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After his father’s death Gerard Roylake returns from Germany to take up his inheritance at Trimley Deen. On one evening he meets his childhood friend, Cristel Toller. They fall in love, but there is a crux. A deaf man, called The Lodger is obsessed with Cristel. He invites Gerard to tea with evil intentions… and Gerard accepts the invitation. The book is written in the first person and tells the story from Gerard's point of view. (Summary by Diana Majlinger)...

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Literature, Fiction

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Excerpt: At one period of its reverses, the House fell into the occupation of a Showman. He was found registered as its occupier, on the parish books of the time when he rented the House, and there was therefore no need of any clue to his name. But, he himself was less easy to be found; for, he had led a wandering life, and settled people had lost sight of him, and people who plumed themselves on being respectable were shy of admitting that they had ever known anything of him....

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Mike’s dream of studying and playing cricket at Cambridge are thwarted as his father runs into financial difficulties. Instead, Mike takes on the job of clerk at the “New Asiatic Bank.” Luckily, school friend Psmith, with his boundless optimism and original views, soon joins his department, and together they endeavour to make the best of their new life in London. (Summary written by Gesine)...

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Comedy

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Plenty of princesses have been cursed by wicked witches, but the curse placed on this princess by her evil aunt is an unusual one: it removes all the princess's gravity. What can break the curse before the princess floats away? Perhaps the best thing for her would be to fall in love, but how a person with no gravity can fall in anything is just the problem. (summary by LauraFox)...

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Children

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A collection of Twain short stories including: The Loves Of Alonzo Fitz Clarence And Rosannah Ethelton On The Decay Of The Art Of Lying About Magnanimous-Incident Literature The Grateful Poodle The Benevolent Author The Grateful Husband Punch, Brothers, Punch The Great Revolution In Pitcairn The Canvasser's Tale An Encounter With An Interviewer Paris Notes Legend Of Sagenfeld, In Germany Speech On The Babies Speech On The Weather Concerning The American Language Rogers (Summary from Project Gutenberg)...

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Fiction, Short stories

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. Well, when I had been dead about thirty years I begun to get a little anxious. Mind you, had been whizzing through space all that time, like a comet. Like a comet! Why, Peters, I laid over the lot of them! Of course there weren?t any of them going my way, as a steady thing, you know, because they travel in a long circle like the loop of a lasso, whereas I was pointed as straight as a dart for the Hereafter; but I happened on one every now and then that was going my way for an hour or so, and then we had a bit of a brush together....

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Excerpt: That homely proverb, used on so many occasions in England, viz. ?That what is bred in the bone will not go out of the flesh,? was never more verified than in the story of my Life. Any one would think that after thirty-five years? affliction, and a variety of unhappy circumstances, which few men, if any, ever went through before, and after near seven years of peace and enjoyment in the fullness of all things; grown old, and when, if ever, it might be allowed me to have had experience of every state of middle life, and to know which was most adapted to make a man completely happy; I say, after all this, any one would have thought that the native propensity to rambling which I gave an account of in my first setting out in the world to have been so predominant in my thoughts, should be worn out, and I might, at sixty one years of age, have been a little inclined to stay at home, and have done venturing life and fortune any more....

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Excerpt: An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids by Anthony Trollope.

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Excerpt: A Dispersion. ?A telegram! Make haste and open it, Jane; they always make me so nervous! I believe that is the reason Reginald always will telegraph when he is coming,? said Miss Adeline Mohun, a very pretty, well preserved, though delicate-looking lady of some age about forty, as her elder sister, brisk and lively and some years older, came into the room....

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Excerpt: Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac, translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley.

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

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The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century (two of them in prose, the rest in verse). The tales, some of which are originals and others not, are contained inside a frame tale and told by a group of pilgrims on their way from Southwark to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The themes of the tales vary, and include topics such as courtly love, treachery, and avarice. The genres also vary, and include romance, Breton lai, sermon, beast fable, and fabliau. The characters, introduced in the General Prologue of the book, tell tales of great cultural relevance. The version read here was edited by D. Laing Purves “for popular perusal” and the language is mostly updated. ( Gesine)...

