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Excerpt: The ancient and famous metropolis of the North sits overlooking a windy estuary from the slope and summit of three hills. No situation could be more commanding for the head city of a kingdom; none better chosen for noble prospects. From her tall precipice and terraced gardens she looks far and wide on the sea and broad champaigns. To the east you may catch at sunset the spark of the May lighthouse, where the Firth expands into the German Ocean; and away to the west, over all the carse of Stirling, you can see the first snows upon Ben Ledi....

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Excerpt: On Being Found Out? and ?The Notch on the Ax? by William Makepeace Thackeray, from Classic Mystery and Detective Stories -- Old Time English, ed. Julian Hawthowrne....

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Excerpt: In that pleasant district of merry England which is watered by the river Don, there extended in ancient times a large forest, covering the greater part of the beautiful hills and valleys which lie between Sheffield and the pleasant town of Doncaster. The remains of this extensive wood are still to be seen at the noble seats of Wentworth, of Warncliffe Park, and around Rotherham. Here haunted of yore the fabulous Dragon of Wantley; here were fought many of the most desperate battles during the Civil Wars of the Roses; and here also flourished in ancient times those bands of gallant outlaws, whose deeds have been rendered so popular in English song....

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Introduction: The species of publication which has come to be generally known by the title of Annual, being a miscellany of prose and verse, equipped with numerous engravings, and put forth every year about Christmas, had flourished for a long while in Germany before it was imitated in this country by an enterprising bookseller, a German by birth, Mr. Ackermann. The rapid success of his work, as is the custom of the time, gave birth to a host of rivals, and, among others, to an Annual styled The Keepsake, the first volume of which appeared in 1828, and attracted much notice, chiefly in consequence of the very uncommon splendour of its illustrative accompaniments. The expenditure which the spirited proprietors lavished on this magnificent volume is understood to have been not less than from ten to twelve thousand pounds sterling!...

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Excerpt: Towards the middle of the month of May, in the year 1660, at nine o?clock in the morning, when the sun, already high in the heavens, was fast absorbing the dew from the ramparts of the castle of Blois a little cavalcade, composed of three men and two pages, re-entered the city by the bridge, without producing any other effect upon the passengers of the quay beyond a first movement of the hand to the head, as a salute, and a second movement of the tongue to express, in the purest French then spoken in France: ?There is Monsieur returning from hunting.? And that was all....

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Excerpt: Prefatory Note: The execution of this version of the Iliad has been entrusted to the three Translators in the following three parts: Each Translator is therefore responsible for his own portion; but the whole has been revised by all three Translators, and the rendering of passages or phrases recurring in more than one portion has been determined after deliberation in common. Even in these, however, a certain elasticity has been deemed desirable....

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Excerpt: The Note Book of an English Opium-Eater by Thomas de Quincey.

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Contents The Note Book of an English Opium-Eater ...4 THREE MEMORABLE MURDERS .............................................................................................. 4 THE TRUE RELATIONS OF THE BIBLE TO MERELY HUMAN SCIENCE...................... 54 SCHLOSSER?S LITERARY HISTORY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ...................... 60 FOX AND BURKE .................................................................................................................................................... 84 JUNIUS....................................................................................................................................................................... 87 THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES, AS REPRESENTED ON THE EDINBURGH STAGE . 98 THE MARQUESS WELLESLEY 1 ............................................................................................ 125 MILTON VERSUS SOUTHEY AND LANDOR ........................................................................ 137 FALSIFICATION OF ENGLISH HISTORY ............................................................................. 154 A PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER...............................

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Introduction: Dead Souls, first published in 1842, is the great prose classic of Russia. That amazing institution, ?the Russian novel,? not only began its career with this unfinished masterpiece by Nikolai Vasil?evich Gogol, but practically all the Russian masterpieces that have come since have grown out of it, like the limbs of a single tree. Dostoieffsky goes so far as to bestow this tribute upon an earlier work by the same author, a short story entitled The Cloak; this idea has been wittily expressed by another compatriot, who says: ?We have all issued out of Gogol?s Cloak.?...

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Excerpt: The Palimpsest Review is the student literary publication for the seventeen Pennsylvania State University Campuses which formerly made up the Commonwealth Educational System, including the twelve campuses of the Commonwealth college, Berks, Schuylkill Haven, Allentown, Altoona, and Ogontz. All the short stories and poems published herein are the products of students enrolled on those campuses during the academic year prior to the semester of publication....

