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Excerpt: Many tales, either rich in situations or made dramatic by some of the innumerable tricks of chance, carry with them their own particular setting, which can be rendered artistically or simply by those who narrate them, without their subjects losing any, even the least of their charms. But there are some incidents in human experience to which the heart alone is able to give life; there are certain details --shall we call them anatomical?--the delicate touches of which cannot be made to reappear unless by an equally delicate rendering of thought; there are portraits which require the infusion of a soul, and mean nothing unless the subtlest expression of the speaking countenance is given; furthermore, there are things which we know not how to say or do without the aid of secret harmonies which a day, an hour, a fortunate conjunction of celestial signs, or an inward moral tendency may produce....

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Excerpt: One confidential evening, not three months ago, Lionel Wallace told me this story of the Door in the Wall. And at the time I thought that so far as he was concerned it was a true story. He told it me with such a direct simplicity of conviction that I could not do otherwise than believe in him. But in the morning, in my own flat, I woke to a different atmosphere, and as I lay in bed and recalled the things he had told me, stripped of the glamour of his earnest slow voice, denuded of the focussed shaded table light, the shadowy atmosphere that wrapped about him and the pleasant bright things, the dessert and glasses and napery of the dinner we had shared, making them for the time a bright little world quite cut off from every-day realities, I saw it all as frankly incredible. ?He was mystifying!? I said, and then: ?How well he did it!? It isn?t quite the thing I should have expected him, of all people, to do well.?...

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Contents THE DOOR IN THE WALL ............................................................................................................ 4 THE STAR ...................................................................................................................................... 20 A DREAM OF ARMAGEDDON ................................................................................................... 31 THE CONE ..................................................................................................................................... 56 A MOONLIGHT FABLE................................................................................................................ 67 THE DIAMOND MAKER.............................................................................................................. 71 THE LORD OF THE DYNAMOS ................................................................................................. 78 THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND................................................................................................. 86...

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Mendele Mocher Sforim (Literary name for Shalom Jacob Abramovitsch) (1835 - 1917, b. Kapulye, Belorussia), one of the first modern Jewish writers, wrote in both Hebrew and Yiddish throughout his career. In his work he described with sharp satirical criticism the traditional life in small Jewish towns, as well as tendencies for assimilation of learned Jews at the time. He was regarded as the grandfather of Yiddish literature, but the Hebraic-Zionist atmosphere in Odessa influenced him, and in 1886 he turned to writing Hebrew fiction. The Book of Beggars, or Fishke the Lame, was one of the first romances written in Hebrew in Eastern Europe. It was published in Yiddish in 1869 and later translated into Hebrew by the author. Mendeli used a satirical style mixed with tears and compassion to describe Jews of the lowest classes in small poor communities in Eastern Europe of the second half of the 19th century, organized to look for food and charity. This was the background for an entangled story of theft, rape and sentimental love, with an emphasis on suffering and hardships of women. (Summary by Omri Lernau)...

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Literature, Fiction, Satire

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E. F. Benson (1867-1940) was born at Wellington College in Berkshire, where his father, who later went on to become the Archbishop of Canterbury, was the first Headmaster. He wrote 105 books in all. Queen Lucia (first published in 1920) was the first of Benson’s ‘Mapp and Lucia’ novels of which there were six. This first book is a comedy of manners based in the provincial village of Riseholme, where Emmeline Lucas (the Queen Lucia of the title) presides over the social and artistic universe of the gullible residents. Her aide-de-camp in these matters is the somewhat effete Georgie Pillson and the chief competitor for her ‘crown’ is Daisy Quantock. The scandal of the Guru, the psychical goings on with Princess Popoffski and the arrival into the sleepy village of a famous Prima Donna all conspire to threaten her supremacy… (summary by Martin Clifton...

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Literature

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Overpopulation is responsible for many of our planet's problems--global warming, the lack of fresh water, poverty, high gasoline and food prices, air and water pollutions, the scarcity of natural resources, the excess of wastes and their proper disposal, and even some wars. In the year 2020 Commander Lemuel Gulliver XVI returns from a twenty year odyssey around the solar system, searching for sites where the world's excess people can be re-located. He found none. On his return he vows to search for solutions to the planet's most pressing problem. He has written six books of his planned fourteen book series and invites you to read them....

