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Excerpt: Scenes and Characters Or, Eighteen Months at Beechcroft by Charlotte M. Yonge.

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. Of Diaries and Diarists Touching The Heroine. Among the diaries beginning with the second quarter of our century, there is frequent mention of a lady then becoming famous for her beauty and her wit: ?an unusual combination,? in the deliberate syllables of one of the writers, who is, however, not disposed to personal irony when speaking of her. It is otherwise in his case and a general fling at the sex we may deem pardonable, for doing as little harm to womankind as the stone of an urchin cast upon the bosom?...

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Excerpt: Don Quixote. Part One by Miquel de Cervantes, translated by John Ormsby, 1922 ed.

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Excerpt: On a Moorland slope where sheep and goats were dispersed among the rocks, there lay a young lad on his back, in a stout canvas cassock over his leathern coat, and stout leathern leggings over wooden shoes. Twilight was fast coming on; only a gleam of purple light rested on the top of the eastern hills, but was gradually fading away, though the sky to the westward still preserved a little pale golden light by the help of the descending crescent moon....

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Excerpt: In a certain quiet and sequestered nook of the retired village of London -- perhaps in the neighborhood of Berkeley Square, or at any rate somewhere near Burlington Gardens--there was once a house of entertainment called the ?Bootjack Hotel.? Mr. Crump, the landlord, had, in the outset of life, performed the duties of Boots in some inn even more frequented than his own, and, far from being ashamed of his origin, as many persons are in the days of their prosperity, had thus solemnly recorded it over the hospitable gate of his hotel....

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Excerpt: The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Samuel Butler.

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Excerpt: A terrible shriek rang through the great Manor-house of Amesbury. It was preceded by a loud explosion, and there was agony as well as terror in the cry. Then followed more shrieks and screams, some of pain, some of fright, others of anger and recrimination. Every one in the house ran together to the spot whence the cries proceeded, namely, the lower court, where the armourer and blacksmith had their workshops....

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Excerpt: ACT I. SCENE I. Rome. A street. [Enter a company of mutinous Citizens, with staves, clubs, and other weapons.] First Citizen: Before we proceed any further, hear me speak. All: Speak, speak. First Citizen: You are all resolved rather to die than to famish? All: Resolved. resolved. First Citizen: First, you know Caius Marcius is chief enemy to the people. All: We know?t, we know?t. First Citizen: Let us kill him, and we?ll have corn at our own price. Is?t a verdict?...

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. What determined the speech that startled him in the course of their encounter scarcely matters, being probably but some words spoken by himself quite without intention--spoken as they lingered and slowly moved together after their renewal of acquaintance. He had been conveyed by friends an hour or two before to the house at which she was staying; the party of visitors at the other house, of whom he was one, and thanks to whom it was his theory, as always, that he was lost in the crowd, had been invited over to luncheon....

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Excerpt: The Recruit by Honore de Balzac, translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley.

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Excerpt: Under the Storm, or Steadfast?s Charge by Charlotte M. Yonge.

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Excerpt: Introduction to Canto First. November?s sky is chill and drear, November?s leaf is red and sear: Late, gazing down the steepy linn That hems our little garden in, Low in its dark and narrow glen You scarce the rivulet might ken, So thick the tangled greenwood grew....

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Preface: There are of course peculiar advantages as well as disadvantages in endeavouring to write the life of one recently departed. On the one hand, the remembrances connected with him are far fresher; his contemporaries can he consulted, and much can be made matter of certainty, for which a few years would have made it necessary to trust to hearsay or probable conjecture. On the other, there is necessarily much more reserve; nor are the results of the actions, nor even their comparative importance, so clearly discernible as when there has been time to ripen the fruit....

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Excerpt: The Reef by Edith Wharton.

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Excerpt: The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Volume One.

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Contents EARLY POEMS.............................................................................................................................. 12 STANZA, WRITTEN AT BRACKNELL................................................................................................................. 12 STANZAS.?APRIL, 1814........................................................................................................................................ 13 TO HARRIET. ........................................................................................................................................................... 14 TO MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN. ....................................................................................................... 15 TO ?. ......................................................................................................................................................................... 16 MUTABILITY............................................................................................................................................................ 16 ON DEATH. ..............................

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Excerpt: Old Moodie. The evening before my departure for Blithedale, I was returning to my bachelor apartments, after attending the wonderful exhibition of the Veiled Lady, when an elderly man of rather shabby appearance met me in an obscure part of the street....

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Excerpt: Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence.

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Excerpt: One day--and that day was many years ago now--I received a long, chatty letter from one of my old chums and fellow wanderers in Eastern waters. He was still out there, but settled down, and middle-aged; I imagined him--grown portly in figure and domestic in his habits; in short, overtaken by the fate common to all except to those who, being specially beloved by the gods, get knocked on the head early. The letter was of the reminiscent ?do you remember? kind--a wistful letter of backward glances. And, amongst other things, ?surely you remember old Nelson,? he wrote....

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Preface: When I first saw Mr. Osgood?s beautiful illustrated edition of The Lady of the Lake, I asked him to let me use some of the cuts in a cheaper annotated edition for school and household use; and the present volume is the result. The text of the poem has given me unexpected trouble. When I edited some of Gray?s poems several years ago, I found that they had not been correctly printed for more than half a century; but in the case of Scott I supposed that the text of Black?s so-called ?Author?s Edition? could be depended upon as accurate. Almost at the start, however, I detected sundry obvious misprints in one of the many forms in which this edition is issued, and an examination of others showed that they were as bad in their way....

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Excerpt: It was on a Saturday, at six in the morning, that I died after a three days? illness. My wife was searching a trunk for some linen, and when she rose and turned she saw me rigid, with open eyes and silent pulses. She ran to me, fancying that I had fainted, touched my hands and bent over me. Then she suddenly grew alarmed, burst into tears and stammered:...