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Contents From the Editor’s Desk 2 Poetry 8 Gregory Enos “Scruffy” 9 Daniel Valente “MacArthur’s Return” 10 Amy Rumpf “The Unexpected” 11 Christie Sidora “Maybe I Could Sleep Tonight” 14 Lisa Alexander “Brown Chair” 15 Gregory Enos “Trapped in a Day, a Night, and an Eternity” 16 Daniel Valente “NewBorn from Old Preserved” 17 Vince Darcangelo “Blind Spot” 19 Megan Barber “Bic” 20 Michelle Delany “Reaching” 21 Katrina Dorneman “The Spirit of Rock Climbing” 22 James Pinkstone “If I Leaned Over and Kissed You” 23 Steve Price “Coolness” 25 Ryan Smith “Saying Goodby” 26 Jennifer Potter “Grandmother Told Me ‘Bout You” 27 Rebecca Matos “A Taste of Mango” 28 Andy Calvin “Along the Cliff Where Mary Stands” 29 Rebecca Shaw “Eat More Opossum” 30 Matthew R Johnson “Cutting Taxes” 32 Jennifer Potter “Sip of Water” 34 Short Storis 36 Joel Harris “Disconnected” 37 Rebecca A. Shaw “Hope” 51 Susan Strohm “The Goddess of Bridgedale High” 54 James Pinkstone “An Ambulance for the Porcelain People” 57 Anthony Tresselt “Uncertain Reconciliation” 66...

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Preface: In making this abridgement of Boswell?s Life of Johnson I have omitted most of Boswell?s criticisms, comments, and notes, all of Johnson?s opinions in legal cases, most of the letters, and parts of the conversation dealing with matters which were of greater importance in Boswell?s day than now. I have kept in mind an old habit, common enough, I dare say, among its devotees, of opening the book of random, and reading wherever the eye falls upon a passage of especial interest. All such passages, I hope, have been retained, and enough of the whole book to illustrate all the phases of Johnson?s mind and of his time which Boswell observed....

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Excerpt: A young Irish gentleman of the numerous clan O?Donnells, and a Patrick, hardly a distinction of him until we know him, had bound himself, by purchase of a railway-ticket, to travel direct to the borders of North Wales, on a visit to a notable landowner of those marches, the Squire Adister, whose family-seat was where the hills begin to lift and spy into the heart of black mountains. Examining his ticket with an apparent curiosity, the son of a greener island debated whether it would not be better for him to follow his inclinations, now that he had gone so far as to pay for the journey, and stay. But his inclinations were also subject to question, upon his considering that he had expended pounds English for the privilege of making the journey in this very train....

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Excerpt: Welcome to the fourth volume of the Best of Four. We hope you enjoy reading it as much as we have enjoyed bringing it to you. The purpose of Best of Four is to bring the best writing produced in English 004 to the widest possible audience. Our students have important stories to tell and powerful voices to be heard. The students who read these essays will learn that they too have permission to state what is important to them in a public voice....

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Table of Contents: Breaking the Ice ................................................................................................................................................................ 4 Computer Dilemma ........................................................................................................................................................... 5 Computers in the Dorm Rooms ........................................................................................................................................ 6 The Best Kind of Job ......................................................................................................................................................... 7 Setting the Record Straight .............................................................................................................................................. 8 Car Club ............................................................................................................................................................................. 9 Wrestling ......................................................

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Excerpt: The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, Vol. One.

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Excerpt: In the latter half of 1914 a few of us were writing that this war was a ?War of Ideas.? A phrase, ?The War to end War,? got into circulation, amidst much sceptical comment. It was a phrase powerful enough to sway many men, essentially pacifists, towards taking an active part in the war against German imperialism, but it was a phrase whose chief content was its aspiration. People were already writing in those early days of disarmament and of the abolition of the armament industry throughout the world; they realized fully the element of industrial belligerency behind the shining armour of imperialism, and they denounced the ?Krupp-Kaiser? alliance. But against such writing and such thought we had to count, in those days, great and powerful realities. Even to those who expressed these ideas there lay visibly upon them the shadow of impracticability; they were very ?advanced? ideas in 1914, very Utopian....

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Excerpt: What Is Man and Other Essays by Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens).

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Contents WHAT IS MAN? ......................................................................................................................................................... 4 THE DEATH OF JEAN ............................................................................................................................................ 75 THE TURNING-POINT OF MY LIFE ................................................................................................................... 86 HOW TO MAKE HISTORY DATES STICK ......................................................................................................... 95 THE MEMORABLE ASSASSINATION............................................................................................................... 108 A SCRAP OF CURIOUS HISTORY...................................................................................................................... 118 SWITZERLAND, THE CRADLE OF LIBERTY ................................................................................................ 125 AT THE SHRINE OF ST. WAGNER ....................................................................

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Excerpt: The house of Heine Brothers, in Munich, was of good repute at the time of which I am about to tell,--a time not long ago; and is so still, I trust. It was of good repute in its own way, seeing that no man doubted the word or solvency of Heine Brothers; but they did not possess, as bankers, what would in England be considered a large or profitable business. The operations of English bankers are bewildering in their magnitude. Legions of clerks are employed. The senior book-keepers, though only salaried servants, are themselves great men; while the real partners are inscrutable, mysterious, opulent beyond measure, and altogether unknown to their customers. Take any firm at random,--Brown, Jones, and Cox, let us say,--the probability is that Jones has been dead these fifty years, that Brown is a Cabinet Minister, and that Cox is master of a pack of hounds in Leicestershire....

