him as he said this; his face was wrinkled into contortions too horrible for human eyes to behold; but presently he calmed himself and proceeded --
"I intended to reason. This passion is detrimental to me; for you do not reflect that you are the cause of its excess. If any being felt emotions of benevolence towards me, should return them an hundred and an hundred fold; for that one creature's sake, I would make peace with the whole kind! But I now indulge in dreams of bliss that cannot be realised. What I ask of is reasonable and moderate; I demand a creature of another sex, but as hideous as myself; the gratification is small, but it is all that I can receive, and it shall content me. It is true we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another. Our lives will not be happy, but they will be harmless, and free from the misery I now feel. Oh! my creator, make me happy; let me feel gratitude towards you for one benefit! Let me see that I excite the sympathy of some existing thing; do not deny me my request!"
Library #65 Dracula's Guest
Baum Stoker
"Tell me, Johann, what is tonight?" He crossed himself, as he answered laconically: "Walpurgis nacht." Then he took out his watch, a great, old-fashioned German silver thing as big as a turnip and looked at it, with his eyebrows gathered together and a little impatient shrug of his shoulders. I realized that this was his way of respectfully protesting against the unnecessary delay and sank back in the carriage, merely motioning him to proceed. He started off rapidly, as if to make up for lost time. Every now and then the horses seemed to throw up their heads and sniff the air suspiciously. On such occasions I often looked round in alarm. The road was pretty bleak, for we were traversing a sort of high windswept plateau. As we drove, I saw a road that looked but little used and which seemed to dip through a little winding valley. It looked so inviting that, even at the risk of offending him, I called Johann to stop--and when he had pulled up, I told him I would like to drive down that road. He made all sorts of excuses and frequently crossed himself as he spoke. This somewhat piqued my curiosity, so I asked him various questions. He answered fencingly and repeatedly looked at his watch in protest.
Finally I said, "Well, Johann, I want to go down this road. I shall not ask you to come unless you like; but tell me why you do not like to go, that is all I ask." For answer he seemed to throw himself off the box, so quickly did he reach the ground. Then he stretched out his hands appealingly to me and implored me not to go. There was just enough of English mixed with the German for me to understand the drift of his talk. He seemed always just about to tell me something--the very idea of which evidently frightened him; but each time he pulled himself up saying, "Walpurgis nacht!"
I tried to argue with him, but it was difficult to argue with a man when I did not know his language. The advantage certainly rested with him, for although he began to speak in English, of a very crude and broken kind, he always got excited and broke into his native tongue--and every time he did so, he looked at his watch. Then the horses became restless and sniffed the air. At this he grew very pale, and, looking around in a frightened way, he suddenly jumped forward, took them by the bridles, and led them on some twenty feet. I followed and asked why he had done this. For an answer he crossed himself, pointed to the spot we had left, and drew his carriage in the direction of the other road, indicating a cross, and said, first in German, then in English, "Buried him--him what killed themselves."
Library #66 A Princess of Mars
Edgar Rice Burroughs
My first impulse was to tell her of my love, and then I thought of the helplessness of her position wherein I alone could lighten the burdens of her captivity, and protect her in my poor way against the thousands of hereditary enemies she must face upon our arrival at Thark. I could not chance causing her additional pain or sorrow by declaring a love which, in all probability she did not return. Should I be so indiscreet, her position would be even more unbearable than now, and the thought that she might feel that I was taking advantage of her helplessness, to influence her decision was the final argument which sealed my lips.
"Why are you so quiet, Dejah Thoris?" I asked. "Possibly you would rather return to Sola and your quarters." "No," she murmured, "I am happy here. I do not know why it is that I should always be happy and contented when you, John Carter, a stranger, are with me; yet at such times it seems that I am safe and that, with you, I shall soon return to my father's court and feel his strong arms about me and my mother's tears and kisses on my cheek." "Do people kiss, then, upon Barsoom?" I asked, when she had explained the word she used, in answer to my inquiry as to its meaning. "Parents, brothers, and sisters, yes; and," she added in a low, thoughtful tone, "lovers." "And you, Dejah Thoris, have parents and brothers and sisters?" "Yes." "And a--lover?" She was silent, nor could I venture to repeat the question. "The man of Barsoom," she finally ventured, "does not ask personal questions of women, except his mother, and the woman he has fought for and won."
