Excerpt Details
Excerpt: Here is a tale which extends over many years and travels into many countries. By a peculiar fitness of circumstance the writer began, continued it, and concluded it among distant and diverse scenes. Above all, he was much upon the sea. The character and fortune of the fraternal enemies, the hall and shrubbery of Durrisdeer, the problem of Mackellar?s homespun and how to shape it for superior flights; these were his company on deck in many star-reflecting harbours, ran often in his mind at sea to the tune of slatting canvas, and were dismissed (something of the suddenest) on the approach of squalls. It is my hope that these surroundings of its manufacture may to some degree find favour for my story with seafarers and sea-lovers like yourselves....

Excerpt Details
Excerpt: Of all the spots on the world?s surface that I, George Walker, of Friday Street, London, have ever visited, Suez in Egypt, at the head of the Red Sea, is by far the vilest, the most unpleasant, and the least interesting. There are no women there, no water, and no vegetation. It is surrounded, and indeed often filled, by a world of sand. A scorching sun is always overhead; and one is domiciled in a huge cavernous hotel, which seems to have been made purposely destitute of all the comforts of civilized life. Nevertheless, in looking back upon the week of my life which I spent there I always enjoy a certain sort of triumph;--or rather, upon one day of that week, which lends a sort of halo not only to my sojourn at Suez, but to the whole period of my residence in Egypt....

Excerpt Details
Excerpt: ?Phantasmagoria and Other Poems? by Lewis Carroll.

Table of Contents Details
Contents Phantasmagoria 4 PHANTASMAGORIA 4 CANTO I - The Trystyng 4 CANTO II - Hys Fyve Rules 7 CANTO III - Scarmoges 10 CANTO IV - Hys Nouryture 13 CANTO V - Byckerment 16 ECHOES 24 A SEA DIRGE 25 Ye Carpette Knyghte 26 HIAWATHA?S PHOTOGRAPHING 27 MELANCHOLETTA 30 A VALENTINE 32 THE THREE VOICES 33 TEMA CON VARIAZIONI 42 A GAME OF FIVES 43 POETA FIT, NON NASCITUR 44 SIZE AND TEARS 46 ATALANTA IN CAMDEN-TOWN 48 THE LANG COORTIN? 49 FOUR RIDDLES 53 FAME?S PENNY-TRUMPET 58...

Excerpt Details
Excerpt: Four years ago--in 1874--two young Englishmen had occasion to go to the United States. They crossed the ocean at midsummer, and, arriving in New York on the first day of August, were much struck with the fervid temperature of that city. Disembarking upon the wharf, they climbed into one of those huge high-hung coaches which convey passengers to the hotels, and with a great deal of bouncing and bumping, took their course through Broadway. The midsummer aspect of New York is not, perhaps, the most favorable one; still, it is not without its picturesque and even brilliant side....

Excerpt Details
Excerpt: Enoch Arden. Long lines of cliff breaking have left a chasm; And in the chasm are foam and yellow sands; Beyond, red roofs about a narrow wharf In cluster; then a moulder?d church; and higher A long street climbs to one tall-tower?d mill; And high in heaven behind it a gray down With Danish barrows; and a hazelwood, By autumn nutters haunted, flourishes Green in a cuplike hollow of the down....

Table of Contents Details
Contents ENOCH ARDEN.......................................................................................................................................................... 4 AYLMER?S FIELD. ..................................................................................................................................................... 23 SEA DREAMS ............................................................................................................................................................. 39 NORTHERN FARMER................................................................................................................................................ 49 MISCELLANEOUS..................................................................................................................................................... 52 TITHONUS.................................................................................................................................................................. 52 THE VOYAGE .........................................................................................................................

Excerpt Details
Excerpt: In the early spring of 1822, the Paris doctors sent to Lower Normandy a young man just recovering from an inflammatory complaint, brought on by overstudy, or perhaps by excess of some other kind. His convalescence demanded complete rest, a light diet, bracing air, and freedom from excitement of every kind, and the fat lands of Bessin seemed to offer all these conditions of recovery. To Bayeux, a picturesque place about six miles from the sea, the patient therefore betook himself, and was received with the cordiality characteristic of relatives who lead very retired lives, and regard a new arrival as a godsend....

Excerpt Details
Excerpt: Chapter 1. The Village ?AND A MIGHTY SING?LAR and pretty place it is, as ever I saw in all the days of my life!? said Captain Jorgan, looking up at it. Captain Jorgan had to look high to look at it, for the village was built sheer up the face of a steep and lofty cliff. There was no road in it, there was no wheeled vehicle in it, there was not a level yard in it. From the sea-beach to the cliff-top two irregular rows of white houses, placed opposite to one another, and twisting here and there....

Excerpt Details
Excerpt: How Sir Galahad fought at a tournament, and how he was known of Sir Gawaine and Sir Ector de Maris. Now saith this story, when Galahad had rescued Percivale from the twenty knights, he yede tho into a waste forest wherein he rode many journeys; and he found many adventures the which he brought to an end, whereof the story maketh here no mention. Then he took his way to the sea on a day, and it befell as he passed by a castle where was a wonder tournament, but they without had done so much that they within were put to the worse, yet were they within good knights enough....

Excerpt Details
Excerpt: Chapter 1. Eilean Aros. It was a beautiful morning in the late July when I set forth on foot for the last time for Aros. A boat had put me ashore the night before at Grisapol; I had such breakfast as the little inn afforded, and, leaving all my baggage till I had an occasion to come round for it by sea, struck right across the promontory with a cheerful heart....