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Historical Fiction

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Children, Memoirs

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It is the end of the 19th century. Like thousands of others, the Rudkus family has emigrated from Lithuania to America in search of a better life. As they settle into the Packingtown neighborhood of Chicago, they find their dreams are unlikely to be realized. In fact, just the opposite is quite likely to occur. Jurgis, the main character of the novel, has brought his father Antanas, his fiancée Ona, her stepmother Teta Elzbieta, Teta Elzbieta's brother Jonas and her six children, and Ona's cousin Marija Berczynskas along. The family, naïve to the ways of Chicago, quickly falls prey to con men and makes a series of bad decisions that lead them into wretched poverty and terrible living conditions. All are forced to find jobs in dismal working conditions for their very survival. Jurgis, broken and discouraged, eventually finds solace in the American Socialist movement. This novel was written during a period in American history when “Trusts” were formed by multiple corporations to establish monopolies that stifled competition and fixed prices. Unthinkable working conditions and unfair business practices were the norm. The Jungle’s autho...

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Fiction, Literature

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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....

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Excerpt: The increase of the towns of Manhattan, as, for the sake of convenience, we shall term New York and her adjuncts, in all that contributes to the importance of a great commercial mart, renders them one of the most remarkable places of the present age. Within the distinct recollections of living men, they have grown from a city of the fifth or sixth class to be near the head of all the purely trading places of the known world. That there are sufficient causes for this unparalleled prosperity, will appear in the analysis of the natural advantages of the port, in its position, security, accessories, and scale....

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Excerpt: The Heir of Redclyffe by Charlotte M. Yonge.

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Introduction: The enterprise of messrs. T. Nelson & Sons and the friendly accommodation of Messrs. Macmillan render possible this collection in one cover of all the short stories by me that I care for any one to read again. Except for the two series of linked incidents that make up the bulk of the book called Tales of Space and Time, no short story of mine of the slightest merit is excluded from this volume....

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Contents INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................. 5 THE JILTING OF JANE ................................................................................10 THE CONE.....................................................................................................16 THE STOLEN BACILLUS............................................................................27 THE FLOWERING OF THE STRANGE ORCHID .....................................34 IN THE AVU OBSERVATORY .....................................................................42 ’PYORNIS ISLAND ....................................................................................48 THE REMARKABLE CASE OF DAVIDSON?S EYES...............................59 THE LORD OF THE DYNAMOS.................................................................69 THE MOTH....................................................................................................77 THE STORY OF THE LATE MR. ELVESHAM...........................................94 UNDER THE KNIFE ..............................................

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Excerpt: CHORUS. Not marching in the fields of Thrasymene, Where Mars did mate the warlike Carthagens; Nor sporting in the dalliance of love, In courts of kings where state is overturn?d; Nor in the pomp of proud audacious deeds, Intends our Muse to vaunt her heavenly verse: Only this, gentles,--we must now perform The form of Faustus? fortunes, good or bad: And now to patient judgments we appeal, And speak for Faustus in his infancy....

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Excerpt: The malady of the age. On a fine evening in the month of September, 1836, a man about thirty years of age was leaning on the parapet of that quay from which a spectator can look up the Seine from the Jardin des Plantes to Notre-Dame, and down, along the vast perspective of the river, to the Louvre. There is not another point of view to compare with it in the capital of ideas. We feel ourselves on the quarter-deck, as it were, of a gigantic vessel. We dream of Paris from the days of the Romans to those of the Franks, from the Normans to the Burgundians, the Middle-Ages, the Valois, Henri IV., Louis XIV., Napoleon, and Louis-Philippe. Vestiges are before us of all those sovereignties, in monuments that recall their memory....

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Excerpt: The Volsunga Saga translated by William Morris and Eirikr Magnusson (1888).

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Contents INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................5 TRANSLATORS? PREFACE.......................................................................23 THE STORY OF THE VOLSUNGS AND NIBLUNGS.............................26 APPENDIX:.................................................................................................132 EXCERPTS FROM THE POETIC EDDA.............................................................................................................. 132 PART OF THE LAY OF SIGRDRIFA (1)................................................................................................................. 139 THE LAY CALLED .................................................................................................................................................. 142 THE SHORT LAY OF SIGURD.............................................................................................................................. 142 THE HELL-RIDE OF BRYNHILD ............................................................................................................................