"But I have fought--" I started, and then I wished my tongue had been cut from my mouth; for she turned even as I caught myself and ceased, and drawing my silks from her shoulder she held them out to me, and without a word, and with head held high, she moved with the carriage of the queen she was toward the plaza and the doorway of her quarters.
I did not attempt to follow her, other than to see that she reached the building in safety, but, directing Woola to accompany her, I turned disconsolately and entered my own house. I sat for hours cross-legged, and cross-tempered, upon my silks meditating upon the queer freaks chance plays upon us poor devils of mortals.
So this was love! I had escaped it for all the years I had roamed the five continents and their encircling seas; in spite of beautiful women and urging opportunity; in spite of a half-desire for love and a constant search for my ideal, it had remained for me to fall furiously and hopelessly in love with a creature from another world, of a species similar possibly, yet not identical with mine. A woman who was hatched from an egg, and whose span of life might cover a thousand years; whose people had strange customs and ideas; a woman whose hopes, whose pleasures, whose standards of virtue and of right and wrong might vary as greatly from mine as did those of the green Martians.
Library #67 A Midsummer's Night Dream
THESEUS: Here come the lovers, full of joy and mirth.
Joy, gentle friends! joy and fresh days of love
Accompany your hearts!
LYSANDER: More than to us
Wait in your royal walks, your board, your bed!
THESEUS: Come now; what masques, what dances shall we have,
To wear away this long age of three hours
Between our after-supper and bed-time?
Where is our usual manager of mirth?
What revels are in hand? Is there no play,
To ease the anguish of a torturing hour?
Call Philostrate.
PHILOSTRATE: Here, mighty Theseus.
THESEUS: Say, what abridgement have you for this evening?
What masque? what music? How shall we beguile
The lazy time, if not with some delight?
PHILOSTRATE: There is a brief how many sports are ripe:
Make choice of which your highness will see first.
THESEUS: [Reads] 'The battle with the Centaurs, to be sung
By an Athenian eunuch to the harp.'
We'll none of that: that have I told my love,
In glory of my kinsman Hercules.
'The riot of the tipsy Bacchanals,
Tearing the Thracian singer in their rage.'
That is an old device; and it was play'd
When I from Thebes came last a conqueror.
'The thrice three Muses mourning for the death
Of Learning, late deceased in beggary.'
That is some satire, keen and critical,
Not sorting with a nuptial ceremony.
'A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus
And his love Thisbe; very tragical mirth.'
Merry and tragical! tedious and brief!
That is, hot ice and wondrous strange snow.
How shall we find the concord of this discord?
PHILOSTRATE: A play there is, my lord, some ten words long,
Which is as brief as I have known a play;
But by ten words, my lord, it is too long,
Which makes it tedious; for in all the play
There is not one word apt, one player fitted:
And tragical, my noble lord, it is;
For Pyramus therein doth kill himself.
Which, when I saw rehearsed, I must confess,
Made mine eyes water; but more merry tears
The passion of loud laughter never shed.
THESEUS: What are they that do play it?
PHILOSTRATE: Hard-handed men that work in Athens here,
Which never labour'd in their minds till now,
And now have toil'd their unbreathed memories
With this same play, against your nuptial.
THESEUS: And we will hear it.
PHILOSTRATE: No, my noble lord;
It is not for you: I have heard it over,
And it is nothing, nothing in the world;
Unless you can find sport in their intents,
Extremely stretch'd and conn'd with cruel pain,
To do you service.
THESEUS: I will hear that play;
For never anything can be amiss,
When simpleness and duty tender it.
