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Excerpt: As a testimony to the affection of his brother-in-law?

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George Sand (the pen name of Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin 1804-1876) is famous for flaunting the convertions of behaviour expected of women of her standing in France at the time and for her numerous romantic liaisons including her long standing affair with Frederic Chopin. The Devil’s Pool (published in 1846 as La Mare au Diable) is one of several short pastoral novels drawn from her childhood experiences in the rural French region of Berri. It tells the story of a young widower, Germain, who, at the insistence of his father-in-law, sets out to remarry so that he will have someone to help raise his three young children. (Summary by the reader)...

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Literature

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Candide is a relentless, brutal assault on government, society, religion, education, and, above all, optimism. Dr. Pangloss teaches his young students Candide and Cunegonde that everything in this world is for the best, a sentiment they cling to as the world steps in to teach them otherwise. The novel is brilliant, hilarious, blasphemous. . . and Voltaire never admitted to writing it....

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Literature

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On a journey to Tuscany with her young friend and traveling companion Caroline Abbott, widowed Lilia Herriton falls in love with both Italy and a handsome Italian much younger than herself, and decides to stay. Furious, her dead husband's family send Lilia's brother-in-law to Italy to prevent a misalliance, but he arrives too late. Lilia marries the Italian and in due course becomes pregnant again. When she dies giving birth to her child, the Herritons consider it both their right and their duty to travel to Monteriano to obtain custody of the infant so that he can be raised as an Englishman. (Summary from Wikipedia)...

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Literature

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Bleak House is the ninth novel by Charles Dickens, published in 20 monthly parts between March 1852 and September 1853. It is widely held to be one of Dickens' finest and most complete novels, containing one of the most vast, complex and engaging arrays of minor characters and sub-plots in his entire canon. Dickens tells all of these both through the narrative of the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson, and as an omniscient narrator. Memorable characters include the menacing lawyer Tulkinghorn, the friendly but depressive John Jarndyce and the childish Harold Skimpole. The plot concerns a long-running legal dispute (Jarndyce and Jarndyce) which has far-reaching consequences for all involved. (Summary from Wikipedia)...

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Literature

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Isabella Matilda Davis Brittingham was a significant early American Bahá'í and was posthumously designated by Shoghi Effendi as one of the 19 Disciples of 'Abdu'l-Bahá and Heralds of the Covenant. She was born in 1852, the daughter of Benjamin Davis, who was a grandson of John Morton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Her sister-in-law heard about the Bahá'í Faith in 1897 and in 1898 Isabella herself became a part of the nascent American Bahá'í community. In September 1901, Isabella went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where she met 'Abdu'l-Bahá, the leader of the Bahá'í Faith and son of the Founder, Bahá'u'lláh. She used the knowledge she gained there to write The Revelation of Baha-ullah in a Sequence of Four Lessons, which was published by the Bahai Publishing Society of Chicago in 1902. There were nine editions of this work, the last being in 1920. It was one of the earliest accurate accounts of the Bahá'í Faith published in the West. The main purpose of the book is to demonstrate the truth of Bahá'u'lláh's Revelation through Biblical prophecy....

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Literature

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One great universal law runs through the realm of nature. Our Saviour gave it in a sentence: 'First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.' It is with the desire to show that the same law rules in another of God's creations—The Bible—that this little volume has been prepared. The Bible has as literally 'grown' as has an oak tree; and probably there is no more likeness between the Bible as we know it to-day and its earliest beginning, than we find between the mighty tree, and the acorn from which it sprang. The subject is so vast that we have not attempted anything beyond the briefest outline. Our purpose has been merely to give some idea of the origin of the Bible books, up to the measure of our present light upon the subject, and also to show the purpose for which they were written. But if our readers, by seeing something of the wonder and glory of the Holy Scriptures, are able to catch a glimpse of the Creator's mind behind the whole, our work will not have been in vain. (Foreword, by Mildred Duff)...

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Religion, Literature

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. I am a rather elderly man. The nature of my avocations for the last thirty years has brought me into more than ordinary contact with what would seem an interesting and somewhat singular set of men, of whom, as yet, nothing that I know of has ever been written -- I mean the law-copyists, or scriveners. I have known very many of them, professionally and privately, and, if I pleased, could relate divers histories at which good-natured gentlemen might smile and sentimental souls might weep....