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Excerpt: The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling by Henry Fielding: Volume Two, Containing Books IX through XVIII.

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. Above Buttons. Long after the hours when tradesmen are in the habit of commencing business, the shutters of a certain shop in the town of Lymport-on-the-Sea remained significantly closed, and it became known that death had taken Mr. Melchisedec Harrington, and struck one off the list of living tailors....

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Excerpt: VOL I. In the morning of life the truthful wooed the beautiful, and their offspring was Love. Like his Divine parents, He is eternal. He has his Mother?s ravishing smile; his Father?s steadfast eyes. He rises every day, fresh and glorious as the untired Sun-God. He is Eros, the ever young. Dark, dark were this world of ours had either Divinity left it--dark without the daybeams of the Latonian Charioteer, darker yet without the daedal Smile of the God of the Other Bow! Dost know him, reader?...

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Contents NOVELS BY EMINENT HANDS ...................................................................................................... 4 NOONDAY IN CHEPE ....................................................................................................................... 5 BUTTON?S IN PALL MALL.............................................................................................................. 9 THE CONDEMNED CELL. ..............................................................................................................12 CODLINGSBY .................................................................................................................................15 PHIL FOGARTY ...............................................................................................................................27 BARBAZURE. ..................................................................................................................................39 LORDS AND LIVERIES. ..................................................................................................................49 CRINOLINE.................................

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Excerpt: War and Peace: Book Nine by Leo Tolstoy.

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Excerpt: A Slow Journey. Again two carriages stood at the front door of the house at Petrovskoe. In one of them sat Mimi, the two girls, and their maid, with the bailiff, Jakoff, on the box, while in the other-- a britchka--sat Woloda, myself, and our servant Vassili. Papa, who was to follow us to Moscow in a few days, was standing bareheaded on the entrance-steps. He made the sign of the cross at the windows of the carriages, and said:...

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. The problem of education is twofold: first to know, and then to utter. Every one who lives any sem blance of an inner life thinks more nobly and profoundly than he speaks; and the best of teachers can impart only broken images of the truth which they perceive. Speech which goes from one to another between two natures, and, what is worse, between two experiences, is doubly relative. The speaker buries his meaning; it is for the hearer to dig it up again; and all speech, written or spoken, is in a dead language until it finds a willing and prepared hearer. Such, moreover, is the complexity of life, that when we condescend upon details in our advice, we may be sure we condescend on error; and the best of education is to throw out some magnanimous hints. No man was ever so poor that he could express all he has in him by words, looks, or actions; his true knowledge is eternally incommunicable, for it is a knowledge of himself; and his best wisdom comes to him by no process of the mind, but in a supreme self-dictation, which keeps varying from hour to hour in its dictates with the variation of events and circumstances....

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Contents Lay Morals ........................................................................................................4 FATHER DAMIEN.........................................................................................43 THE PENTLAND RISING A PAGE OF HISTORY 1666 ............................57 THE DAY AFTER TO-MORROW................................................................74 COLLEGE PAPERS.......................................................................................83 CRITICISMS................................................................................................106 SKETCHES ..................................................................................................129 THE GREAT NORTH ROAD ......................................................................141 THE YOUNG CHEVALIER ........................................................................176 HEATHERCAT.............................................................................................187...

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Excerpt: You Never Can Tell by George Bernard Shaw.

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Excerpt: Advertisement. The story of ?Catherine,? which appeared in Fraser?s Magazine in 1839-40, was written by Mr. Thackeray, under the name of Ikey Solomons, Jun., to counteract the injurious influence of some popular fictions of that day, which made heroes of highwaymen and burglars, and created a false sympathy for the vicious and criminal....

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Excerpt: It was about the beginning of September, 1664, that I, mong the rest of my neighbors, heard in ordinary dis course that the plague was returned again in Holland; for it had been very violent there, and particularly at Amsterdam and Rotterdam, in the year 1663, whither, they say, it was brought, some said from Italy, others from the Levant, among some goods which were brought home by their Turkey fleet; others said it was brought from Candia; others from Cyprus. It mattered not from whence it came; but all agreed it was come into Holland again....

