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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....

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. How Beaumains came to King Arthur?s Court and demanded three petitions of King Arthur. When Arthur held his Round Table most plenour, it fortuned that he commanded that the high feast of Pentecost should be holden at a city and a castle, the which in those days was called Kynke Kenadonne, upon the sands that marched nigh Wales. So ever the king had a custom that at the feast of Pentecost in especial, afore other feasts in the year, he would not go that day to meat until he had heard or seen of a great marvel....

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Excerpt: ACT I. SCENE I. KING JOHN?S palace. [Enter KING JOHN, QUEEN ELINOR, PEMBROKE, ESSEX, SALISBURY, and others, with CHATILLON.] KING JOHN: Now, say, Chatillon, what would France with us? CHATILLON: Thus, after greeting, speaks the King of France In my behavior to the majesty, The borrow?d majesty, of England here. QUEEN ELINOR: A strange beginning: ?borrow?d majesty!? KING JOHN: Silence, good mother; hear the embassy. CHATILLON: Philip of France, in right and true behalf Of thy deceased brother Geffrey?s son, Arthur Plantagenet, lays most lawful claim To this fair island and the territories, To Ireland, Poictiers, Anjou, Touraine, Maine, Desiring thee to lay aside the sword Which sways usurpingly these several titles, And put these same into young Arthur?s hand, Thy nephew and right royal sovereign....

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. Of the joy King Arthur and the queen had of the achievement of the Sangreal; and how Launcelot fell to his old love again. So after the quest of the Sangreal was fulfilled, and all knights that were left alive were come again unto the Table Round, as the book of the Sangreal maketh mention, then was there great joy in the court; and in especial King Arthur and Queen Guenever made great joy of the remnant that were come home, and passing glad was the king and the queen of Sir Launcelot and of Sir Bors, for they had been passing long away in the quest of the Sangreal....

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Preface: It is sometimes treated as an impertinence to revive the personages of one story in another, even though it is after the example of Shakespeare, who revived Falstaff, after his death, at the behest of Queen Elizabeth. This precedent is, however, a true impertinence in calling on the very great to justify the very small!...

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Excerpt: While we pursued the horsemen of the north, He stole away and left his men: Whereat the great Lord of Northumberland, Whose warlike ears could never brook retreat, Cheer?d up the drooping army; and himself, Lord Clifford and Lord Stafford, all abreast, Charged our main battle?s front, and breaking in Were by the swords of common soldiers slain....

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Excerpt: Why We Are at War by Woodrow Wilson.

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Preface: This book sets out as forcibly and exactly as possible the religious belief of the writer. That belief is not orthodox Christianity; it is not, indeed, Christianity at all; its core nevertheless is a profound belief in a personal and intimate God. There is nothing in its statements that need shock or offend anyone who is prepared for the expression of a faith different from and perhaps in several particulars opposed to his own. The writer will be found to be sympathetic with all sincere religious feeling....

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Excerpt: The writer of a book which copies the manners and language of Queen Anne?s time, must not omit the Dedication to the Patron; and I ask leave to inscribe this volume to your Lordship, for the sake of the great kindness and friendship which I owe to you and yours. My volume will reach you when the Author is on his voyage to a country where your name is as well known as here. Wherever I am, I shall gratefully regard you; and shall not be the less welcomed in America because I am....

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Excerpt: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur?s Court by Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens).

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Excerpt: Chorus: O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention, A kingdom for a stage, princes to act And monarchs to behold the swelling scene! Then should the warlike Harry, like himself, Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels, Leash?d in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire Crouch for employment. But pardon, and gentles all, The flat unraised spirits that have dared On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth So great an object: can this cockpit hold The vasty fields of France? or may we cram Within this wooden O the very casques That did affright the air at Agincourt? O, pardon! since a crooked figure may Attest in little place a million; And let us, ciphers to this great accompt, On your imaginary forces work....

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Excerpt: The Second Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling.

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Contents HOW FEAR CAME.................................................................................................................................................... 4 THE LAW OF THE JUNGLE.................................................................................................................................. 19 THE MIRACLE OF PURUN BHAGAT ................................................................................................................... 21 A SONG OF KABIR ................................................................................................................................................. 34 LETTING IN THE JUNGLE .................................................................................................................................. 35 MOWGLI?S SONG AGAINST PEOPLE..................................................................................................................... 59 THE UNDERTAKERS ............................................................................................................................................. 60 A RIPPLE SONG .................................