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Excerpt: The Taming of the Shrew; Actus Primus -- Scaena Prima -- Enter Begger and Hostes, Christophero Sly. Begger. Ile pheeze you infaith. Host. A paire of stockes you rogue. Beg. Y?are a baggage, the Slies are no Rogues. Looke in the Chronicles, we came in with Richard Conqueror: therefore Paucas pallabris, let the world slide: Sessa. Host. You will not pay for the glasses you have burst? Beg. No, not a deniere: go by S[aint]. Jeronimie, goe to thy cold bed, and warme thee. Host. I know my remedie, I must go fetch the Head- borough. Beg. Third, or fourth, or fifth Borough, Ile answere him by Law. Ile not budge an inch boy: Let him come, and kindly. Falles asleepe. Winde hornes. Enter a Lord from hunting, with his traine. Lo. Huntsman I charge thee, tender wel my hounds, Brach Meriman, the poore Curre is imbost, And couple Clowder with the deepe- mouth?d brach, Saw?st thou not boy how Silver made it good At the hedge corner, in the couldest fault, I would not loose the dogge for twentie pound. Hunts. Why Belman is as good as he my Lord, He cried upon it at the meerest losse, And twice to day pick?d out the dullest sent, Trust me, ...

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Table of Contents: The Taming of the Shrew, 1 -- Actus primus. Scaena Prima., 1 -- Actus Tertia., 29 -- Actus Quartus. Scena Prima., 44 -- Actus Quintus., 56...

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Introduction: Immediately after Lincoln?s re-election to the Presidency, in an off-hand speech, delivered in response to a serenade by some of his admirers on the evening of November 10, 1864, he spoke as follows: ?It has long been a grave question whether any government not too strong for the liberties of its people can be strong enough to maintain its existence in great emergencies. On this point, the present rebellion brought our republic to a severe test, and the Presidential election, occurring in regular course during the rebellion, added not a little to the strain?. The strife of the election is but human nature practically applied to the facts in the case....

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. A bright spring day was fading into evening. High overhead in the clear heavens small rosy clouds seemed hardly to move across the sky but to be sinking into its depths of blue. In a handsome house in one of the outlying streets of the government town of O---- (it was in the year 1842) two women were sitting at an open window; one was about fifty, the other an old lady of seventy....

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Excerpt: Colonel Chabert. ?Hullo! There is that old Box-coat again!? This exclamation was made by a lawyer?s clerk of the class called in French offices a gutter-jumper--a messenger in fact--who at this moment was eating a piece of dry bread with a hearty appetite. He pulled off a morsel of crumb to make into a bullet, and fired it gleefully through the open pane of the window against which he was leaning. The pellet, well aimed, rebounded almost as high as the window, after hitting the hat of a stranger who was crossing the courtyard of a house in the Rue Vivienne, where dwelt Maitre Derville, attorney-at-law....

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Excerpt: The Comedie of Errors; Actus Primus -- Scena Prima -- Enter the Duke of Ephesus, with the Merchant of Siracusa, Iaylor, and other attendants. Marchant. Proceed Solinus to procure my fall, And by the doome of death end woes and all. Duke. Merchant of Siracusa, plead no more. I am not partiall to infringe our Lawes; The enmity and discord which of late Sprung from the rancorous outrage of your Duke, To Merchants our well-dealing Countrimen, Who wanting gilders to redeeme their lives, Have seal?d his rigorous statutes with their blouds, Excludes all pitty from our threatning lookes: For since the mortall and intestine jarres Twixt thy seditious Countrimen and us, It hath in solemne Synodes beene decreed, Both by the Siracusians and our selves, To admit no trafficke to our aduerse townes: Nay more, if any borne at Ephesus Be seene at any Siracusian Marts and Fayres: Againe, if any Siracusian borne Come to the Bay of Ephesus, he dies: His goods confiscate to the Dukes dispose, Unlesse a thousand markes be levied To quit the penalty, and to ransome him: Thy substance, valued at the highest rate, Cannot amount unto a hundred Marke...

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Table of Contents: The Comedie of Errors, 1 -- Actus primus, Scena prima., 1 -- Actus Secundus., 7 -- Actus Tertius. Scena Prima., 14 -- Actus Quartus. Scoena Prima., 22 -- Actus Quintus. Scoena Prima., 33...

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Excerpt: Part I, The Wild; The Trail of the Meat -- DARK spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway. The trees had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they seemed to lean toward each other, black and ominous, in the fading light. A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness --a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the Sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild. But there was life, abroad in the land and defiant. Down the frozen waterway toiled a string of wolfish dogs. Their bristly fur was rimed with frost. Their breath froze in the air as it left their mouths, spouting forth in spumes of vapor that settled upon the hair of their bodies and formed into crystals...