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Excerpt: It was sitting by the fire, in a mysterious and magnificent retreat,--now a thing of the past but surviving in our memory,--whence our eyes commanded a view of Paris from the heights of Belleville to those of Belleville, from Montmartre to the triumphal Arc de l?Etoile, that one morning, refreshed by tea, amid the myriad suggestions that shoot up and die like rockets from your sparkling flow of talk, lavish of ideas, you tossed to my pen a figure worthy of Hoffmann,--that casket of unrecognized gems, that pilgrim seated at the gate of Paradise with ears to hear the songs of the angels but no longer a tongue to repeat them, playing on the ivory keys with fingers crippled by the stress of divine inspiration, believing that he is expressing celestial music to his bewildered listeners....

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Excerpt: BEDFORD. Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night! Comets, importing change of times and states, Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky, And with them scourge the bad revolting stars That have consented unto Henry?s death! King Henry the Fifth, too famous to live long! England ne?er lost a king of so much worth....

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Excerpt: The school at which young Charley Hexam had first learned from a book--the streets being, for pupils of his degree, the great Preparatory Establishment in which very much that is never unlearned is learned without and before book--was a miserable loft in an unsavoury yard. Its atmosphere was oppressive and disagreeable; it was crowded, noisy, and confusing; half the pupils dropped asleep, or fell into a state of waking stupefaction; the other half kept them in either condition by maintaining a monotonous droning noise, as if they were performing, out of time and tune, on a ruder sort of bagpipe. The teachers, animated solely by good intentions, had no idea of execution, and a lamentable jumble was the upshot of their kind endeavours....

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Excerpt: LIBER I. (ll. 1-28) Right is it that we praise the King of heaven, the Lord of hosts, and love Him with all our hearts. For He is great in power, the Source of all created things, the Lord Almighty. Never hath He known beginning, neither cometh an end of His eternal glory. Ever in majesty He reigneth over celestial thrones; in righteousness and strength He keepeth the courts of heaven which were established, broad and ample, by the might of God, for angel dwellers, wardens of the soul....

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Contents Codex Junius 11.........3 BIBLIOGRAPHY:................................3 Other Translations ...............................3 Critical Editions ...................................3 GENESIS ..............................................4 (Beginning of ?Genesis B?)..................9 EXODUS..............................................62 DANIEL..............................................74 CHRIST AND SATAN.......................90...

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Excerpt: The First Part of Henry the Sixth; Actus Primus -- Scoena Prima -- Dead March. Enter the Funerall of King Henry the Fifth, attended on by the Duke of Bedford, Regent of France; the Duke of Gloster, Protector; the Duke of Exeter Warwicke, the Bishop of Winchester, and the Duke of Somerset. Bedford. Hung be y heavens with black, yield day to night; Comets importing change of Times and States, Brandish your crystall Tresses in the Skie, And with them scourge the bad revolting Stars, That have consented unto Henries death: King Henry the Fift, too famous to live long, England ne?re lost a King of so much worth. Glost. England ne?re had a King untill his time: Vertue he had, deserving to command, His brandisht Sword did blinde men with his beames, His Armes spred wider then a Dragons Wings: His sparkling Eyes, repleat with wrathfull fire, More dazled and drove back his Enemies, Then mid- day Sunne, fierce bent against their faces. What should I say? his Deeds exceed all speech: He ne?re lift up his Hand, but conquered. Exe. We mourne in black, why mourn we not in blood? Henry is dead, and never shall revive: Upon a Woodden Coffi...

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Table of Contents: The first Part of Henry the Sixt, 1 -- Actus Primus. Scoena Prima., 1 -- Actus Secundus. Scena Prima., 15 -- Actus Tertius. Scena Prima., 27 -- Scoena Secunda., 32 -- Scaena Tertia., 35 -- Scoena Quarta., 38 -- Actus Quartus. Scena Prima., 39 -- Scena secunda., 52 -- Scoena Tertia., 53 -- Actus Quintus., 63...

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This reading is in Hebrew. Mendele Mocher Sforim (Literary name for Shalom Jacob Abramovitsch) (1835 - 1917, b. Kapulye, Belorussia), one of the first modern Jewish writers, wrote in both Hebrew and Yiddish throughout his career. In his work he described with sharp satirical criticism the traditional life in small Jewish towns, as well as tendencies for assimilation of learned Jews at the time. He was regarded as the grandfather of Yiddish literature but the Hebraic-Zionist atmosphere in Odessa influenced him, and in 1886 he turned to writing Hebrew fiction. The hero of The Travels of Benjamin the III is a fool in a town full of poor Jews who barely manage to keep themselves alive. Benjamin is struck suddenly by a desire to travel, and joined by Sendrel he sets out to find a Jewish kingdom mentioned in legends of the Ten Lost Tribes. They hardly make it around the block. Barely escaping from their own wives, the two travel only as far as nearby towns. As the novel progresses they fall into the hands of Jewish kidnappers, who take advantage of their naiveté to sell them into the czarist army. They are caught when they try to escape, ...

