Excerpt: The Phantom ?Rickshaw and Other Ghost Stories by Rudyard Kipling.

Contents THE PHANTOM ?RICKSHAW ...................................................................................................... 4 MY OWN TRUE GHOST STORY................................................................................................ 25 THE STRANGE RIDE OF MORROWBIE JUKES ................................................................... 33 THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING........................................................................................... 54 ?THE FINEST STORY IN THE WORLD? ................................................................................. 87...

Excerpt: SING, O GODDESS, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Jove fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another....

Excerpt: ?GOODNESS! If ever I did see such a pig!? said Ellen King, as she mounted the stairs. ?I wouldn?t touch him with a pair of tongs!? ?Who?? said a voice from the bedroom. ?Why, that tramper who has just been in to buy a loaf! He is a perfect pig, I declare! I only wonder you did not find of him up here! The police ought to hinder such folk from coming into decent people?s shops! There, you may see him now!? ?Is that he upon the bridge--that chap about the size of our Harold??...

Excerpt: SUFFOLK. As by your high imperial majesty I had in charge at my depart for France, As procurator to your excellence, To marry Princess Margaret for your grace, So, in the famous ancient city, Tours, In presence of the Kings of France and Sicil, The Dukes of Orleans, Calaber, Bretagne and Alencon, Seven earls, twelve barons and twenty reverend bishops, I have perform?d my task and was espoused: And humbly now upon my bended knee, In sight of England and her lordly peers, Deliver up my title in the queen To your most gracious hands, that are the substance Of that great shadow I did represent....

Excerpt: The rugged forhead that with graue foresight Welds kingdomes causes, & affaires of state, My looser rimes (I wote) doth sharply wite, For praising loue, as I haue done of late, And magnifying louers deare debate; By which fraile youth is oft to follie led, Through false allurement of that pleasing baite, That better were in vertues discipled, Then with vaine poemes weeds to haue their fancies fed....

Excerpt: Chapter 1. How Merlin was assotted and doted on one of the ladies of the lake, and how he was shut in a rock under a stone and there died. So after these quests of Sir Gawaine, Sir Tor, and King Pellinore, it fell so that Merlin fell in a dotage on the damosel that King Pellinore brought to court, and she was one of the damosels of the lake, that hight Nimue. But Merlin would let her have no rest, but always he would be with her. And ever she made Merlin good cheer till she had learned of him all manner thing that she desired; and he was assotted upon her, that he might not be from her....

Excerpt: Chapter 58. M. Noirtier de Villefort. We will now relate what was passing in the house of the king?s attorney after the departure of Madame Danglars and her daughter, and during the time of the conversation between Maximilian and Valentine, which we have just detailed. M. de Villefort entered his father?s room, followed by Madame de Villefort. Both of the visitors, after saluting the old man and speaking to Barrois, a faithful servant, who had been twenty-five years in his service, took their places on either side of the paralytic....

Excerpt: Herman Melville. I and my chimney, two grey-headed old smokers, reside in the country. We are, I may say, old settlers here; particularly my old chimney, which settles more and more every day. Though I always say, I and my chimney, as Cardinal Wolsey used to say, ?I and my king,? yet this egotistic way of speaking, wherein I take precedence of my chimney, is hereby borne out by the facts; in everything, except the above phrase, my chimney taking precedence of me....

Excerpt: Chapter 1. How a young man came into the court of King Arthur, and how Sir Kay called him in scorn La Cote Male Taile. At the court of King Arthur there came a young man and bigly made, and he was richly beseen: and he desired to be made knight of the king, but his over-garment sat over-thwartly, howbeit it was rich cloth of gold. What is your name? said King Arthur. Sir, said he, my name is Breunor le Noire, and within short space ye shall know that I am of good kin....

Excerpt: How Sir Percivale came to a recluse and asked counsel, and how she told him that she was his aunt. Now saith the tale, that when Sir Launcelot was rid den after Sir Galahad, the which had all these ad ventures above said, Sir Percivale turned again unto the recluse, where he deemed to have tidings of that knight that Launcelot followed. And so he kneeled at her window, and the recluse opened it and asked Sir Percivale what he would. Madam, he said, I am a knight of King Arthur?s court, and my name is Sir Percivale de Galis. When the recluse heard his name she had great joy of him, for mickle she had loved him to-fore any other knight, for she ought to do so, for she was his aunt. And then she commanded the gates to be opened, and there he had all the cheer that she might make him, and all that was in her power was at his commandment....

