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Excerpt: To whom, madame, but to you should I inscribe this work; to you whose lofty and candid intellect is a treasury to your friends; to you that are to me not only a whole public, but the most indulgent of sisters as well? Will you deign to accept a token of the friendship of which I am proud? You, and some few souls as noble, will grasp the whole of the thought underlying The Firm of Nucingen, appended to Cesar Birotteau. Is there not a whole social lesson in the contrast between the two stories?...

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Excerpt: When The Duchess Was Dead No one, probably, ever felt himself to be more alone in the world than our old friend the Duke of Omnium, when the Duchess died. When this sad event happened he had ceased to be Prime Minister. During the first nine months after he had left office he and the Duchess remained in England. Then they had gone abroad, taking with them their three children. The eldest, Lord Silverbridge, had been at Oxford, but had his career there cut short by some more than ordinary youthful folly, which had induced his father to agree with the college authorities that his name had better be taken off the college books,--all which had been cause of very great sorrow to the Duke. The other boy was to go to Cambridge, but his father had thought it well to give him a twelve-month?s run on the Continent, under his own inspection....

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. He had a mortal dislike, poor Stransom, to lean anniversaries, and loved them still less when they made a pretence of a figure. Celebrations and suppressions were equally painful to him, and but one of the former found a place in his life. He had kept each year in his own fashion the date of Mary Antrim?s death. It would be more to the point perhaps to say that this occasion kept him: it kept him at least effectually from doing anything else. It took hold of him again and again with a hand of which time had softened but never loosened the touch. He waked to his feast of memory as consciously as he would have waked to his marriage-morn. Marriage had had of old but too little to say to the matter: for the girl who was to have been his bride there had been no bridal embrace. She had died of a malignant fever after the wedding-day had been fixed, and he had lost before fairly tasting it an affection that promised to fill his life to the brim....

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Excerpt: A Woman of Thirty by Honore de Balzac, translated by Ellen Marriage.

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Excerpt: There is a special variety of human nature obtained in the Social Kingdom by a process analogous to that of the gardener?s craft in the Vegetable Kingdom, to wit, by the forcing-house--a species of hybrid which can be raised neither from seed nor from slips. This product is known as the Cashier, an anthropomorphous growth, watered by religious doctrine, trained up in fear of the guillotine, pruned by vice, to flourish on a third floor with an estimable wife by his side and an uninteresting family....

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Excerpt: Volume Two of The Life And Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, containing a Faithful Account of the Fortunes, Misfortunes, Uprisings, Downfallings and Complete Career of the Nickelby Family by Charles Dickens....

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. His leaving it till called for the writer of these humble lines being a Waiter, and having come of a family of Waiters, and owning at the present time five brothers who are all Waiters, and likewise an only sister who is a Waitress, would wish to offer a few words respecting his calling; first having the pleasure of hereby in a friendly manner offering the Dedication of the same unto Joseph, much respected Head Waiter at the Slamjam Coffee-house, London, E.C., than which a individual more eminently deserving of the name of man, or a more amenable honour to his own head and heart, whether considered in the light of a Waiter or regarded as a human being, do not exist....

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Preface: No one can be more sensible than is the Author that the present is an overgrown book of a nondescript class, neither the ?tale? for the young, nor the novel for their elders, but a mixture of both....

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Excerpt: I am an Englishman, living, as all Englishman should do, in England, and my wife would not, I think, be well pleased were any one to insinuate that she were other than an Englishwoman; but in the circumstances of my marriage I became connected with the south of Spain, and the narrative which I am to tell requires that I should refer to some of those details....

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Excerpt: Prayers Written at Vailima and a Lowden Sabbath Morn by Robert Louis Stevenson.