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Excerpt: Preface By Way Of Criticism. These studies are collected from the monthly press. One appeared in the New Quarterly, one in MacMillan?s, and the rest in the Cornhill Magazine. To the Cornhill I owe a double debt of thanks; first, that I was received there in the very best society, and under the eye of the very best of editors; and second, that the proprietors have allowed me to republish so considerable an amount of copy....

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Contents PREFACE BY WAY OF CRITICISM. ........................................................................................... 4 CHAPTER I ? VICTOR HUGO?S ROMANCES ........................................................................ 15 CHAPTER II ? SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS.......................................................... 34 CHAPTER III ? WALT WHITMAN............................................................................................. 63 CHAPTER IV ? HENRY DAVID THOREAU: HIS CHARACTER AND OPINIONS........... 84 CHAPTER V ? YOSHIDA-TORAJIRO..................................................................................... 107 CHAPTER VI ? FRANCOIS VILLON, STUDENT, POET, AND HOUSEBREAKER.........117 CHAPTER VII ? CHARLES OF ORLEANS ............................................................................ 141 CHAPTER VIII ? SAMUEL PEPYS .......................................................................................... 170 CHAPTER IX ? JOHN KNOX AND HIS RELATIONS TO WOMEN .................................. 190...

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Excerpt: Chapter 1. The Foreigner At Home. ?This is no my ain house; I ken by the biggin? o?t.? Two recent books* one by Mr. Grant White on England, one on France by the diabolically clever Mr. Hillebrand, may well have set people thinking on the divisions of races and nations. Such thoughts should arise with particular congruity and force to inhabitants of that United Kingdom, peopled from so many different stocks, babbling so many different dialects, and offering in its extent such singular contrasts, from the busiest over-population to the unkindliest desert, from the Black Country to the Moor of Rannoch. It is not only when we cross the seas that we go abroad; there are foreign parts of England; and the race that has conquered so wide an empire has not yet managed to assimilate the islands whence she sprang. Ireland, Wales, and the Scottish mountains still cling, in part, to their old Gaelic speech. It was but the other day that English triumphed in Cornwall, and they still show in Mousehole, on St. Michael?s Bay, the house of the last Cornish-speaking woman. English itself, which will now frank the traveller through the most of...

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Contents CHAPTER I: THE FOREIGNER AT HOME ..................................................................................... 5 CHAPTER II: SOME COLLEGE MEMORIES................................................................................ 14 CHAPTER III: OLD MORTALITY .................................................................................................. 20 CHAPTER IV: A COLLEGE MAGAZINE ...................................................................................... 28 CHAPTER V: AN OLD SCOTCH GARDENER ............................................................................. 36 CHAPTER VI: PASTORAL .............................................................................................................. 41 CHAPTER VII: THE MANSE .......................................................................................................... 48 CHAPTER VIII: MEMOIRS OF AN ISLET .................................................................................... 53 CHAPTER IX: THOMAS STEVENSON ? CIVIL ENGINEER...................................................... 58 CHAPTER X: TALK AND TALKERS ....................

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Excerpt: Welcome to the fifth volume of Best of Four. We hope you enjoy reading it as much as we have enjoyed bringing it to you. The purpose of Best of Four is to bring the best writing produced in English 004 each fall semester to the widest audience possible. Our students have important stories to tell and powerful voices to be heard. The students who read these essays will learn that they too have permission to state what is important to them in a public voice....

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Contents How to Use This Magazine .............................................................................................................. 3 High School to College Andrew Makhoul ........................................................................................ 4 Ignoring Problems Creates More! Ashley Morris................................................................................ 5 Hang in There Brad Hart ................................................................................................................. 6 Nate Brandi Saveri ........................................................................................................................... 7 The Best Birthday Is the Sixteenth Brent Heimbach ......................................................................... 9 Sharing the Bread of Angels Christa Sist ......................................................................................... 10 Tragedy in the Night Danielle Gehman .......................................................................................... 11 My Grandfather David Smith ..............................................

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Introduction: Benjamin Franklin was born in Milk Street, Boston, on January 6, 1706. His father, Josiah Franklin, was a tallow chandler who married twice, and of his seventeen children Benjamin was the youngest son. His schooling ended at ten, and at twelve he was bound apprentice to his brother James, a printer, who published the ?New England Courant.? To this journal he became a contributor, and later was for a time its nominal editor....