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Fiction, Literature, Satire

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Considered a change agent in early Gothic romance; oft-referenced in later literary works or paid homage to by such authors as Jane Austen (influential novel ready by her heroine, Catherine Morland, in Northanger Abbey ); Edgar Allen Poe (borrowed plot elements for the short story The Oval Portrait ); and Sir Walter Scott. - In The Mysteries of Udolpho , one of the most famous and popular gothic novels of the eighteenth century, Ann Radcliffe took a new tack from her predecessors and portrayed her heroine's inner life, creating an atmosphere thick with fear, and providing a gripping plot that continues to thrill readers today. - The Mysteries of Udolpho , set in Europe in the year 1584, is the story of orphan Emily St. Aubert, who finds herself separated from the man she loves and confined within the medieval castle of her aunt's new husband, Montoni, after being forced to travel through France and Italy. Inside the castle, she must cope with an unwanted suitor, Montoni's threats, and the wild imaginings and terrors that threaten to overwhelm her. - The mysterious happenings in the story always have a natural and probable explanatio...

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Horror/Ghost stories, Literature, Fiction

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Excerpt: Landfall and departure mark the rhythmical swing of a seaman?s life and of a ship?s career. From land to land is the most concise definition of a ship?s earthly fate. A ?Departure? is not what a vain people of landsmen may think. The term ?Landfall? is more easily understood; you fall in with the land, and it is a matter of a quick eye and of a clear atmosphere....

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Contents: I. Landfalls and Departures IV. Emblems of Hope VII. The Fine Art X. Cobwebs and Gossamer XIII. The Weight of the Burden XVI. Overdue and Missing XX. The Grip of the Land XXII. The Character of the Foe XXV. Rules of East and West...

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Pope’s Essay on Man, a masterpiece of concise summary in itself, can fairly be summed up as an optimistic enquiry into mankind’s place in the vast Chain of Being. Each of the poem’s four Epistles takes a different perspective, presenting Man in relation to the universe, as individual, in society and, finally, tracing his prospects for achieving the goal of happiness. In choosing stately rhyming couplets to explore his theme, Pope sometimes becomes obscure through compressing his language overmuch. By and large, the work is a triumphant exercise in philosophical poetry, communicating its broad and commonplace truths in superbly balanced phrases which remind us that Pope, alas, is one of the most quoted but least read writers in English: “Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always To be Blest.” (Summary by Martin Geeson)...

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Literature, Poetry, Religion

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Le pélerinage d'un nommé Chrétien est un roman allégorique de John Bunyan, publié en 1678. L'auteur rédigea cet ouvrage en 1675, alors qu'il était emprisonné pour avoir violé le Conventicle Act, qui punissait les personnes coupables d'avoir organisé des services religieux non autorisés et sans supervision de l'Église anglicane. Le récit rapporte les aventures de Chrétien, un homme ordinaire tâchant de se frayer un chemin depuis la Cité de la destruction jusqu'à la Cité céleste de Sion. The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come by John Bunyan (published February, 1678) is a Christian allegory. It is regarded as one of the most significant works of English literature, has been translated into more than 200 languages, and has never been out of print. The allegory tells of Christian, an everyman character, who makes his way from the City of Destruction (Earth) to the Celestial City (Heaven) of Zion. (Summary from Wikipedia, adapted by Ezwa)...

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Literature, Religion

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. Lakeside was a pleasant little town of five or six thousand inhabitants, and a rather pretty one, too, as towns go in the Far West. It had church accommodations for thirty-five thousand, which is the way of the Far West and the South, where everybody is religious, and where each of the Protestant sects is represented and has a plant of its own. Rank was unknown in Lakeside--unconfessed, anyway; everybody knew everybody and his dog, and a sociable friendliness was the prevailing atmosphere....