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Contents Prayers Written At Vailima ...........................................................................4 FOR SUCCESS................................................................................................................................ 6 FOR GRACE.................................................................................................................................... 7 AT MORNING ................................................................................................................................. 7 EVENING ......................................................................................................................................... 7 ANOTHER FOR EVENING........................................................................................................... 8 IN TIME OF RAIN .......................................................................................................................... 8 ANOTHER IN TIME OF RAIN ..................................................................................................... 8 BEFORE A TEMPORARY SEPARATION ...................................

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Introduction: In September of the year during the February of which Hawthorne had completed ?The Scarlet Letter,? he began ?The House of the Seven Gables.? Meanwhile, he had removed from Salem to Lenox, in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, where he occupied with his family a small red wooden house, still standing at the date of this edition, near the Stockbridge Bowl....

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Excerpt: Le Morte Darthur -- Glossary to volume one -- by Sir Thomas Malory.

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Excerpt: Here are not many people three-fourths and as it is desirable that a story-teller and a story-reader should establish a mutual understanding as soon as possible, I beg it to be noticed that I confine this observation neither to young people nor to little people, but extend it to all conditions of people: little and big, young and old: yet growing up, or already growing down again ? there are not, I say, many people who would care to sleep in a church. I don?t mean at sermon- time in warm weather (when the thing has actually been done, once or twice), but in the night, and alone....

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Excerpt: Louis Lambert was born at Montoire, a little town in the Vendomois, where his father owned a tannery of no great magnitude, and intended that his son should succeed him; but his precocious bent for study modified the paternal decision. For, indeed, the tanner and his wife adored Louis, their only child, and never contradicted him in anything....

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Excerpt: Volumes, almost libraries, have been written about Balzac; and perhaps of very few writers, putting aside the three or four greatest of all, is it so difficult to select one or a few short phrases which will in any way denote them, much more sum them up. Yet the five words quoted above, which come from an early letter to his sister when as yet he had not ?found his way,? characterize him, I think, better than at least some of the volumes I have read about him, and supply, when they are properly understood, the most valuable of all keys and companions for his comprehension....

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Contents HONORE DE BALZAC ................................................................................................................... 4 APPENDIX...................................................................................................................................... 32 THE BALZAC PLAN OF THE COMEDIE HUMAINE ............................................................ 32 Comedie Humaine ............................................................................................................................ 33 Author?s Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 43...

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Excerpt: The Wreck of the Golden Mary by Charles Dickens.

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Excerpt: Records of a Family of Engineers by Robert Louis Stevenson.

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Contents INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................. 4 CHAPTER I ? DOMESTIC ANNALS...........................................................................................11 CHAPTER II ? THE SERVICE OF THE NORTHERN LIGHTS I ......................................... 32 CHAPTER III ? THE BUILDING OF THE BELL ROCK ....................................................... 57...

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Excerpt: ?IT IS VERY KIND in the dear mother.? ?But--what, Rachel? Don?t you like it! She so enjoyed choosing it for you.? ?Oh yes, it is a perfect thing in its way. Don?t say a word to her; but if you are consulted for my next birthday present, Grace, couldn?t you suggest that one does cease to be a girl.? ?Only try it on, Rachel dear, she will be pleased to see you in it.? ?Oh yes, I will bedizen myself to oblige her. I do assure you I am not ungrateful. It is beautiful in itself, and shows how well nature can be imitated; but it is meant for a mere girl, and this is the very day I had fixed for hauling down the flag of youth.?...

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Excerpt: To M. le Marquis Damaso Pareto I have always longed to tell a simple and true story, which should strike terror into two young lovers, and drive them to take refuge each in the other?s heart, as two children cling together at the sight of a snake by a woodside. At the risk of spoiling my story and of being taken for a coxcomb, I state my intention at the outset....

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Excerpt: How much is conveyed in those two short words--?The Parish!? And with how many tales of distress and misery, of broken fortune and ruined hopes, too often of unrelieved wretchedness and successful knavery, are they associated! A poor man, with small earnings, and a large family, just manages to live on from hand to mouth, and to procure food from day to day; he has barely sufficient to satisfy the present cravings of nature, and can take no heed of the future....