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Excerpt: Vanity Fair: Volume One (Chapters One through Twenty-five) by William Makepeace Thackeray.

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. Chirp the First. The kettle began it! Don?t tell me what Mrs. Peerybingle said. I know better. Mrs. Peerybingle may leave it on record to the end of time that she couldn?t say which of them began it; but, I say the kettle did. I ought to know, I hope! The kettle began it, full five minutes by the little waxy faced Dutch clock in the corner, before the Cricket uttered a chirp....

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Excerpt: ?If you talk of Murphy and Francis Moore, gentlemen,? said the lamplighter who was in the chair, ?I mean to say that neither of ?em ever had any more to do with the stars than Tom Grig had.? ?And what had he to do with ?em?? asked the lamplighter who officiated as vice. ?Nothing at all,? replied the other; ?just exactly nothing at all.?...

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Excerpt: I once used to live in a little street which probably is not known to you--the Rue de Lesdiguieres. It is a turning out of the Rue Saint-Antoine, beginning just opposite a fountain near the Place de la Bastille, and ending in the Rue de la Cerisaie. Love of knowledge stranded me in a garret; my nights I spent in work, my days in reading at the Bibliotheque d?Orleans, close by. I lived frugally; I had accepted the conditions of the monastic life, necessary conditions for every worker, scarcely permitting myself a walk along the Boulevard. Bourdon when the weather was fine....

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Excerpt: When, in March, 1832, the first volume of the now famous Contes Drolatiques was published by Gosselin of Paris, Balzac, in a short preface, written in the publisher?s name, replied to those attacks which he anticipated certain critics would make upon his hardy experiment....

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Contents Translators Preface............................................................................................................................ 4 PROLOGUE ..................................................................................................................................... 6 THE FAIR IMPERIA........................................................................................................................ 8 THE VENIAL SIN........................................................................................................................... 21 HOW THE GOOD MAN BRUYN TOOK A WIFE. ......................................................................................... 21 HOW THE SENESCHAL STRUGGLED WITH HIS WIFE?S MODESTY. ................................................. 31 THAT WHICH IS ONLY A VENIAL SIN. ........................................................................................................ 38 HOW AND BY WHOM THE SAID CHILD WAS PROCURED. ................................................................... 44 HOW THE SAID LOVE-SIN WAS REPENTED OF AND LED TO GREAT MOURNING. ................

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Excerpt: King Richard II by William Shakespeare.

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Excerpt: Mugby Junction by Charles Dickens.

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Excerpt: ACT I. SCENE I. Athens. The palace of THESEUS. [Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, PHILOSTRATE, and Attendants.] THESEUS: Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour Draws on apace; four happy days bring in Another moon: but, O, methinks, how slow This old moon wanes! she lingers my desires, Like to a step-dame or a dowager Long withering out a young man revenue. HIPPOLYTA: Four days will quickly steep themselves in night; Four nights will quickly dream away the time; And then the moon, like to a silver bow New-bent in heaven, shall behold the night Of our solemnities....

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Excerpt: ?Halloa! Below there!? When he heard a voice thus calling to him, he was standing at the door of his box, with a flag in his hand, furled round its short pole. One would have thought, considering the nature of the ground, that he could not have doubted from what quarter the voice came; but instead of looking up to where I stood on the top of the steep cutting nearly over his head, he turned himself about, and looked down the Line. There was something remarkable in his manner of doing so, though I could not have said for my life what. But I know it was remarkable enough to attract my notice, even though his figure was foreshortened and shadowed, down in the deep trench, and mine was high above him, so steeped in the glow of an angry sunset, that I had shaded my eyes with my hand before I saw him at all....

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Contents: The Signal-Man The Haunted-House The Trial For Murder

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Excerpt: AEGEON. Proceed, Solinus, to procure my fall And by the doom of death end woes and all. DUKE SOLINUS: Merchant of Syracuse, plead no more; I am not partial to infringe our laws: The enmity and discord which of late Sprung from the rancorous outrage of your duke To merchants, our well-dealing countrymen, Who wanting guilders to redeem their lives Have seal?d his rigorous statutes with their bloods, Excludes all pity from our threatening looks. For, since the mortal and intestine jars ?Twixt thy seditious countrymen and us....