Go, bring them in: and take your places, ladies.
HIPPOLYTA: I love not to see wretchedness o'er charged
And duty in his service perishing.
THESEUS: Why, gentle sweet, you shall see no such thing.
HIPPOLYTA: He says they can do nothing in this kind.
Library #68 Antony and Cleopatra
OCTAVIUS CAESAR: Go to him, Dolabella, bid him yield;
Being so frustrate, tell him he mocks
The pauses that he makes.
DOLABELLA: Caesar, I shall.
[Exit]
[Enter DERCETAS, with the sword of MARK ANTONY]
OCTAVIUS CAESAR Wherefore is that? and what art thou that darest
Appear thus to us?
DERCETAS: I am call'd Dercetas;
Mark Antony I served, who best was worthy
Best to be served: whilst he stood up and spoke,
He was my master; and I wore my life
To spend upon his haters. If thou please
To take me to thee, as I was to him
I'll be to Caesar; if thou pleasest not,
I yield thee up my life.
OCTAVIUS CAESAR: What is't thou say'st?
DERCETAS: I say, O Caesar, Antony is dead.
OCTAVIUS CAESAR: The breaking of so great a thing should make
A greater crack: the round world
Should have shook lions into civil streets,
And citizens to their dens: the death of Antony
Is not a single doom; in the name lay
A moiety of the world.
DERCETAS: He is dead, Caesar:
Not by a public minister of justice,
Nor by a hired knife; but that self hand,
Which writ his honour in the acts it did,
Hath, with the courage which the heart did lend it,
Splitted the heart. This is his sword;
I robb'd his wound of it; behold it stain'd
With his most noble blood.
OCTAVIUS CAESAR: Look you sad, friends?
The gods rebuke me, but it is tidings
To wash the eyes of kings.
AGRIPPA: And strange it is,
That nature must compel us to lament
Our most persisted deeds.
MECAENAS: His taints and honours
Waged equal with him.
AGRIPPA: A rarer spirit never
Did steer humanity: but you, gods, will give us
Some faults to make us men. Caesar is touch'd.
MECAENAS: When such a spacious mirror's set before him,
He needs must see himself.
OCTAVIUS CAESAR: O Antony!
I have follow'd thee to this; but we do lance
Diseases in our bodies: I must perforce
Have shown to thee such a declining day,
Or look on thine; we could not stall together
In the whole world: but yet let me lament,
With tears as sovereign as the blood of hearts,
That thou, my brother, my competitor
In top of all design, my mate in empire,
Friend and companion in the front of war,
The arm of mine own body, and the heart
Where mine his thoughts did kindle,--that our stars,
Unreconciliable, should divide
Our equalness to this. Hear me, good friends--
But I will tell you at some meeter season:
[Enter an Egyptian]
The business of this man looks out of him;
We'll hear him what he says. Whence are you?
Egyptian. A poor Egyptian yet. The queen my mistress,
Confined in all she has, her monument,
Of thy intents desires instruction,
That she preparedly may frame herself
To the way she's forced to.
Library #69 As You Like It
ORLANDO: As I remember, Adam, it was upon this fashion bequeathed me by will but poor a thousand crowns, and, as thou sayest, charged my brother, on his blessing, to breed me well: and there begins my
sadness. My brother Jaques he keeps at school, and report speaks goldenly of his profit: for my part,
he keeps me rustically at home, or, to speak more properly, stays me here at home unkept; for call you
that keeping for a gentleman of my birth, that differs not from the stalling of an ox? His horses
are bred better; for, besides that they are fair with their feeding, they are taught their manage,
and to that end riders dearly hired: but I, his brother, gain nothing under him but growth; for the
which his animals on his dunghills are as much bound to him as I. Besides this nothing that he so
plentifully gives me, the something that nature gave me his countenance seems to take from me: he lets
me feed with his hinds, bars me the place of a brother, and, as much as in him lies, mines my
gentility with my education. This is it, Adam, that grieves me; and the spirit of my father, which I
think is within me, begins to mutiny against this servitude: I will no longer endure it, though yet I
know no wise remedy how to avoid it.