Table of Contents Details
Contents THE MERRY MEN .......................................................................................4 WILL O? THE MILL...................................................................................50 MARKHEIM ................................................................................................74 THRAWN JANET ........................................................................................90 OLALLA .....................................................................................................100 THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD......................................................140...

Excerpt Details
Excerpt: In the centre of the great city of London lies a small neighborhood, consisting of a cluster of narrow streets and courts, of very venerable and debilitated houses, which goes by the name of Little Britain. Christ Church School and St. Bartholomew?s Hospital bound it on the west; Smithfield and Long Lane on the north; Aldersgate Street, like an arm of the sea, divides it from the eastern part of the city; whilst the yawning gulf of Bull-and-Mouth Street separates it from Butcher Lane, and the regions of Newgate. Over this little territory, thus bounded and designated, the great dome of St. Paul?s, swelling above the intervening houses of Paternoster Row, Amen Corner, and Ave Maria Lane, looks down with an air of motherly protection. This quarter derives its appellation from having been, in ancient times, the residence of the Dukes of Brittany....

Excerpt Details
Excerpt: Kennedy is a country doctor, and lives in Colebrook, on the shores of Eastbay. The high ground rising abruptly behind the red roofs of the little town crowds the quaint High Street against the wall which defends it from the sea. Beyond the sea-wall there curves for miles in a vast and regular sweep the barren beach of shingle, with the village of Brenzett standing out darkly across the water, a spire in a clump of trees; and still further out the perpendicular column of a lighthouse, looking in the distance no bigger than a lead pencil, marks the vanishing-point of the land....

Excerpt Details
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 Details
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 Details
Excerpt: The ancient and famous metropolis of the North sits overlooking a windy estuary from the slope and summit of three hills. No situation could be more commanding for the head city of a kingdom; none better chosen for noble prospects. From her tall precipice and terraced gardens she looks far and wide on the sea and broad champaigns. To the east you may catch at sunset the spark of the May lighthouse, where the Firth expands into the German Ocean; and away to the west, over all the carse of Stirling, you can see the first snows upon Ben Ledi....

Excerpt Details
Excerpt: Chapter 1. How Sir Mordred presumed and took on him to be King of England, and would have married the queen, his father?s wife As Sir Mordred was ruler of all England, he did do make letters as though that they came from beyond the sea, and the letters specified that King Arthur was slain in battle with Sir Launcelot. Wherefore Sir Mordred made a parliament, and called the lords together, and there he made them to choose him king; and so was he crowned at Canterbury, and held a feast there fifteen days; and afterward he drew him unto Winchester, and there he took the Queen Guenever, and said plainly that he would wed her which was his uncle?s wife and his father?s wife....

Excerpt Details
Excerpt: Chapter 1. It had occurred to her early that in her position-- that of a young person spending, in framed and wired confinement, the life of a guinea-pig or a magpie-- she should know a great many persons without their recognizing the acquaintance. That made it an emotion the more lively--though singularly rare and always, even then, with opportunity still very much smothered--to see any one come in whom she knew outside, as she called it, any one who could add anything to the meanness of her function. Her function was to sit there with two young men--the other telegraphist and the counter-clerk; to mind the ?sounder,? which was always going, to dole out stamps and postal-orders, weigh letters, answer stupid questions, give difficult change and, more than anything else, count words as numberless as the sands of the sea, the words of the telegrams thrust, from morning to night, through the gap left in the high lattice, across the encumbered shelf that her forearm ached with rubbing. This transparent screen fenced out or fenced in, according to the side of the narrow counter on which the human lot was cast, the duskiest corne...

Excerpt Details
Introduction: This tale, of which I have not consciously changed a single feature, I received from tradition. It is highly popular through all the country of the eight Tevas, the clan to which Rahero belonged; and particularly in Taiarapu, the windward peninsula of Tahiti, where he lived. I have heard from end to end two versions; and as many as five different persons have helped me with details. There seems no reason why the tale should not be true....

Table of Contents Details
Contents THE SONG OF RAHERO ............................................................................4 I. THE SLAYING OF TAMATEA .............................................................................................................................. 5 II. THE VENGING OF TAMATEA ......................................................................................................................... 13 III. RAHERO ............................................................................................................................................................. 22 THE FEAST OF FAMINE ..........................................................................29 I. THE PRIEST?S VIGIL.......................................................................................................................................... 29 II. THE LOVERS ...................................................................................................................................................... 32 III. THE FEAST ...........................................................................................................................

Excerpt Details
Excerpt: The War in the Air by H. G. Wells.

Excerpt Details
Excerpt: A Set of Six by Joseph Conrad.

Table of Contents Details
Contents AUTHOR?S NOTE .........................................................................................4 A SET OF SIX ..................................................................................................8 GASPAR RUIZ .................................................................................................8 AN IRONIC TALE .........................................................................................65 AN INDIGNANT TALE.................................................................................90 A DESPERATE TALE..................................................................................113 A MILITARY TALE.....................................................................................136 A PATHETIC TALE .....................................................................................223...

Excerpt Details
Excerpt: The Second Cabin. I first encountered my fellow-passengers on the Broomielaw in Glasgow. Thence we descended the Clyde in no familiar spirit, but looking askance on each other as on possible enemies. A few Scandinavians, who had already grown acquainted on the North Sea, were friendly and voluble over their long pipes; but among English speakers distance and suspicion reigned supreme. The sun was soon overclouded, the wind freshened and grew sharp as we continued to descend the widening estuary; and with the falling temperature the gloom among the passengers increased....