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. How Sir Agravaine and Sir Mordred were busy upon Sir Gawaine for to disclose the love between Sir Launcelot and Queen Guenever In May when every lusty heart flourisheth and bourgeoneth, for as the season is lusty to behold and comfortable, so man and woman rejoice and gladden of summer coming with his fresh flowers: for winter with his rough winds and blasts cause a lusty man and woman to cower and sit fast by the fire. So in this season, as in the month of May, it befell a great anger and unhap that stinted not till the flower of chivalry of all the world was destroyed and slain; and all was long upon two unhappy knights the which were named Agravaine and Sir Mordred, that were brethren unto Sir Gawaine....

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Excerpt: Across the Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson.

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Contents CHAPTER I - ACROSS THE PLAIN........................3 CHAPTER II - THE OLD PACIFIC CAPITAL........38 CHAPTER III - FONTAINEBLEAU VILLAGE COMMUNITIES OF PAINTERS...............................52 CHAPTER IV - EPILOGUE TO ?AN INLAND VOYAGE?................................................................. 68 CHAPTER V - RANDOM MEMORIES.................79 CHAPTER VI - RANDOM MEMORIES................89 CHAPTER VII - THE LANTERN-BEARERS........97 CHAPTER VIII - A CHAPTER ON DREAMS......107 CHAPTER IX - BEGGARS...................................118 CHAPTER X - LETTER TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO PROPOSES TO EMBRACE THE CAREER OF ART............................................127 CHAPTER XII - A CHRISTMAS SERMON.........140...

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Excerpt: The Tempest by William Shakespeare assumes any responsibility for the material contained within the document or for the file as an electronic transmission, in any way....

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. Of the joy King Arthur and the queen had of the achievement of the Sangreal; and how Launcelot fell to his old love again. So after the quest of the Sangreal was fulfilled, and all knights that were left alive were come again unto the Table Round, as the book of the Sangreal maketh mention, then was there great joy in the court; and in especial King Arthur and Queen Guenever made great joy of the remnant that were come home, and passing glad was the king and the queen of Sir Launcelot and of Sir Bors, for they had been passing long away in the quest of the Sangreal....

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Preface: An affair which might be deemed worthy of a note of a few lines in any general history has been here expanded to the size of a volume or large pamphlet. The smallness of the scale, and the singularity of the manners and events and many of the characters, considered, it is hoped that, in spite of its outlandish subject, the sketch may find readers. It has been a task of difficulty. Speed was essential, or it might come too late to be of any service to a distracted country....

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Excerpt: Modern Broods, or Developments Unlooked For by Charlotte M. Yonge.

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Excerpt: William Shakespeare?s Titus Andronicus.

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Excerpt: How Sir Tristram jousted, and smote down King Arthur, because he told him not the cause why he bare that shield. And if so be ye can descrive what ye bear, ye are worthy to bear the arms. As for that, said Sir Tristram, I will answer you; this shield was given me, not desired, of Queen Morgan le Fay; and as for me, I can not descrive these arms, for it is no point of my charge, and yet I trust to God to bear them with worship. Truly, said King Arthur, ye ought not to bear none arms but if ye wist what ye bear: but I pray you tell me your name....

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. The countryside and the man on a lovely spring morning in the year 1829, a man of fifty or thereabouts was wending his way on horseback along the mountain road that leads to a large village near the Grande Chartreuse. This village is the market town of a populous canton that lies within the limits of a valley of some considerable length. The melting of the snows had filled the boulder- strewn bed of the torrent (often dry) that flows through this valley, which is closely shut in between two parallel mountain barriers, above which the peaks of Savoy and of Dauphine tower on every side....

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Excerpt: ?Let the boys have it if they like it,? said Mrs. Garrow, pleading to her only daughter on behalf of her two sons. ?Pray don?t, mamma,? said Elizabeth Garrow. ?It only means romping. To me all that is detestable, and I am sure it is not the sort of thing that Miss Holmes would like.? ?We always had it at Christmas when we were young.? ?But, mamma, the world is so changed.?...