ADAM: Yonder comes my master, your brother.
ORLANDO: Go apart, Adam, and thou shalt hear how he will shake me up.
[Enter OLIVER]
OLIVER: Now, sir! what make you here?
ORLANDO: Nothing: I am not taught to make any thing.
OLIVER: What mar you then, sir?
ORLANDO: Marry, sir, I am helping you to mar that which God made, a poor unworthy brother of yours, with idleness.
OLIVER: Marry, sir, be better employed, and be naught awhile.
ORLANDO: Shall I keep your hogs and eat husks with them? What prodigal portion have I spent, that I should come to such penury?
OLIVER: Know you where your are, sir?
ORLANDO: O, sir, very well; here in your orchard.
OLIVER: Know you before whom, sir?
ORLANDO: Ay, better than him I am before knows me. I know you are my eldest brother; and, in the gentle condition of blood, you should so know me. The courtesy of nations allows you my better, in that
you are the first-born; but the same tradition takes not away my blood, were there twenty brothers
betwixt us: I have as much of my father in me as you; albeit, I confess, your coming before me is
nearer to his reverence.
OLIVER: What, boy!
ORLANDO: Come, come, elder brother, you are too young in this.
OLIVER: Wilt thou lay hands on me, villain?
ORLANDO: I am no villain; I am the youngest son of Sir Rowland de Boys; he was my father, and he is thrice a villain that says such a father begot villains. Wert thou not my brother, I would not take this hand
from thy throat till this other had pulled out thy tongue for saying so: thou hast railed on thyself.
Library #70 Cymbeline
CLOTEN: I am near to the place where they should meet, if Pisanio have mapped it truly. How fit his garments serve me! Why should his mistress, who was made by him that made the tailor, not be fit too? The rather--saving reverence of the word--for 'tis said a woman's fitness comes by fits. Therein I must
play the workman. I dare speak it to myself--for it is not vain-glory for a man and his glass to confer
in his own chamber--I mean, the lines of my body are as well drawn as his; no less young, more strong,
not beneath him in fortunes, beyond him in the advantage of the time, above him in birth, alike
conversant in general services, and more remarkable in single oppositions: yet this imperceiverant
thing loves him in my despite. What mortality is! Posthumus, thy head, which now is growing upon thy
shoulders, shall within this hour be off; thy mistress enforced; thy garments cut to pieces before
thy face: and all this done, spurn her home to her father; who may haply be a little angry for my so
rough usage; but my mother, having power of his testiness, shall turn all into my commendations. My
horse is tied up safe: out, sword, and to a sore purpose! Fortune, put them into my hand! This is
the very description of their meeting-place; and the fellow dares not deceive me.
BELARIUS [To IMOGEN]: You are not well: remain here in the cave; We'll come to you after hunting.
ARVIRAGUS [To IMOGEN]: Brother, stay here Are we not brothers?
IMOGEN: So man and man should be; But clay and clay differs in dignity, Whose dust is both alike. I am very sick.
GUIDERIUS: Go you to hunting; I'll abide with him.
IMOGEN: So sick I am not, yet I am not well; But not so citizen a wanton as
To seem to die ere sick: so please you, leave me; Stick to your journal course: the breach of custom
Is breach of all. I am ill, but your being by me Cannot amend me; society is no comfort
To one not sociable: I am not very sick, Since I can reason of it. Pray you, trust me here:
I'll rob none but myself; and let me die, Stealing so poorly.
GUIDERIUS: I love thee; I have spoke it How much the quantity, the weight as much, As I do love my father.
BELARIUS: What! how! how!
ARVIRAGUS: If it be sin to say so, I yoke me In my good brother's fault: I know not why I love this youth; and I have heard you say, Love's reason's without reason: the bier at door, And a demand who is't shall die, I'd say 'My father, not this youth.'