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Excerpt: It is no easy task in this world to distinguish between what is great in it, and what is mean; and many and many is the puzzle that I have had in reading History (or the works of fiction which go by that name), to know whether I should laud up to the skies, and endeavor, to the best of my small capabilities, to imitate the remarkable character about whom I was reading, or whether I should fling aside the book and the hero of it, as things altogether base, unworthy, laughable, and get a novel, or a game of billiards, or a pipe of tobacco, or the report of the last debate in the House, or any other employment which would leave the mind in a state of easy vacuity, rather than pester it with a vain set of dates relating to actions which are in themselves not worth a fig, or with a parcel of names of people whom it can do one no earthly good to remember....

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. Now come ye for peace here, or come ye for war? ?The abbot, in his alb arrayed,? stood at the altar in the abbey-chapel of Rubygill, with all his plump, sleek, rosy friars, in goodly lines disposed, to solemnise the nuptials of the beautiful Matilda Fitzwater, daughter of the Baron of Arlingford, with the noble Robert Fitz-Ooth, Earl of Locksley and Huntingdon. The abbey of Rubygill stood in a picturesque valley, at a little distance from the western boundary of Sherwood Forest, in a spot which seemed adapted by nature to be the retreat of monastic mortification, being on the banks of a fine trout-stream, and in the midst of woodland coverts, abounding with excellent game. The bride, with her father and attendant maidens, entered the chapel; but the earl had not arrived....

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Excerpt: It is neither to the Roman Prince, nor to the representative of the illustrious house of Cajetani, which has given more than one Pope to the Christian Church, that I dedicate this short portion of a long history; it is to the learned commentator of Dante....

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Excerpt: They, who to states and governors of the Commonwealth direct their speech, High Court of Parliament, or, wanting such access in a private condition, write that which they foresee may advance the public good; I suppose them, as at the beginning of no mean endeavour, not a little altered and moved inwardly in their minds: some with doubt of what will be the success, others with fear of what will be the censure; some with hope, others with confidence of what they have to speak....

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Contents Areopagitica ? 3 John Milton: A Brief Bio, 1608 - 74 ? 49 L?ALLEGRO ? 50 IL PENSEROSO ? 54 COMUS ? 58 LYCIDAS ? 86

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Excerpt: The Works of Edgar Allan Poe in Five Volumes: Volume One.

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Contents EDGAR ALLAN POE AN APPRECIATION ............................................................................................................. 4 EDGAR ALLAN POE BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL ....................................................................................... 11 TO HELEN ................................................................................................................................................................. 14 DEATH OF EDGAR A. POE BY N. P. WILLIS........................................................................................................ 19 THE UNPARALLELED ADVENTURES OF ONE HANS PFAAL......................................................................... 26 Notes to Hans Pfaal .................................................................................................................................................... 68 THE GOLD-BUG ....................................................................................................................................................... 75 THE HOMO-CAMELEOPARD ...................................................................

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Introduction: In an age of materialism like our own the phenomenon of spiritual power is as significant and inspiring as it is rare. No longer associated with the ?divine right? of kings, it has survived the downfall of feudal and theocratic systems as a mystic personal emanation in place of a coercive weapon of statecraft....

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Contents INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................................................... 4 LIST OF POSTHUMOUS WORKS......................................................................................................................... 34 THE FORGED COUPON ........................................................................................................................................ 35 AFTER THE DANCE ............................................................................................................................................. 108 ALYOSHA THE POT ............................................................................................................................................. 118 MY DREAM ............................................................................................................................................................ 123 THERE ARE NO GUILTY PEOPLE .................................................................................................................... 136 THE YOUNG TSAR .............

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Excerpt: Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence.

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Contents PART ONE........................................................................................................................................ 4 CHAPTER I THE EARLY MARRIED LIFE OF THE MORELS ............................................................................ 4 CHAPTER II THE BIRTH OF PAUL, AND ANOTHER BATTLE......................................................................... 31 CHAPTER III THE CASTING OFF OF MOREL?THE TAKING ON OF WILLIAM ....................................... 51 CHAPTER IV THE YOUNG LIFE OF PAUL............................................................................................................ 64 CHAPTER V PAUL LAUNCHES INTO LIFE .......................................................................................................... 91 CHAPTER VI DEATH IN THE FAMILY................................................................................................................ 123 PART TWO................................................................................................................................... 153 CHAPTER VII LAD-AND-GIRL LOVE................................

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Excerpt: Exception has been taken to the title of this seeming tomfoolery on the ground that the Catherine it represents is not Great Catherine, but the Catherine whose gallantries provide some of the lightest pages of modern history. Great Catherine, it is said, was the Catherine whose diplomacy, whose campaigns and conquests, whose plans of Liberal reform, whose correspondence with Grimm and Voltaire enabled her to cut such a magnificent figure in the eighteenth century....