Excerpt: Chapter I; I SCARCELY know where to begin, though I sometimes facetiously place the cause of it all to Charley Furuseth?s credit. He kept a summer cottage in Mill Valley, under the shadow of Mount Tamalpais, and never occupied it except when he loafed through the winter months and read Nietzsche and Schopenhaver to rest his brain. When summer came on, he elected to sweat out a hot and dusty existence in the city and to toil incessantly. Had it not been my custom to run up to see him every Saturday afternoon and to stop over till Monday morning, this particular January Monday morning would not have found me afloat on San Francisco Bay. Not but that I was afloat in a safe craft, for the Martinez was a new ferrysteamer, making her fourth or fifth trip on the run between Sausalito and San Francisco. The danger lay in the heavy fog which blanketed the bay, and of which, as a landsman, I had little apprehension. In fact, I remember the placid exaltation with which took up my position on the forward upper deck, directly beneath the pilot-house, and allowed the mystery of the fog to lay hold of my imagination. A fresh breeze was bl...

Table of Contents: Chapter I, 1 -- Chapter II, 8 -- Chapter III, 14 -- Chapter IV, 24 -- Chapter V, 29 -- Chapter VI, 35 -- Chapter VII, 46 -- Chapter VIII, 49 -- Chapter IX, 55 -- Chapter X, 62 -- Chapter XI, 67 -- Chapter XII, 72 -- Chapter XIII, 80 -- Chapter XIV, 84 -- Chapter XV, 91 -- Chapter XVI, 96 -- Chapter XVII, 102 -- Chapter XVIII, 113 -- Chapter XIX, 119 -- Chapter XX, 125 -- Chapter XXI, 132 -- Chapter XXII, 136 -- Chapter XXIII, 139 -- Chapter XXIV, 143 -- Chapter XXV, 149 -- Chapter XXVI, 160 -- Chapter XXVII, 170 -- Chapter XXVIII, 177...

Excerpt: Barnaby Rudge, A Tale of the Riots of ?Eighty by Charles Dickens.

Excerpt: Chapter 1. What determined the speech that startled him in the course of their encounter scarcely matters, being probably but some words spoken by himself quite without intention--spoken as they lingered and slowly moved together after their renewal of acquaintance. He had been conveyed by friends an hour or two before to the house at which she was staying; the party of visitors at the other house, of whom he was one, and thanks to whom it was his theory, as always, that he was lost in the crowd, had been invited over to luncheon....

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....

Preface: In which it is proved that, notwithstanding their names? ending in os and is, the heroes of the story which we are about to have the honor to relate to our readers have nothing mythological about them....

Excerpt: King Richard II by William Shakespeare.

Excerpt: The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac, translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley.

Excerpt: Mugby Junction by Charles Dickens.

Excerpt: The Recruit by Honore de Balzac, translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley.

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....

Preface: As the most striking lines of poetry are the most hackneyed, because they have grown to be the common inheritance of all the world, so many of the most noble deeds that earth can show have become the best known, and enjoyed their full meed of fame. Therefore it may be feared that many of the events here detailed, or alluded to, may seem trite to those in search of novelty; but it is not for such that the collection has been made....

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....

Excerpt: ACT I. SCENE I. Windsor. Before PAGE?s house. [Enter SHALLOW, SLENDER, and SIR HUGH EVANS.] SHALLOW: Sir Hugh, persuade me not; I will make a Star-chamber matter of it: if he were twenty Sir John Falstaffs, he shall not abuse Robert Shallow, esquire. SLENDER: In the county of Gloucester, justice of peace and ?Coram.? SHALLOW: Ay, cousin Slender, and ?Custalorum. SLENDER: Ay, and ?Rato-lorum? too; and a gentleman born, master parson; who writes himself ?Armigero,? in any bill, warrant, quittance, or obligation, ?Armigero.? SHALLOW: Ay, that I do; and have done any time these three hundred years....

Excerpt: How Sir Launcelot came to a chapel, where he found dead, in a white shirt, a man of religion, of an hundred winter old. When the hermit had kept Sir Launcelot three days, the hermit gat him an horse, an helm, and a sword. And then he departed about the hour of noon. And then he saw a little house. And when he came near he saw a chapel, and there beside he saw an old man that was clothed all in white full richly; and then Sir Launcelot said: God save you. God keep you, said the good man, and make you a good knight. Then Sir Launcelot alighted and entered into the chapel, and there he saw an old man dead, in a white shirt of passing fine cloth....

Excerpt: Introduction to Canto First. November?s sky is chill and drear, November?s leaf is red and sear: Late, gazing down the steepy linn That hems our little garden in, Low in its dark and narrow glen You scarce the rivulet might ken, So thick the tangled greenwood grew....

Preface: There are of course peculiar advantages as well as disadvantages in endeavouring to write the life of one recently departed. On the one hand, the remembrances connected with him are far fresher; his contemporaries can he consulted, and much can be made matter of certainty, for which a few years would have made it necessary to trust to hearsay or probable conjecture. On the other, there is necessarily much more reserve; nor are the results of the actions, nor even their comparative importance, so clearly discernible as when there has been time to ripen the fruit....

Excerpt: Half-way down the Rue Saint-Denis, almost at the corner of the Rue du Petit-Lion, there stood formerly one of those delightful houses which enable historians to reconstruct old Paris by analogy. The threatening walls of this tumbledown abode seemed to have been decorated with hieroglyphics....

Excerpt: ACT I. SCENE I. King Lear?s palace. Enter KENT, GLOUCESTER, and EDMUND. KENT: I thought the king had more affected the Duke of Albany than Cornwall. GLOUCESTER: It did always seem so to us: but now, in the division of the kingdom, it appears not which of the dukes he values most; for equalities are so weighed, that curiosity in neither can make choice of either?s moiety. KENT: Is not this your son, my lord? GLOUCESTER: His breeding, sir, hath been at my charge: I have so often blushed to acknowledge him, that now I am brazed to it. KENT: I cannot conceive you....

LEAR, King of Britain KING OF FRANCE DUKE OF BURGUNDY DUKE OF CORNWALL DUKE OF ALBANY EARL OF KENT EARL OF GLOUCESTER EDGAR: Son to Gloucester. EDMUND: bastard son to Gloucester. CURAN: a courtier. Old Man: tenant to Gloucester. Doctor Fool OSWALD: Steward to Goneril. A Captain employed by Edmund Gentleman attendant on Cordelia A Herald Servants to Cornwall GONERIL: REGAN: daughters to Lear. CORDELIA: Knights of Lear?s train, Captains, Messengers, Soldiers, and Attendants...

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, ...

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...

Excerpt: Introduction To Guy Mannering. The novel or romance of Waverley made its way to the public slowly, of course, at first, but afterwards with such accumulating popularity as to encourage the author to a second attempt. He looked about for a name and a subject; and the manner in which the novels were composed cannot be better illustrated than by reciting the simple narrative on which Guy Mannering was originally founded; but to which, in the progress of the work, the production ceased to bear any, even the most distant resemblance....