BELARIUS [Aside]: O noble strain! O worthiness of nature! breed of greatness!
Cowards father cowards and base things sire base: Nature hath meal and bran, contempt and grace.
I'm not their father; yet who this should be, Doth miracle itself, loved before me. 'Tis the ninth hour o' the morn.
Library #71 Hamlet
BERNARDO: Say,
What, is Horatio there?
HORATIO: A piece of him.
BERNARDO: Welcome, Horatio: welcome, good Marcellus.
MARCELLUS: What, has this thing appear'd again to-night?
BERNARDO: I have seen nothing.
MARCELLUS: Horatio says 'tis but our fantasy,
And will not let belief take hold of him
Touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us:
Therefore I have entreated him along
With us to watch the minutes of this night;
That if again this apparition come,
He may approve our eyes and speak to it.
HORATIO: Tush, tush, 'twill not appear.
BERNARDO: Sit down awhile;
And let us once again assail your ears,
That are so fortified against our story
What we have two nights seen.
HORATIO: Well, sit we down,
And let us hear Bernardo speak of this.
BERNARDO: Last night of all,
When yond same star that's westward from the pole
Had made his course to illume that part of heaven
Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,
The bell then beating one,--
MARCELLUS: Peace, break thee off; look, where it comes again!
BERNARDO: In the same figure, like the king that's dead.
MARCELLUS: Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.
BERNARDO: Looks it not like the king? mark it, Horatio.
HORATIO: Most like: it harrows me with fear and wonder.
BERNARDO: It would be spoke to.
MARCELLUS: Question it, Horatio.
HORATIO: What art thou that usurp'st this time of night,
Together with that fair and warlike form
In which the majesty of buried Denmark
Did sometimes march? by heaven I charge thee, speak!
MARCELLUS: It is offended.
BERNARDO: See, it stalks away!
HORATIO: Stay! speak, speak! I charge thee, speak!
MARCELLUS: 'Tis gone, and will not answer.
BERNARDO: How now, Horatio! you tremble and look pale:
Is not this something more than fantasy?
What think you on't?
HORATIO: Before my God, I might not this believe
Without the sensible and true avouch
Of mine own eyes.
MARCELLUS: Is it not like the king?
HORATIO: As thou art to thyself:
Such was the very armour he had on
When he the ambitious Norway combated;
So frown'd he once, when, in an angry parle,
He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.
'Tis strange.
MARCELLUS: Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour,
With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.
HORATIO: In what particular thought to work I know not;
But in the gross and scope of my opinion,
This bodes some strange eruption to our state.
MARCELLUS: Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows,
Why this same strict and most observant watch
So nightly toils the subject of the land,
And why such daily cast of brazen cannon,
And foreign mart for implements of war;
Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task
Does not divide the Sunday from the week;
What might be toward, that this sweaty haste
Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day:
Who is't that can inform me?
Library #72 Julius Caeser
BRUTUS: What said Popilius Lena?
CASSIUS: He wish'd to-day our enterprise might thrive. I fear our purpose is discovered.
BRUTUS: Look, how he makes to Caesar; mark him.
CASSIUS: Casca, be sudden, for we fear prevention. Brutus, what shall be done? If this be known,
Cassius or Caesar never shall turn back, For I will slay myself.
BRUTUS: Cassius, be constant: Popilius Lena speaks not of our purposes; For, look, he smiles, and Caesar doth not change.
CASSIUS: Trebonius knows his time; for, look you, Brutus. He draws Mark Antony out of the way.
DECIUS BRUTUS: Where is Metellus Cimber? Let him go, And presently prefer his suit to Caesar.
BRUTUS: He is address'd: press near and second him.
CINNA: Casca, you are the first that rears your hand.
CAESAR: Are we all ready? What is now amiss that Caesar and his senate must redress?
METELLUS CIMBER: Most high, most mighty, and most puissant Caesar, Metellus Cimber throws before thy seat An humble heart,--
CAESAR: I must prevent thee, Cimber.
