Excerpt: THE harbor?patrol cutter, lights out, engine muffled, crept silently through the fog?bound waters.
Excerpt: I wish to tell you a tale that I heard told by a minstrel at the court of the wisest king of any faith who ever lived, the King of Castile, Lord Alfonso, a man of hospitality, generosity, wit, valor, courtesy and great chivalric ability. He was neither anointed nor consecrated: but was crowned with worth, and wisdom, and loyalty, valor and prowess. The king had assembled many knights and many minstrels at his court, and many powerful barons. When the court was a...
The sun was going down on the Black Spur Range. The red light it had kindled there was still eating its way along the serried crest, showing through gaps in the ranks of pines, etching out the interstices of broken boughs, fading away and then flashing suddenly out again like sparks in burnt-up paper. Then the night wind swept down the whole mountain side, and began its usual struggle with the shadows upclimbing from the valley, only to lose itself in the end and be abso...
Excerpt: WHEN God?s curse forsook my country, it fell on me. I had been young and heroic; I had fought well; what portion of the clock?work of Fate had been allotted me I had utterly performed. Twelve years ago I became a man and strove for my country?s freedom; now she has attained her heights without me, and I what am I? A shapeless hulk, that stays in the shadow, and that hates the world and the people of the world, and verily the God above the world!
High upon a rock, poised like a bird for flight, stark naked, his satin skin shining like gold and silver in the rising sun, stood a youth, tall, slim of body, not fully developed but with muscles promising, in their faultless, gently swelling outline, strength and suppleness to an unusual degree. Gazing down into the pool formed by an eddy of the river twenty feet below him, he stood as if calculating the distance, his profile turned toward the man who had just emerged ...
Excerpt: Chapter 1. SUNSHINE. ?The last day of October!? said the Sun to himself, ?the last day of my favorite month, and the birthday of my little namesake! See if I don?t make the most of it!?
Two houses stood on the hill. Strange houses, those, because of their contrast. Individually, each had qualities that captured the admiration. Compared as a pair, they clashed. The same was true of the owners. Claude Bigby owned the old mansion and it reflected his conservatism. For a century the Bigby family had lived on the slope above the town of Lamira in the great stone residence which looked lost among its own gables. The original Bigbys had hewn the oak trees to f...
Excerpt: Chapter 1. Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov ALEXEY Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, a landowner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe in its proper place. For the present I will only say that this ?landowner?for so we used to call him, although he hardly spent a day of his life on his own estate...
My father's house was in the country, seven miles away from the nearest town. He had been an officer in the navy; but as he had met with some accident that would disable him from ever serving again, he gave up his commission, and his half-pay. He had a small private fortune, and my mother had not been penniless; so he purchased a house, and ten or twelve acres of land, and set himself up as an amateur farmer on a very small scale. My mother rejoiced over the very small s...
CONTENTS CHAPTER . ENTER CHORUS I. A RESCUE -- II. OLD HOPES -- V. THE DISASTER -- V. BEAVER BEACH VI. YE’LL TAK’ THE HIGH ROAD AND I’LL TAK’ THE LOW ROAD -- VII. GIVE A DOG A BAD NAME -- VIII. A BAD PENNY TURNS UP -- X. OUTER DARKNESS -- X. THE TRYST -- XI. WHEN HALF-GODS GO -- XII. TO REMAIN ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE IS NOT ALWAYS A VICTORY -- XIII. THE WATCHER AND THE WARDEN -- XIV. WHITE ROSES IN A LAW-OFFICE -- XV. HAPPY FEAR GIVES HIMSELF UP -- XVI. THE TWO CANAANS...
Excerpt: Chapter 1. ST. AMBROSE?S CHOIR. ?For be it known That their saint?s honour is their own.? SCOTT. The town of Micklethwayte was rising and thriving. There were salubrious springs which an enterprising doctor had lately brought into notice. The firm of Greenleaf and Dutton manufactured umbrellas in large quantities, from the stout weather?proof family roof down to the daintiest fringed toy of a parasol. There were a Guild Hall and a handsome Corn Market. There was...
February 1st. Up, and to the office pretty betimes, and the Board not meeting as soon as I wished, I was forced to go to White Hall in expectation of a Committee for Tangier, but when I come it was put off, and so home again to the office, and sat till past two o'clock; where at the Board some high words passed between Sir W. Pen and I, begun by me, and yielded to by him, I being in the right in finding fault with him for his neglect of duty. At noon home to dinner, and ...
Excerpt: When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again.
From the moment when, through the courtesy of my friend Barrett Wendell, I came first to know Mr. Henry Adams's book, Mont-Saint- Michel and Chartres, I was profoundly convinced that this privately printed, jealously guarded volume should be withdrawn from its hiding-place amongst the bibliographical treasures of collectors and amateurs and given that wide publicity demanded alike by its intrinsic nature and the cause it could so admirably serve. To say that the book was...
Excerpt: EEN FIJNE MORGEND IN DE MEI In die eerste Lieve vrouwkensdagen was de Lente ziek. De zon bleef weg en klaterde maar van tijd tot tijd, zoo door een wolkenholleken, een bussel licht op de gele boterbloemen. Het versche groen dat zij langs alle kanten geweldig uit den grond, de boomen en het water had gezogen, zat er ongeduldig naar te wachten.
We are doing the English cathedral towns, aunt Celia and I. Aunt Celia has an intense desire to improve my mind. Papa told her, when we were leaving Cedarhurst, that he wouldn't for the world have it too much improved, and aunt Celia remarked that, so far as she could judge, there was no immediate danger; with which exchange of hostilities they parted. We are traveling under the yoke of an iron itinerary, warranted neither to bend nor break. It was made out by a young Hi...
Excerpt: Chapter 1. The New Project Tom Swift appeared to be calm, although in reality he was about as excited over his latest invention as he ever had been about anything in his life. ?I'm sure it?s going to work, Ned!? he said eagerly to his chum as they neared Tom?s private laboratory. ?With my new devices I hope to learn more about the planets. I want to start soon? ?Listen here!? broke in Ned Newton. ?If you?re thinking of going to Mars or the moon, just count me ou...
Excerpt: Chapter One. What subtle strange message had come to her out of the West? Carley Burch laid the letter in her lap and gazed dreamily through the window.
Perhaps I should admit on the title page that this book is By L. Frank Baum and his correspondents, for I have used many suggestions conveyed to me in letters from children. Once on a time I really imagined myself an author of fairy tales, but now I am merely an editor or private secretary for a host of youngsters whose ideas I am requestsed to weave into the thread of my stories. These ideas are often clever. They are also logical and interesting. So I have used them wh...
Y. Fashion. -- Lory, pay the post-boy, and take the portmanteau. -- Lory. -- Faith, sir, we had better let the post-boy take the portmanteau and pay himself. -- Y. Fashion. -- Why sure there's something left in it. -- Lory. -- Not a rag, upon my honour, sir—we eat the last of your wardrobe at Newmalton—and if we had had twenty miles farther to -- go, our next meal must have been off the cloak-bag. -- Y. Fashion. -- Why 'sdeath it appears full. -- Lory. -- Yes, sir—I made...