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Table of Contents: Part I: TheWild 1 -- I: The Trail of the Meat, 1 -- II: The She-Wolf, 8 -- III: The Hunger Cry, 16 -- Part II: Born of the Wild 24 -- I: The Battle of the Fangs, 24 -- II: The Lair, 32 -- III: The Gray Cub, 38 -- IV: The Wall of the World, 42 -- V: The Law of Meat, 50 -- Part III: The Gods of the Wild 55 -- I: The Makers of Fire, 55 -- II: The Bondage, 64 -- III: The Outcast, 70 -- IV: The Trail of the Gods, 74 -- V: The Covenant, 78 -- VI: The Famine, 85 -- Part IV: The Superior Gods 92 -- I: The Enemy of His Kind, 92 -- II: The Mad God, 100 -- III: The Reign of Hate, 107 -- IV: The Clinging Death, 111 -- V: The Indomitable, 120 -- VI: The Love-Master, 125...

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Excerpt: William Shakespeare, the protagonist on the great arena of modern poetry, and the glory of the human intellect, was born at Stratford-upon- Avon, in the county of Warwick, in the year 1564, and upon some day, not precisely ascertained, in the month of April. It is certain that he was baptized on the 25th; and from that fact, combined with some shadow of a tradition, Malone has inferred that he was born on the 23d. There is doubtless, on the one hand, no absolute necessity deducible from law or custom, as either operated in those times, which obliges us to adopt such a conclusion; for children might be baptized, and were baptized, at various distances from their birth: yet, on the other hand, the 23d is as likely to have been the day as any other; and more likely than any earlier day, upon two arguments. First, because there was probably a tradition floating in the seventeenth century, that Shakespeare died upon his birthday: now it is beyond a doubt that he died upon the 23d of April....

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Contents SHAKSPEARE ........................................................................................................................4 POPE ................................................................................................................................... 73 CHARLES LAMB ............................................................................................................... 121 GOETHE........................................................................................................................... 163 SCHILLER......................................................................................................................... 187...

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Excerpt: A Treatise on Government by Aristotle, translated by William Ellis.

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Excerpt: Puck of Pook?s Hill by Rudyard Kipling.

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Contents Puck of Pook?s Hill ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 4 WELAND?S SWORD......................................................................................................................................................................................... 4 Puck?s Song ......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 4 A Tree Song ....................................................................................................................................................................................................... 20 YOUNG MEN AT THE MANOR .................................................................................................................................................................... 21 Sir Richard?s Song .........................................................................................

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. Mrs. Munden had not yet been to my studio on so good a pretext as when she first intimated that it would be quite open to me--should I only care, as she called it, to throw the handkerchief--to paint her beautiful sister-in-law. I needn?t go here more than is essential into the question of Mrs. Munden, who would really, by the way, be a story in herself. She has a manner of her own of putting things, and some of those she has put to me--! Her implication was that Lady Beldonald hadn?t only seen and admired certain examples of my work, but had literally been prepossessed in favour of the painter?s ?personality.? Had I been struck with this sketch I might easily have imagined her ladyship was throwing me the handkerchief. ?She hasn?t done,? my visitor said, ?what she ought.?...

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Amongst the great popular novelists of the nineteenth century who are still read today, Anthony Trollope stands alongside his contemporary, Charles Dickens. His two series of novels, the political (The Pallisers) and the clerical (The Barsetshire Chronicles) are the best known. This book is the first of the Barsetshire series and was also Trollope’s first really successful novel. In the mid nineteenth century there were a number of financial scandals in the Church of England including those of Rochester, where the endowments which should have supported the King’s School Canterbury had been diverted to the Dean and Chapter; and of the hospital of St Cross at Winchester where the Rev. Francis North, later the Earl of Guildford, had been appointed to the mastership of the hospital by his father the bishop. The revenues of the hospital were very considerable, the work involved minimal. The scandal soon broke. Trollope based ‘The Warden’ on the St Cross case, but in the novel the Warden is a kindly, devoted, priest, beloved by all that knew him and is racked by fear that he is accepting money to which he is not entitled. His antagonist i...

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Literature

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Excerpt: Mr. President and Gentlemen of the convention:-- If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. ?A house divided against itself cannot stand.? I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing....

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Contents SPEECH AT SPRINGFIELD, JUNE 17, 1858 ............................................................................................................ 4 SPEECH AT CHICAGO, JULY 10, 1858. .................................................................................................................. 12 IN REPLY TO SENATOR DOUGLAS ...................................................................................................................... 12 SPEECH AT SPRINGFIELD, JULY 17, 1858. .......................................................................................................... 30 CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN ........................................................................................................................... 48 LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS ..................................................................................................................................... 48 FIRST JOINT DEBATE, AT OTTAWA, AUGUST 21, 1858 ..................................................................................... 50 SECOND JOINT DEBATE, AT FREEPORT, AUGUST 27, 1858 .....................................................