These couchings and these lowly courtesies
Might fire the blood of ordinary men,
And turn pre-ordinance and first decree
Into the law of children. Be not fond,
To think that Caesar bears such rebel blood
That will be thaw'd from the true quality
With that which melteth fools; I mean, sweet words,
Low-crooked court'sies and base spaniel-fawning.
Thy brother by decree is banished:
If thou dost bend and pray and fawn for him,
I spurn thee like a cur out of my way.
Know, Caesar doth not wrong, nor without cause
Will he be satisfied.
METELLUS CIMBER: Is there no voice more worthy than my own
To sound more sweetly in great Caesar's ear
For the repealing of my banish'd brother?
BRUTUS: I kiss thy hand, but not in flattery, Caesar;
Desiring thee that Publius Cimber may
Have an immediate freedom of repeal.
CAESAR: What, Brutus!
CASSIUS: Pardon, Caesar; Caesar, pardon:
As low as to thy foot doth Cassius fall,
To beg enfranchisement for Publius Cimber.
CAESAR: I could be well moved, if I were as you:
If I could pray to move, prayers would move me:
But I am constant as the northern star,
Of whose true-fix'd and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament.
The skies are painted with unnumber'd sparks,
They are all fire and every one doth shine,
But there's but one in all doth hold his place:
So in the world; 'tis furnish'd well with men,
And men are flesh and blood, and apprehensive;
Yet in the number I do know but one
That unassailable holds on his rank,
Unshaked of motion: and that I am he,
Let me a little show it, even in this;
That I was constant Cimber should be banish'd,
And constant do remain to keep him so.
CINNA: O Caesar,--
CAESAR: Hence! wilt thou lift up Olympus?
DECIUS BRUTUS: Great Caesar,--
CAESAR: Doth not Brutus bootless kneel?
CASCA: Speak, hands for me!
CAESAR: Et tu, Brute! Then fall, Caesar.
Library #73 Love's Labour's Lost
FERDINAND: Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives,
Live register'd upon our brazen tombs
And then grace us in the disgrace of death;
When, spite of cormorant devouring Time,
The endeavor of this present breath may buy
That honour which shall bate his scythe's keen edge
And make us heirs of all eternity.
Therefore, brave conquerors,--for so you are,
That war against your own affections
And the huge army of the world's desires,--
Our late edict shall strongly stand in force:
Navarre shall be the wonder of the world;
Our court shall be a little Academe,
Still and contemplative in living art.
You three, Biron, Dumain, and Longaville,
Have sworn for three years' term to live with me
My fellow-scholars, and to keep those statutes
That are recorded in this schedule here:
Your oaths are pass'd; and now subscribe your names,
That his own hand may strike his honour down
That violates the smallest branch herein:
If you are arm'd to do as sworn to do,
Subscribe to your deep oaths, and keep it too.
LONGAVILLE: I am resolved; 'tis but a three years' fast:
The mind shall banquet, though the body pine:
Fat paunches have lean pates, and dainty bits
Make rich the ribs, but bankrupt quite the wits.
DUMAIN: My loving lord, Dumain is mortified:
The grosser manner of these world's delights
He throws upon the gross world's baser slaves:
To love, to wealth, to pomp, I pine and die;
With all these living in philosophy.
BIRON: I can but say their protestation over;
So much, dear liege, I have already sworn,
That is, to live and study here three years.
But there are other strict observances;
As, not to see a woman in that term,
Which I hope well is not enrolled there;
And one day in a week to touch no food
And but one meal on every day beside,
The which I hope is not enrolled there;
And then, to sleep but three hours in the night,
And not be seen to wink of all the day--
When I was wont to think no harm all night
And make a dark night too of half the day--
Which I hope well is not enrolled there:
O, these are barren tasks, too hard to keep,
Not to see ladies, study, fast, not sleep!
FERDINAND: Your oath is pass'd to pass away from these.
