Excerpt: Ladies and gentlemen, it will be very difficult for an audience so large as this to hear distinctly what a speaker says, and consequently it is important that as profound silence be preserved as possible. While I was at the hotel to-day, an elderly gentleman called upon me to know whether I was really in favor of producing a perfect equality between the negroes and white people. While I had not proposed to myself on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the question was asked me I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying something in regard to it....

Contents LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS FOURTH JOINT DEBATE, AT CHARLESTON, SEPTEMBER 18, 1858. ............ 4 FIFTH JOINT DEBATE, AT GALESBURGH, OCTOBER 7, 1858 ....................................................................... 26 SIXTH JOINT DEBATE, AT QUINCY, OCTOBER 13, 1858. ................................................................................ 44 LAST JOINT DEBATE, AT ALTON, OCTOBER 15, 1858. .................................................................................... 64...

Excerpt: ?The Raven? by Edgar Allan Poe.

Excerpt: Chapter 1. ?THERE, I?ve done every bit I can do! I?m going to see what o?clock it is.? ?I heard it strike eleven just now.? ?Sylvia, you?ll tip up! What a tremendous stretch!? ?Wha-ooh! Oh dear! We sha?n?t get one moment before dinner! Oh, horrible! oh, horrible! most horrible!? ?Sylvia, you know I hate hearing Hamlet profaned.? ?You can?t hate it more than having no one to hear our lessons.?...

Excerpt: Chapter 1. ?They?ve got him for life!? I said to myself that evening on my way back to the station; but later on, alone in the compartment (from Wimbledon to Waterloo, before the glory of the District Railway) I amended this declaration in the light of the sense that my friends would probably after all not enjoy a monopoly of Mr. Saltram. I won?t pretend to have taken his vast measure on that first occasion, but I think I had achieved a glimpse of what the privilege of his acquaintance might mean for many persons in the way of charges accepted....

Excerpt: The Shaving of Shagpat by George Meredith.

Excerpt: ?The Lake Gun? is one of James Fenimore Cooper?s very few short stories, and was written in the last year of his life. It was commissioned by George E. Wood for publication in a volume of miscellaneous stories and poems called ?The Parthenon? (New York: George E. Wood, 1850), and Cooper received $100 for it. The story was reprinted a few years later in a similar volume called ?Specimens of American Literature? (New York, 1866). It was published in book form in 1932 in a slipcased edition limited to 450 copies (New York: William Farquhar Payson, 1932) with an introduction by Robert F. Spiller....

Excerpt: The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens).

Contents. I. The birth of the Prince and the Pauper. II. Tom?s early life. III. Tom?s meeting with the Prince. IV. The Prince?s troubles begin. V. Tom as a patrician. VI. Tom receives instructions. VII. Tom?s first royal dinner. VIII. The question of the Seal. IX. The river pageant. X. The Prince in the toils. XI. At Guildhall. XII. The Prince and his deliverer. XIII. The disappearance of the Prince....

Excerpt: Essay on Man by Alexander Pope.

Excerpt: ?Truth is strange, Stranger than fiction.? I think it but right that in making my appearance before the public I should at once acquaint them with my titles and name. My card, as I leave it at the houses of the nobility, my friends, is as follows:--...

Excerpt: ?There are several objections to it, but I?ll take it if you?ll alter it,? Mr. Locket?s rather curt note had said; and there was no waste of words in the postscript in which he had added: ?If you?ll come in and see me, I?ll show you what I mean.? This communication had reached Jersey Villas by the first post, and Peter Baron had scarcely swallowed his leathery muffin before he got into motion to obey the editorial behest. He knew that such precipitation looked eager, and he had no desire to look eager--it was not in his interest; but how could he maintain a godlike calm, principled though he was in favour of it, the first time one of the great magazines had accepted, even with a cruel reservation, a specimen of his ardent young genius?...

Excerpt: Dombey sat in the corner of the darkened room in the great arm-chair by the bedside, and Son lay tucked up warm in a little basket bedstead, carefully disposed on a low settee immediately in front of the fire and close to it, as if his constitution were analogous to that of a muffin, and it was essential to toast him brown while he was very new....

Excerpt: The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad.

Excerpt: A Modern Telemachus by Charlotte M. Yonge.

Excerpt: Among the many fatalities attending the bloom of young desire, that of blindly taking to the confectionery line has not, perhaps, been sufficiently considered. How is the son of a British yeoman, who has been fed principally on salt pork and yeast dumplings, to know that there is satiety for the human stomach even in a paradise of glass jars full of sugared almonds and pink lozenges, and that the tedium of life can reach a pitch where plum-buns at discretion cease to offer the slightest excitement?...

Excerpt: Sydney Spring. My dear sir, your letter introducing Mr. Faree was duly received. There was no opening to nominate him for Superintendent of Public Instruction, but through him Egypt made a most valuable contribution to the convention. I think it may be fairly said that he came off the lion of the day--or rather of the night. Can you not elect him to the Legislature? It seems to me he would be hard to beat. What objection could be made to him? What is your Senator Martin saying and doing? What is Webb about?...

Excerpt: Pierre Grassou by Honore de Balzac, translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley.

Excerpt: How he was kidnapped and cast away; his sufferings in a desert isle; his journey in the wild highlands; his acquaintance with Alan Breck Stewart and other notorious Highland Jacobites; with all that he suffered at the hands of his uncle, Ebenezer Balfour of Shaws, falsely so called Written by himself and now set forth by Robert Louis Stevenson with a preface by Mr. Stevenson...

Excerpt: The Secret Places of the Heart by H. G. Wells.

Excerpt: Mudfog and Other Sketches by Charles Dickens.

Contents: I. PUBLIC LIFE OF MR. TULRUMBLE - ONCE MAYOR OF MUDFOG II. FULL REPORT OF THE FIRST MEETING OF THE MUDFOG ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF EVERYTHING III. FULL REPORT OF THE SECOND MEETING OF THE MUDFOG ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF EVERYTHING IV. THE PANTOMIME OF LIFE V. SOME PARTICULARS CONCERNING A LION VI.MR. ROBERT BOLTON: THE ?GENTLEMAN CONNECTED WITH THE PRESS? VII. FAMILIAR EPISTLE FROM A PARENT TO A CHILD AGED TWO YEARS AND TWO MONTHS...

Excerpt: Tom Sawyer, Detective by Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens).