THE SKETCH BOOKRURAL LIFE IN ENGLANDby Washington IrvingOh! friendly to the best pursuits of man,Friendly to thought, to virtue, and to peace,Domestic life in rural pleasures past!COWPER.THE stranger who would form a correct opinion of the Englishcharacter must not confine his observations to the metropolis. He mustgo forth into the country; he must sojourn in villages and hamlets; he...
Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnsonby Hesther Lynch PiozziINTRODUCTIONMrs. Piozzi, by her second marriage, was by her first marriage the Mrs. Thrale in whose house at Streatham Doctor Johnson was, after the year of his first introduction, 1765, in days of infirmity, an honoured and a cherished friend. The year of the beginning of the friendship was the year in which Johnson, fifty-six years old, obtained his degree of LL.D. from Dublin, andthough he never called himself Doctorwas thenceforth called Doctor by all his friends.Before her marriage Mrs. Piozzi had been Miss Hesther Lynch Salusbu
On a Saturday morning in early August in 1969, a series of bizarre and inexplicable events occurred aboard the fifty-five-thousand-ton luxury liner S.S. Bretagne as it was preparing to sail from the Port of New York to Le Havre. Claude Dessard, chief purser of the Bretagne, a capable and meticulous man, ran, as he was fond of saying, a "tight ship". In the fifteen years Dessard had served aboard the Bretagne, he had never encountered a situation he had not been able to deal with efficiently and discreetly. Considering that the S.S. Bretagne was a French ship, this was high tribute, indeed. H
I ignored the questions in the eyes of the groom as I lowered the grisly parcel and turned the horse in for care and maintenance. My cloak could not really conceal the nature of its contents as I slung the guts over my shoulder and stamped off toward the rear entrance to the palace. Hell would soon be demanding its paycheck. I skirted the exercise area and made my way to the trail that led toward the southern end of the palace gardens. Fewer eyes along that route. I would still be spotted, but it would be a lot less awkward than going in the front way, where things are always busy. Damn....
It was Jackstraw who heard it first-it was always Jackstraw, whose hearing was an even match for his phenomenal eyesight, who heard things first. Tired of having my exposed hands alternately frozen, I had dropped my book, zipped my sleeping-bag up to the chin and was drowsily watching him carving figurines from a length of inferior narwhal tusk when his hands suddenly fell still and he sat quite motionless. Then, unhurriedly as always, he dropped the piece of bone into the coffee-pan that simmered gently by the side of our oil-burner stove-curio collectors paid fancy prices for what they i
1 mander James D. Swanson of the U.S. Navy was short, plump and crowding forty. He had jet-black hair topping a pink, cherubic face, and with the deep permanent creases of laughter lines radiating from his eyes and curving around his mouth, he was a dead ringer for the cheerful, happy-golucky extrovert who is the life and soul of the party where the guests park their brains along with their hats and coats. That, anyway, was how he struck me at first glance, but on the reasonable assumption that I might very likely find some other qualities in the man picked to mand the latest and most pow
FOREWORD This book recounts the five-day history of a major American scientific crisis. As in most crises, the events surrounding the Andromeda Strain were a pound of foresight and foolishness, innocence and ignorance. Nearly everyone involved had moments of great brilliance, and moments of unaccountable stupidity. It is therefore impossible to write about the events without offending some of the participants. However, I think it is important that the story be told. This country supports the largest scientific establishment in the history of mankind. New discoveries are constantly
In the Court of the Fountain the sun of March shone through young leaves of ash and elm, and water leapt and fell through shadow and clear light. About that roofless court stood four high walls of stone. Behind those were rooms and courts, passages, corridors, towers, and at last the heavy outmost walls of the Great House of Roke, which would stand any assault of war or earthquake or the sea itself, being built not only of stone, but of incontestable magic. For Roke is the Isle of the Wise, where the art magic is taught; and the Great House is the school and central place of wizardry; and
December 29th: A lone figure, hunched down against the howling winter wind, moved step by frozen step through the Colorado wilderness. He was ill clad for such a winter trek, wearing soft thin boots and a clinging mauve with-sparkles tunic. His only defenses against the cold were an engineer cap on his platinum-blond thin hair and a scarf made of an old piece of furniture fabric wrapped several times around his thin pale neck. The wanderer was nearly frozen to death, his cracked and bleeding gloveless hands shoved into small pockets lined with tissue paper. His pale face, buried in the fabr
400 BCTHE FROGSby AristophanesCharacters in the PlayXANTHIAS, servant of dionysusDIONYSUSHERACLESA CORPSECHARONAEACUSA MAID SERVANT OF PERSEPHONEHOSTESS, keeper of cook-shopPLATHANE, her partnerEURIPIDESAESCHYLUSPLUTOCHORUS OF FROGSCHORUS OF BLESSED MYSTICSFROGS|The scene shows the house of HERACLES in thebackground. There enter two travellers: DIONYSUS on foot, in his...
A TALE OF THE TONTLAWALDLong, long ago there stood in the midst of a country covered withlakes a vast stretch of moorland called the Tontlawald, on whichno man ever dared set foot. From time to time a few bold spiritshad been drawn by curiosity to its borders, and on their returnhad reported that they had caught a glimpse of a ruined house ina grove of thick trees, and round about it were a crowd of beingsresembling men, swarming over the grass like bees. The men wereas dirty and ragged as gipsies, and there were besides a quantityof old women and half-naked children....
THE SPIRIT OF LAWSBy Charles de Secondat, Baron de MontesquieuTranslated by Thomas Nugent, revised by J. V. PrichardThe Translator to the Readerby Thomas Nugent1752The following work may with the strictest justice be said to have done honour to human nature as well as to the great abilities of the author. The wisest and most learned man, and those most distinguished by birth and the elevation of their stations, have, in every country in Europe, considered it as a most excellent performance. And may we be permitted to add, that a sovereign prince [1] as justly celebrated for his probity and go
PADRE IGNACIO Or The Song of TemptationPADRE IGNACIO OrThe Song of TemptationBY OWEN WISTER1- Page 2-PADRE IGNACIO Or The Song of TemptationIAt Santa Ysabel del Mar the season was at one of those momentswhen the air rests quiet over land and sea. The old breezes were gone; thenew ones were not yet risen. The flowers in the mission garden opened...
THE COMPARISON OF TIBERIUS AND CAIUS GRACCHUSWITH AGIS AND CLEOMENESby Plutarchtranslated by John DrydenHAVING given an account severally of these persons, it remainsonly that we should take a view of them in comparison with oneanother.As for the Gracchi, the greatest detractors and their worstenemies could not but allow that they had a genius to virtue beyondall other Romans, which was improved also by a generous education.Agis and Cleomenes may be supposed to have had stronger natural gifts,...
The Spirit of Place and Other EssaysThe Spirit of Place andOther Essaysby Alice Meynell1- Page 2-The Spirit of Place and Other EssaysTHE SPIRIT OF PLACEWith mimicry, with praises, with echoes, or with answers, the poetshave all but outsung the bells. The inarticulate bell has found too muchinterpretation, too many rhymes professing to close with her inaccessible...
AEMILIUS PAULUS229-160 B.C.by Plutarchtranslated by John DrydenALMOST all agree that the Aemilii were one of the ancient andpatrician houses in Rome; and those authors who affirm that KingNuma was pupil to Pythagoras tell us that the first who gave name tohis posterity was Mamercus, the son of Pythagoras, who, for hisgrace and address in speaking, was called Aemilius. Most of thisrace that have risen through their merit to reputation also enjoyed...