Excerpt: Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody?s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind reception it meets with in the world, and that so very few are offended with it. But, if it should happen otherwise, the danger is not great; and I have learned from long experience never to apprehend mischief from those understandings I have been able to provoke: for anger and fury, though they add strength to the sinews of the body, yet are found to relax those of the mind, and to render all its efforts feeble and impotent....

Prologue: [Anselmo and Luigi] ANSELMO. What think you,--lies there any truth in the tale The King will wed again? LUIGI. Why not, Anselmo? A king is no less lonely than a collier When his wife dies, And his young daughter there, For all her being a princess, is no less A motherless child, and cries herself to sleep Night after night, as noisily as any, You may be sure....

Excerpt: ACT I. SCENE I. A desert place. [Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches.] First Witch: When shall we three meet again In thunder, lightning, or in rain? Second Witch: When the hurlyburly?s done, When the battle?s lost and won. Third Witch: That will be ere the set of sun. First Witch: Where the place? Second Witch: Upon the heath. Third Witch: There to meet with Macbeth. First Witch: I come, Graymalkin!...

Excerpt: King Richard II by William Shakespeare.

Excerpt: Chapter 1. On a cold morning in December, towards the close of the year 1612, a young man, whose clothing betrayed his poverty, was standing before the door of a house in the Rue des Grands-Augustine, in Paris. After walking to and fro for some time with the hesitation of a lover who fears to approach his mistress, however complying she may be, he ended by crossing the threshold and asking if Maitre Francois Porbus were within. At the affirmative answer of an old woman who was sweeping out one of the lower rooms the young man slowly mounted the stairway, stopping from time to time and hesitating, like a newly fledged courier doubtful as to what sort of reception the king might grant him....

Excerpt: The French Revolution. A History (Volume Two).

Contents VOLUME II.?THE CONSTITUTION ...................................................................................................................... 6 BOOK 2.I. THE FEAST OF PIKES ............................................................................................................................. 6 Chapter 2.1.I. In the Tuileries. ..................................................................................................................................... 6 Chapter 2.1.II. In the Salle de Manege. ..................................................................................................................... 10 Chapter 2.1.III. The Muster....................................................................................................................................... 21 Chapter 2.1.IV. Journalism. ........................................................................................................................................ 27 Chapter 2.1.V. Clubbism. ............................................................................................................................................ 31 Ch...

Excerpt: Chapter 1. How Queen Guenever rode a-Maying with certain knights of the Round Table and clad all in green. So it befell in the month of May, Queen Guenever called unto her knights of the Table Round; and she gave them warning that early upon the morrow she would ride a-Maying into woods and fields beside Westminster. And I warn you that there be none of you but that he be well horsed, and that ye all be clothed in green, outher in silk outher in cloth; and I shall bring with me ten ladies, and every knight shall have a lady behind him, and every knight shall have a squire and two yeomen; and I will that ye all be well horsed....

Excerpt: When, in March, 1832, the first volume of the now famous Contes Drolatiques was published by Gosselin of Paris, Balzac, in a short preface, written in the publisher?s name, replied to those attacks which he anticipated certain critics would make upon his hardy experiment....

Contents Translators Preface............................................................................................................................ 4 PROLOGUE ..................................................................................................................................... 6 THE FAIR IMPERIA........................................................................................................................ 8 THE VENIAL SIN........................................................................................................................... 21 HOW THE GOOD MAN BRUYN TOOK A WIFE. ......................................................................................... 21 HOW THE SENESCHAL STRUGGLED WITH HIS WIFE?S MODESTY. ................................................. 31 THAT WHICH IS ONLY A VENIAL SIN. ........................................................................................................ 38 HOW AND BY WHOM THE SAID CHILD WAS PROCURED. ................................................................... 44 HOW THE SAID LOVE-SIN WAS REPENTED OF AND LED TO GREAT MOURNING. ................

Excerpt: Dear Baron, you have taken so warm an interest in my long, vast ?History of French Manners in the Nineteenth Century,? you have given me so much encouragement to persevere with my work, that you have given me a right to associate your name with some portion of it. Are you not one of the most important representatives of conscientious, studious Germany?...

Excerpt: King Richard II by William Shakespeare.