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Excerpt: Welcome to the ninth volume of Best of ?. For the past several years we have been publishing student writing with the intention of both celebrating the work that our students do and of sharing it with others for a variety of instructional purposes. Beginning with volume seven, we started accepting student essays from all twelve Commonwealth College campuses, from students in English 004, 015, and 030. The essays in the current edition are all from students in English 004 and 015 classes....

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Contents April Gilbert ?Cancun? ................................................................................... 4 April Gilbert ?My New Dog Neechi? .............................................................. 6 Kimberly Ann Jones ?The Lost Tradition? ........................................................ 7 Kimberly Ann Jones ?Nerves?........................................................................... 8 Tom Hoburn ?Snow Storm Baby? ................................................................... 9 Andrew Michael ?How To Get Completely Lost? .......................................... 11 Chris Hanney ?The War of the Stars? ............................................................ 12 Dana Helsel ?Role Reversal within MacBeth? ................................................ 14 Douglas Webster ?What Are We Fighting For?? ............................................ 17 John P Netterwald, Jr ?The Frogs? ................................................................ 19 Joy Marshall ?The Case of Billy Frank Vickers?............................................ 21 Kenneth Cara ?Joe Paterno: He Is Penn State? ...............

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Excerpt: Notes on Life and Letters by Joseph Conrad.

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Contents AUTHOR?S NOTE ........................................................................................................................................................ 5 PART I?LETTERS ........................................................................................................................................................ 8 BOOKS?1905 ............................................................................................................................................................. 8 HENRY JAMES?AN APPRECIATION?1905 ......................................................................................................... 15 ALPHONSE DAUDET?1898 .................................................................................................................................... 22 ANATOLE FRANCE?1904 ....................................................................................................................................... 32 STEPHEN CRANE?A NOTE WITHOUT DATES?1919 ......................................................................................... 46 TALES OF THE SEA?1898 .....................

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. The Foreigner At Home. ?This is no my ain house; I ken by the biggin? o?t.? Two recent books* one by Mr. Grant White on England, one on France by the diabolically clever Mr. Hillebrand, may well have set people thinking on the divisions of races and nations. Such thoughts should arise with particular congruity and force to inhabitants of that United Kingdom, peopled from so many different stocks, babbling so many different dialects, and offering in its extent such singular contrasts, from the busiest over-population to the unkindliest desert, from the Black Country to the Moor of Rannoch. It is not only when we cross the seas that we go abroad; there are foreign parts of England; and the race that has conquered so wide an empire has not yet managed to assimilate the islands whence she sprang. Ireland, Wales, and the Scottish mountains still cling, in part, to their old Gaelic speech. It was but the other day that English triumphed in Cornwall, and they still show in Mousehole, on St. Michael?s Bay, the house of the last Cornish-speaking woman. English itself, which will now frank the traveller through the most of...

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Contents CHAPTER I: THE FOREIGNER AT HOME ..................................................................................... 5 CHAPTER II: SOME COLLEGE MEMORIES................................................................................ 14 CHAPTER III: OLD MORTALITY .................................................................................................. 20 CHAPTER IV: A COLLEGE MAGAZINE ...................................................................................... 28 CHAPTER V: AN OLD SCOTCH GARDENER ............................................................................. 36 CHAPTER VI: PASTORAL .............................................................................................................. 41 CHAPTER VII: THE MANSE .......................................................................................................... 48 CHAPTER VIII: MEMOIRS OF AN ISLET .................................................................................... 53 CHAPTER IX: THOMAS STEVENSON ? CIVIL ENGINEER...................................................... 58 CHAPTER X: TALK AND TALKERS ....................

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Excerpt: Welcome to the fifth volume of Best of Four. We hope you enjoy reading it as much as we have enjoyed bringing it to you. The purpose of Best of Four is to bring the best writing produced in English 004 each fall semester to the widest audience possible. Our students have important stories to tell and powerful voices to be heard. The students who read these essays will learn that they too have permission to state what is important to them in a public voice....

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Contents How to Use This Magazine .............................................................................................................. 3 High School to College Andrew Makhoul ........................................................................................ 4 Ignoring Problems Creates More! Ashley Morris................................................................................ 5 Hang in There Brad Hart ................................................................................................................. 6 Nate Brandi Saveri ........................................................................................................................... 7 The Best Birthday Is the Sixteenth Brent Heimbach ......................................................................... 9 Sharing the Bread of Angels Christa Sist ......................................................................................... 10 Tragedy in the Night Danielle Gehman .......................................................................................... 11 My Grandfather David Smith ..............................................