BIRON: Let me say no, my liege, an if you please:
I only swore to study with your grace
And stay here in your court for three years' space.
LONGAVILLE: You swore to that, Biron, and to the rest.
BIRON: By yea and nay, sir, then I swore in jest.
What is the end of study? let me know.
FERDINAND: Why, that to know, which else we should not know.
BIRON: Things hid and barr'd, you mean, from common sense?
FERDINAND: Ay, that is study's godlike recompense.
Library #74 Macbeth
First Witch: Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd.
Second Witch: Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined.
Third Witch: Harpier cries 'Tis time, 'tis time.
First Witch: Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison'd entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter'd venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i' the charmed pot.
ALL: Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
Second Witch: Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg and owlet's wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
ALL: Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Third Witch: Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches' mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Silver'd in the moon's eclipse,
Nose of Turk and Tartar's lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver'd by a drab,
Make the gruel thick and slab:
Add thereto a tiger's chaudron,
For the ingredients of our cauldron.
ALL: Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Second Witch: Cool it with a baboon's blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.
HECATE: O well done! I commend your pains;
And every one shall share i' the gains;
And now about the cauldron sing,
Live elves and fairies in a ring,
Enchanting all that you put in.
Second Witch: By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
Open, locks,
Whoever knocks!
MACBETH: How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags!
What is't you do?
ALL: A deed without a name.
MACBETH: I conjure you, by that which you profess,
Howe'er you come to know it, answer me:
Though you untie the winds and let them fight
Against the churches; though the yesty waves
Confound and swallow navigation up;
Though bladed corn be lodged and trees blown down;
Though castles topple on their warders' heads;
Though palaces and pyramids do slope
Their heads to their foundations; though the treasure
Of nature's germens tumble all together,
Even till destruction sicken; answer me
To what I ask you.
First Witch: Speak.
Second Witch: Demand.
Third Witch: We'll answer.
First Witch: Say, if thou'dst rather hear it from our mouths,
Or from our masters?
MACBETH: Call 'em; let me see 'em.
First Witch: Pour in sow's blood, that hath eaten
Her nine farrow; grease that's sweaten
From the murderer's gibbet throw
Into the flame.
ALL: Come, high or low;
Thyself and office deftly show!
MACBETH: Tell me, thou unknown power,--
First Witch: He knows thy thought:
Hear his speech, but say thou nought.
First Apparition: Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth! beware Macduff;
Beware the thane of Fife. Dismiss me. Enough.
MACBETH: Whate'er thou art, for thy good caution, thanks;
Thou hast harp'd my fear aright: but one
word more,--
First Witch: He will not be commanded: here's another,
More potent than the first.
Library #75 Much Ado About Nothing
BENEDICK: Pray thee, sweet Mistress Margaret, deserve well at my hands by helping me to the speech of Beatrice.
MARGARET: Will you then write me a sonnet in praise of my beauty?
BENEDICK: In so high a style, Margaret, that no man living shall come over it; for, in most comely truth, thou deservest it.
MARGARET: To have no man come over me! why, shall I always keep below stairs?
BENEDICK: Thy wit is as quick as the greyhound's mouth; it catches.
MARGARET: And yours as blunt as the fencer's foils, which hit, but hurt not.
BENEDICK: A most manly wit, Margaret; it will not hurt a woman: and so, I pray thee, call Beatrice: I give thee the bucklers.
MARGARET: Give us the swords; we have bucklers of our own.
BENEDICK: If you use them, Margaret, you must put in the pikes with a vice; and they are dangerous weapons for maids.
MARGARET: Well, I will call Beatrice to you, who I think hath legs.
BENEDICK: And therefore will come.
The god of love,
That sits above,
And knows me, and knows me,
How pitiful I deserve,--
I mean in singing; but in loving, Leander the good swimmer,
Troilus the first employer of panders,
and a whole bookful of these quondam carpet-mangers,
whose names yet run smoothly in the even road of a blank verse,
why, they were never so truly turned over and over as my poor self in love.
