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Preface: A Chancery judge once had the kindness to inform me, as one of a company of some hundred and fifty men and women not laboring under any suspicions of lunacy, that the Court of Chancery, though the shining subject of much popular prejudice (at which point I thought the judge?s eye had a cast in my direction), was almost immaculate. There had been, he admitted, a trivial blemish or so in its rate of progress, but this was exaggerated and had been entirely owing to the ?parsimony of the public,? which guilty public, it appeared, had been until lately bent in the most determined manner on by no means enlarging the number of Chancery judges appointed--I believe by Richard the Second, but any other king will do as well....

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I was one hundred miles from Nowhere—and I mean that literally—when I spotted this girl out of the corner of my eye. I'd been keeping an extra lookout because I still expected the other undead bugger left over from the murder party at Nowhere to be stalking me. In a Post apocalyptic world, the few people left must be strong. And must not hesitate to kill. Of course, killing another Deathlander was one of the chief pleasures and urges of all the solitary wanders in this vast wasteland. Kill and kill again. But this other was a girl and that brought up the second great urge: sex. Which was it to be today? Perhaps both? And who would walk away afterward?(Summary by Phil Chenevert)...

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Science fiction

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Excerpt: At Paris there are almost always two separate parties going on at every ball and rout. First, an official party, composed of the persons invited, a fashionable and much-bored circle. Each one grimaces for his neighbor?s eye; most of the younger women are there for one person only; when each woman has assured herself that for that one she is the handsomest woman in the room, and that the opinion is perhaps shared by a few others, a few insignificant phrases are exchanged, as: ?Do you think of going away soon to La Crampade?? ?How well Madame de Portenduere sang!? ?Who is that little woman with such a load of diamonds?? Or, after firing off some smart epigrams, which give transient pleasure, and leave wounds that rankle long, the groups thin out, the mere lookers on go away, and the waxlights burn down to the sconces....

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The Throg task force struck the Terran survey camp a few minutes after dawn, without warning, and with a deadly precision which argued that the aliens had fully reconnoitered and prepared that attack. Eye-searing lances of energy lashed back and forth across the base with methodical accuracy. And a single cowering witness, flattened on a ledge in the heights above, knew that when the last of those yellow-red bolts fell, nothing human would be left alive down there. And so Shann Lantee, most menial of the Terrans attached to the camp on the planet Warlock, was left alone and weaponless in the strange, hostile world, the human prey of the aliens from space and the aliens on the ground alike. (Summary from Front Cover )...

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Science fiction

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. I was returning home by the fields. It was midsummer, the hay harvest was over and they were just beginning to reap the rye. At that season of the year there is a delightful variety of flowers --red, white, and pink scented tufty clover; milk-white ox-eye daisies with their bright yellow centers and pleasant spicy smell;...

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In July 1887, Esperanto made its debut as a 40-page pamphlet from Warsaw, published in Russian, Polish, French and German: all written by a Polish eye-doctor under the pen-name of Dr. Esperanto (“one who hopes”). Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof (1859-1917) had a gift for languages, and a calling to help foster world amity: by a neutral “Internacia Lingvo” that anyone anywhere could readily use as a second language: neither forsaking a mother tongue, nor imposing it. In 1889 Zamenhof published an English translation by Richard H. Geoghegan, a young Irish linguist. All five are respectively considered the “First Book”. This classic sets forth Esperanto pretty much as we know it today (except that we no longer use internal apostrophes for composite words). Its original repertoire of 900 root words has grown tenfold in the past century, but you can still almost make do with the vocabulary herein. -- Summary by Gene Keyes...

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Instruction, Languages

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Excerpt: For a long time after the course of the steamer Sofala had been altered for the land, the low swampy coast had retained its appearance of a mere smudge of darkness beyond a belt of glitter. The sunrays seemed to fall violently upon the calm sea--seemed to shatter themselves upon an adamantine surface into sparkling dust, into a dazzling vapor of light that blinded the eye and wearied the brain with its unsteady brightness....

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Excerpt: An ancient English cathedral tower? How can the ancient English Cathedral tower be here! The well-known massive gray square tower of its old Cathedral? How can that be here! There is no spike of rusty iron in the air, between the eye and it, from any point of the real prospect. What is the spike that intervenes, and who has set it up? Maybe it is set up by the Sultan?s orders for the impaling of a horde of Turkish robbers, one by one....