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Contents THE $30,000 BEQUEST ............................................................................................................................................. 5 A DOG?S TALE ......................................................................................................................................................... 33 WAS IT HEAVEN? OR HELL?............................................................................................................................... 43 A CURE FOR THE BLUES ..................................................................................................................................... 61 THE CURIOUS BOOK ............................................................................................................................................ 79 THE CALIFORNIAN?S TALE ............................................................................................................................... 121 A HELPLESS SITUATION.................................................................................................................................... 128 A TELEPHONIC CONVERSAT...

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The work was composed between 1790 and 1793, in the period of radical foment and political conflict immediately after the French Revolution. The title is an ironic reference to Emanuel Swedenborg's theological work Heaven and Hell published in Latin 33 years earlier. Swedenborg is directly cited and criticized by Blake several places in the Marriage. Though Blake was influenced by his grand and mystical cosmic conception, Swedenborg's conventional moral structures and his Manichean view of good and evil led Blake to express a deliberately depolarized and unified vision of the cosmos in which the material world and physical desire are equally part of the divine order, hence, a marriage of heaven and hell. The book is written in prose, except for the opening Argument and the Song of Liberty. The book describes the poet's visit to Hell, a device adopted by Blake from Dante's Inferno and Milton's Paradise Lost....

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Literature, Philosophy, Satire, Poetry

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Excerpt: The tower among the Apennines It was in June that the sculptor, Kenyon, arrived on horse back at the gate of an ancient country house (which, from some of its features, might almost be called a castle) situated in a part of Tuscany somewhat remote from the ordinary track of tourists. Thither we must now accompany him, and endeavor to make our story flow onward, like a streamlet, past a gray tower that rises on the hillside, overlooking a spacious valley, which is set in the grand framework of the Apennines....

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Excerpt: ACT I. SCENE I. KING JOHN?S palace. [Enter KING JOHN, QUEEN ELINOR, PEMBROKE, ESSEX, SALISBURY, and others, with CHATILLON.] KING JOHN: Now, say, Chatillon, what would France with us? CHATILLON: Thus, after greeting, speaks the King of France In my behavior to the majesty, The borrow?d majesty, of England here. QUEEN ELINOR: A strange beginning: ?borrow?d majesty!? KING JOHN: Silence, good mother; hear the embassy. CHATILLON: Philip of France, in right and true behalf Of thy deceased brother Geffrey?s son, Arthur Plantagenet, lays most lawful claim To this fair island and the territories, To Ireland, Poictiers, Anjou, Touraine, Maine, Desiring thee to lay aside the sword Which sways usurpingly these several titles, And put these same into young Arthur?s hand, Thy nephew and right royal sovereign....

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Excerpt: Subject Of Contention. One midnight of a winter month the sleepers in Riversley Grange were awakened by a ringing of the outer bell and blows upon the great hall-doors. Squire Beltham was master there: the other members of the household were, his daughter Dorothy Beltham; a married daughter Mrs. Richmond; Benjamin Sewis, an old half-caste butler; various domestic servants; and a little boy, christened Harry Lepel Richmond....

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Excerpt: Preface To The American Edition. On the death of Fleeming Jenkin, his family and friends determined to publish a selection of his various papers; by way of introduction, the following pages were drawn up; and the whole, forming two considerable volumes, has been issued in England. In the States, it has not been thought advisable to reproduce the whole; and the memoir appearing alone, shorn of that other matter which was at once its occasion and its justification, so large an account of a man so little known may seem to a stranger out of all proportion....

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Excerpt: Lucien had gone to Paris; and David Sechard, with the courage and intelligence of the ox which painters give the Evangelist for accompanying symbol, set himself to make the large fortune for which he had wished that evening down by the Charente, when he sat with Eve by the weir, and she gave him her hand and her heart. He wanted to make the money quickly, and less for himself than for Eve?s sake and Lucien?s....

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Excerpt: Story of the Door. Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable. At friendly meetings, and when the wine was to his taste, something eminently human beaconed from his eye; something indeed which never found its way into his talk, but which spoke not only in these silent symbols of the after-dinner face, but more often and loudly in the acts of his life. He was austere with himself; drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages; and though he enjoyed the theater, had not crossed the doors of one for twenty years. But he had an approved tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almost with envy, at the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in any extremity inclined to help rather than to reprove. ?I incline to Cain?s heresy,? he used to say quaintly: ?I let my brother go to the devil in his own way.? In this character, it was frequently his fortune to be the last reputable acquaintance and the last good influence in the lives of d...