Marry, I cannot show it in rhyme;
I have tried: I can find out no rhyme to 'lady' but 'baby,'
an innocent rhyme; for 'scorn,' 'horn,'
a hard rhyme; for, 'school,' 'fool,'
a babbling rhyme;
very ominous endings:
no, I was not born under a rhyming planet,
nor I cannot woo in festival terms.
Sweet Beatrice, wouldst thou come when I called thee?
BEATRICE: Yea, signior, and depart when you bid me.
BENEDICK: O, stay but till then!
BEATRICE: 'Then' is spoken; fare you well now: and yet, ere I go, let me go with that I came; which is, with knowing what hath passed between you and Claudio.
BENEDICK: Only foul words; and thereupon I will kiss thee.
BEATRICE: Foul words is but foul wind, and foul wind is but foul breath, and foul breath is noisome; therefore I will depart unkissed.
BENEDICK: Thou hast frighted the word out of his right sense, so forcible is thy wit. But I must tell thee
plainly, Claudio undergoes my challenge; and either I must shortly hear from him, or I will subscribe
him a coward. And, I pray thee now, tell me for which of my bad parts didst thou first fall in love with me?
BEATRICE: For them all together; which maintained so politic a state of evil that they will not admit any good part to intermingle with them. But for which of my good parts did you first suffer love for me?
BENEDICK: Suffer love! a good epithet! I do suffer love indeed, for I love thee against my will.
Library #76 Othello
IAGO: Despise me, if I do not. Three great ones of the city,
In personal suit to make me his lieutenant,
Off-capp'd to him: and, by the faith of man,
I know my price, I am worth no worse a place:
But he; as loving his own pride and purposes,
Evades them, with a bombast circumstance
Horribly stuff'd with epithets of war;
And, in conclusion,
Nonsuits my mediators; for, 'Certes,' says he,
'I have already chose my officer.'
And what was he?
Forsooth, a great arithmetician,
One Michael Cassio, a Florentine,
A fellow almost damn'd in a fair wife;
That never set a squadron in the field,
Nor the division of a battle knows
More than a spinster; unless the bookish theoric,
Wherein the toged consuls can propose
As masterly as he: mere prattle, without practise,
Is all his soldiership. But he, sir, had the election:
And I, of whom his eyes had seen the proof
At Rhodes, at Cyprus and on other grounds
Christian and heathen, must be be-lee'd and calm'd
By debitor and creditor: this counter-caster,
He, in good time, must his lieutenant be,
And I--God bless the mark!--his Moorship's ancient.
RODERIGO: By heaven, I rather would have been his hangman.
IAGO: Why, there's no remedy; 'tis the curse of service,
Preferment goes by letter and affection,
And not by old gradation, where each second
Stood heir to the first. Now, sir, be judge yourself,
Whether I in any just term am affined
To love the Moor.
RODERIGO: I would not follow him then.
IAGO: O, sir, content you;
I follow him to serve my turn upon him:
We cannot all be masters, nor all masters
Cannot be truly follow'd. You shall mark
Many a duteous and knee-crooking knave,
That, doting on his own obsequious bondage,
Wears out his time, much like his master's ass,
For nought but provender, and when he's old, cashier'd:
Whip me such honest knaves. Others there are Who,
trimm'd in forms and visages of duty,
Keep yet their hearts attending on themselves,
And, throwing but shows of service on their lords,
Do well thrive by them and when they have lined their coats
Do themselves homage: these fellows have some soul;
And such a one do I profess myself. For, sir,
It is as sure as you are Roderigo,
Were I the Moor, I would not be Iago:
In following him, I follow but myself;
Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty,
But seeming so, for my peculiar end:
For when my outward action doth demonstrate
The native act and figure of my heart
In compliment extern, 'tis not long after
But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve
For daws to peck at: I am not what I am.
RODERIGO: What a full fortune does the thicklips owe If he can carry't thus!