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Excerpt: The waies, through which my weary steps I guyde, In this delightfull land of Faery, Are so exceeding spacious and wyde, And sprinckled with such sweet variety, Of all that pleasant is to eare or eye, That I nigh rauisht with rare thoughts delight, My tedious trauell doe forget thereby; And when I gin to feele decay of might, It strength to me supplies, & chears my dulled spright....

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Preface: What is exaggeration to one class of minds and perceptions, is plain truth to another. That which is commonly called a long-sight, perceives in a prospect innumerable features and bearings non-existent to a short-sighted person. I sometimes ask myself whether there may occasionally be a difference of this kind between some writers and some readers; whether it is always the writer who colors highly, or whether it is now and then the reader whose eye for color is a little dull?...

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With her usual wit and charm, Ms. Repplier recalls her days at Eden Hall, the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Torresdale, north of Philadelphia. She shares the highlights (and some of the low lights) of her time there. Perhaps this sharp eye, nurtured by her willfulness and independent spirit, was the reason she was not invited to return to Eden after her second year. Not only Catholics or boarding school alumnae will find this book entertaining; anyone who went to school or who looks back on their childhood will see their own experience somewhere in this memoir. ( Summary by Mary Schneider )...

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Essay/Short nonfiction, Humor, Memoirs

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Preface: A Chancery judge once had the kindness to inform me, as one of a company of some hundred and fifty men and women not labouring under any suspicions of lunacy, that the Court of Chancery, though the shining subject of much popular prejudice (at which point I thought the judge?s eye had a cast in my direction), was almost immaculate....

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Excerpt: To equip so small a book with a preface is, I am half afraid, to sin against proportion. But a preface is more than an author can resist, for it is the reward of his labours. When the foundation stone is laid, the architect appears with his plans, and struts for an hour before the public eye. So with the writer in hisPreface: he may have never a word to say, but he must show himself for a moment in the portico, hat in hand, and with an urbane demeanour....

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Contents PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION................................................................................................. 4 ANTWERP TO BOOM ....................................................................................................................... 5 ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL...................................................................................................... 9 THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE................................................................................................... 13 AT MAUBEUGE ............................................................................................................................... 17 ON THE SAMBRE CANALISED .................................................................................................... 20 PONT-SUR-SAMBRE (We Are Pedlars) .......................................................................................... 25 PONT-SUR-SAMBRE (The Travelling Merchant) ........................................................................... 29 SAMBRE AND OISE CANAL ..................................................................................

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“None of us think enough of these things on which the eye rests. But don't let us let the eye rest. Why should the eye be so lazy? Let us exercise the eye until it learns to see startling facts that run across the landscape as plain as a painted fence. Let us be ocular athletes. Let us learn to write essays on a stray cat or a coloured cloud. I have attempted some such thing in what follows; but anyone else may do it better, if anyone else will only try. ” (Gilbert Keith Chesterton)...

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Essay/Short nonfiction

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Excerpt: VARIABLE, and therfore miserable condition of Man; this minute I was well, and am ill, this minute. I am surpriz?d with a sodaine change, and alteration to worse, and can impute it to no cause, nor call it by any name. We study Health, and we deliberate upon our meats, and drink, and ayre, and exercises, and we hew, and wee polish every stone, that goes to that building; and so our Health is a long and regular work; But in a minute a Canon batters all, overthrowes all, demolishes all; a Sicknes unprevented for all our diligence, unsuspected for all our curiositie; nay, undeserved, if we consider only disorder, summons us, seizes us, possesses us, destroyes us in an instant. O miserable condition of Man, which was not imprinted by God, who as hee is immortall himselfe, had put a coale, a beame of Immortalitie into us, which we might have blowen into a flame, but blew it out, by our first sinne; wee beggard our selves by hearkning after false riches, a?nd infatuated our selves by hearkning after false knowledge. So that now, we doe not onely die, but die upon the Rack, die by the torment of sicknesse; nor that onely, but are ...

