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

Contents PREFACE.......................................................................................................................................... 7 PREFACE BY MRS. SHELLEY TO FIRST COLLECTED EDITION, 1839. ......................... 16 POSTSCRIPT IN SECOND EDITION OF 1839. ........................................................................ 21 PREFACE BY MRS. SHELLEY. TO THE VOLUME OF POSTHUMOUS POEMS PUBLISHED IN 1824......................................................................................................................... 22 THE DAEMON OF THE WORLD. .............................................................................................. 26 ALASTOR: OR, THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE. .......................................................................... 39 NOTE ON ALASTOR, BY MRS. SHELLEY. ......................................................................................................... 54 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM. ............................................................................................................ 56 AUTHOR?S PREFACE................................................................

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: 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 tower among the Apennines It was in June that the sculptor, Kenyon, arrived on horse back at the gate of an ancient country house (which, from some of its features, might almost be called a castle) situated in a part of Tuscany somewhat remote from the ordinary track of tourists. Thither we must now accompany him, and endeavor to make our story flow onward, like a streamlet, past a gray tower that rises on the hillside, overlooking a spacious valley, which is set in the grand framework of the Apennines....

Excerpt: If the French have as great an aversion for traveling as the English have a propensity for it, both English and French have perhaps sufficient reasons. Something better than England is everywhere to be found; whereas it is excessively difficult to find the charms of France outside France. Other countries can show admirable scenery, and they frequently offer greater comfort than that of France, which makes but slow progress in that particular. They sometimes display a bewildering magnificence, grandeur, and luxury; they lack neither grace nor noble manners; but the life of the brain, the talent for conversation, the ?Attic salt? so familiar at Paris, the prompt apprehension of what one is thinking, but does not say, the spirit of the unspoken, which is half the French language, is nowhere else to be met with. Hence a Frenchman, whose raillery, as it is, finds so little comprehension, would wither in a foreign land like an uprooted tree....

Excerpt: The Toys to Have. The jolliest indoor games for boys and girls demand a floor, and the home that has no floor upon which games may be played falls so far short of happiness. It must be a floor covered with linoleum or cork carpet, so that toy soldiers and such-like will stand up upon it, and of a color and surface that will take and show chalk marks; the common green colored cork carpet without a pattern is the best of all. It must be no highway to other rooms, and well lit and airy. Occasionally, alas! it must be scrubbed--and then a truce to Floor Games....

Excerpt: I saw a gray-haired man, a figure of hale age, sitting at a desk and writing: He seemed to be in a room in a tower, very high, so that through the tall window on his left one perceived only distances, a remote horizon of sea, a headland and that vague haze and glitter in the sunset that many miles away marks a city. All the appointments of this room were orderly and beautiful, and in some subtle quality, in this small difference and that, new to me and strange. They were in no fashion I could name, and the simple costume the man wore suggested neither period nor country. It might, I thought, be the Happy Future, or Utopia, or the Land of Simple Dreams; an errant mote of memory, Henry James?s phrase and story of ?The Great Good Place,? twinkled across my mind, and passed and left no light....

Excerpt: The Poems of George Meredith by George Meredith.

Contents CHILLIANWALLAH..................................................................................................................... 14 THE DOE: A FRAGMENT........................................................................................................... 15 BEAUTY ROHTRAUT .................................................................................................................. 19 THE OLIVE BRANCH .................................................................................................................. 20 SONG .............................................................................................................................................. 23 THE WILD ROSE AND THE SNOWDROP ............................................................................. 24 THE DEATH OF WINTER .......................................................................................................... 25 SONG .............................................................................................................................................. 26 JOHN LACKLAND ....................................................

Excerpt: We sailed from Peru, where we had continued by the space of one whole year, for China and Japan, by the South Sea, taking with us victuals for twelve months; and had good winds from the east, though soft and weak, for five months? space and more. But then the wind came about, and settled in the west for many days, so as we could make little or no way, and were sometimes in purpose to turn back. But then again there arose strong and great winds from the south, with a point east; which carried us up, for all that we could do, toward the north: by which time our victuals failed us, though we had made good spare of them....

Excerpt: Chapter 1. A very little boy stood upon a heap of gravel for the honor of Rum Alley. He was throwing stones at howling urchins from Devil?s Row who were circling madly about the heap and pelting at him. His infantile countenance was livid with fury. His small body was writhing in the delivery of great, crimson oaths. ?Run, Jimmie, run! Dey?ll get yehs,? screamed a retreating Rum Alley child. ?Naw,? responded Jimmie with a valiant roar, ?dese micks can?t make me run.?...

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....

Introduction: Near seven years ago, a short while before his death in 1844, John Sterling committed the care of his literary Character and printed Writings to two friends, Archdeacon Hare and myself. His estimate of the bequest was far from overweening; to few men could the small sum-total of his activities in this world seem more inconsiderable than, in those last solemn days, it did to him. He had burnt much; found much unworthy; looking steadfastly into the silent continents of Death and Eternity, a brave man?s judgments about his own sorry work in the field of Time are not apt to be too lenient. But, in fine, here was some portion of his work which the world had already got hold of, and which he could not burn. This too, since it was not to be abolished and annihilated, but must still for some time live and act, he wished to be wisely settled, as the rest had been. And so it was left in charge to us, the survivors, to do for it what we judged fittest, if indeed doing nothing did not seem the fittest to us. This message, communicated after his decease, was naturally a sacred one to Mr. Hare and me....

Excerpt: ?Tis hard to say, if greater Want of Skill Appear in Writing or in Judging ill, But, of the two, less dang?rous is th? Offence, To tire our Patience, than mis-lead our Sense: Some few in that, but Numbers err in this, Ten Censure wrong for one who Writes amiss; A Fool might once himself alone expose, Now One in Verse makes many more in Prose....

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: Lady Susan Vernon to Mr. Vernon. My Dear Brother,--I can no longer refuse myself the pleasure of profiting by your kind invitation when we last parted of spending some weeks with you at Churchhill, and, therefore, if quite convenient to you and Mrs. Vernon to receive me at present, I shall hope within a few days to be introduced to a sister whom I have so long desired to be acquainted with. My kind friends here are most affectionately urgent with me to prolong my stay, but their hospitable and cheerful dispositions lead them too much into society for my present situation and state of mind; and I impatiently look forward to the hour when I shall be admitted into Your delightful retirement....

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!...

Excerpt: One of Our Conquerors by George Meredith.

Excerpt: You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. I arrived here yesterday, and my first task is to assure my dear sister of my welfare and increasing confidence in the success of my undertaking....

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

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?...