Excerpt: Chapter 1. The Betrothal. Pere Merlier?s Mill, one beautiful summer evening, was arranged for a grand fete. In the courtyard were three tables, placed end to end, which awaited the guests. Everyone knew that Francoise, Merlier?s daughter, was that night to be betrothed to Dominique, a young man who was accused of idleness but whom the fair sex for three leagues around gazed at with sparkling eyes, such a fine appearance had he....

Excerpt: The Wings of the Dove by Henry James.

The Death of Ivan Ilyitch is the story of a socially ambitious middle-aged judge who contracts an unexplained and untreatable illness. As Ivan Ilyitch is forced to face the death he fears, he asks himself whether the life he thought was so correct was, in fact, a moral life after all. Written after Tolstoy's religious conversion, the novella is widely considered to be one of his masterpieces. (Summary by Laurie Anne Walden)...

Literature

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?...

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

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....

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....

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

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....

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?...

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....

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

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

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....

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....

Excerpt: The Reef by Edith Wharton.

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

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. ..............................

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....

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