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Table of Contents: I., 1 -- II., 3 -- III., 4 -- IV., 6 -- V., 8 -- VI., 10 -- VII., 11 -- VIII., 13 -- IX., 15 -- X., 17 -- XI., 19 -- XII., 21 -- XIII., 23 -- XIV., 25 -- XV., 27 -- XVI., 29 -- XVII., 31 -- XVIII., 33 -- XIX., 35 -- XX., 37 -- XXI., 39 -- XXII., 41 -- XXIII., 43...

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A charming brief account of a two months' autumnal stay on the shores of the Lake of Geneva. Howells, who was there with his family traveling from England to Italy, has a sharp eye not only for scenery and architecture, but for people and customs, both Swiss and foreign. (Summary by Nicholas Clifford)...

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Travel

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Old Martin Chuzzlewit has heaps of money that has never brought him anything but misery. Estranged from his grandson and namesake, when word gets out that he is ill, he finds himself surrounded by a throng of relatives that he despises, all hoping to get a piece of the pie. He allows himself to be taken under the wing of his obsequious and hypocritical cousin, Seth Pecksniff, who is more than happy to shelter him and kowtow to him and to keep all other relatives away. Will this vulture be the one to inherit the old man’s fortune, or is there more going on than meets the eye?Treachery, mayhem, and possibly murder, along with some genuine love and compassion are skillfully intertwined in this book, along with Dickens’ classic wit and brilliantly created characters. His villains are odious, his good guys are delightful, and those that fall in between truly deserve to be called “Characters.” (summary by Debra Lynn)...

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Satire

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In this collection, Bevis Hillier has put together some of Chesterton's essays in The Defandant, Varied Types and Tremendous Trifles. These 12 pieces were chosen to giving a peek into the margins of Chesterton's work and give a sense of the distinctive flavor of his mind. They were also chosen with an eye to showing what a complex and fascinating character he was. (Summary by Phil chenevert)...

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Humor, Essay/Short nonfiction, Philosophy

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Excerpt: The pages which follow have been extracted from a pile of manuscript which was apparently meant for the eye of one woman only. She seems to have been the writer?s childhood?s friend. They had parted as children, or very little more than children. Years passed. Then something recalled to the woman the companion of her young days and she wrote to him: ?I have been hearing of you lately. I know where life has brought you. You certainly selected your own road. But to us, left behind, it always looked as if you had struck out into a pathless desert....

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Excerpt: Twelfe Night, Or what you will; Actus Primus -- Scaena Prima -- Enter Orsino Duke of Illyria, Curio, and other Lords. Duke. If Musicke be the food of Love, play on, Give me excesse of it: that surfetting, The appetite may sicken, and so dye. That straine agen, it had a dying fall: O, it came ore my eare, like the sweet sound That breathes upon a banke of Violets; Stealing, and giving Odour. Enough, no more, ?Tis not so sweet now, as it was before. O spirit of Love, how quicke and fresh art thou, That notwithstanding thy capacitie, Receiveth as the Sea. Nought enters there, Of what validity, and pitch so ere, But falles into abatement, and low price Even in a minute; so full of shapes is fancie, That it alone, is high fantasticall. Cu. Will you go hunt my Lord? Du. What Curio? Cu. The Hart. Du. Why so I do, the Noblest that I have: O when mine eyes did see Olivia first, Me thought she purg?d the ayre of pestilence; That instant was I turn?d into a Hart, And my desires like fell and cruell hounds, Ere since pursue me. How now what newes from her? Enter Valentine. Val. So please my Lord, I might not be admitted, But from her h...

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Table of Contents: Twelfe Night, Or what you will, 1 -- Actus Primus, Scaena Prima., 1 -- Scena Secunda., 2 -- Scaena Tertia., 3 -- Scena Quarta., 6 -- Scena Quinta., 7 -- Finis, Actus primus., 14 -- Actus Secundus, Scaena prima., 14 -- Scaena Secunda., 16 -- Scoena Tertia., 17 -- Scena Quarta., 21 -- Scena Quinta., 24 -- Finis Actus secundus, 28 -- Actus Tertius, Scaena prima., 28 -- Scoena Secunda., 32 -- Scaena Tertia., 34 -- Scoena Quarta., 35 -- Actus Quartus, Scaena prima., 44 -- Scoena Secunda., 45 -- Scaena Tertia., 48 -- Finis Actus Quartus., 49 -- Actus Quintus. Scena Prima., 49...