Bureaucracyby Honore de BalzacTranslated by Katharine Prescott WormeleyDEDICATIONTo the Comtesse Seraphina San Severino, with the respectfulhomage of sincere and deep admiration.De Balzac.BUREAUCRACYCHAPTER ITHE RABOURDIN HOUSEHOLDIn Paris, where men of thought and study bear a certain likeness toone another, living as they do in a common centre, you must have metwith several resembling Monsieur Rabourdin, whose acquaintance we areabout to make at a moment when he is head of a bureau in one of our...
Majorie DawMajorie Dawby Thomas Bailey Aldrich1- Page 2-Majorie DawCHAPTER I.DR. DILLON TO EDWARD DELANEY, ESQ., AT THE PINES.NEAR RYE, N.H.August 8, 1872.My Dear Sir: I am happy to assure you that your anxiety is withoutreason. Flemming will be confined to the sofa for three or four weeks, and...
His Own Peopleby Booth TarkingtonI. A Change of LodgingThe glass-domed "palm-room" of the Grand Continental Hotel Magnifiquein Rome is of vasty heights and distances, filled with a mellow greenlight which filters down languidly through the upper foliage of tallpalms, so that the two hundred people who may be refreshing ordisplaying themselves there at the tea-hour have something the lookof under-water creatures playing upon the sea-bed. They appear,however, to be unaware of their condition; even the ladies, most likeanemones of that gay assembly, do not seem to know it; and when the...
The Magic Skinby Honore de BalzacTranslated by Ellen MarriageTo Monsieur Savary, Member of Le Academie des Sciences.ITHE TALISMANTowards the end of the month of October 1829 a young man entered thePalais-Royal just as the gaming-houses opened, agreeably to the lawwhich protects a passion by its very nature easily excisable. Hemounted the staircase of one of the gambling hells distinguished bythe number 36, without too much deliberation."Your hat, sir, if you please?" a thin, querulous voice called out. A...
THE RED SEALTHE RED SEALby Natalie Sumner Lincoln1- Page 2-THE RED SEALCHAPTER IIN THE POLICE COURTTe Assistant District Attorney glanced down at the papers in his handand then up at the well-dressed, stockily built man occupying the witnessstand. His manner was conciliatory."According to your testimony, Mr. Clymer, the prisoner, John...
The Trumpet-Majorby Thomas Hardybeing a tale of the Trumpet-Major, John Loveday, a soldier in thewar with Buonaparte, and Robert, his brother, first mate in theMerchant Service.PREFACEThe present tale is founded more largely on testimonyoral andwrittenthan any other in this series. The external incidentswhich direct its course are mostly an unexaggerated reproduction ofthe recollections of old persons well known to the author inchildhood, but now long dead, who were eye-witnesses of thosescenes. If wholly transcribed their recollections would have filled...
BOOK II: OF THEIR TRADES, AND MANNER OF LIFEAGRICULTURE is that which is so universally understood among themthat no person, either man or woman, is ignorant of it; they areinstructed in it from their childhood, partly by what they learnat school and partly by practice; they being led out often intothe fields, about the town, where they not only see others atwork, but are likewise exercised in it themselves. Besidesagriculture, which is so common to them all, every man has somepeculiar trade to which he applies himself, such as the...
NEGORE, THE COWARDHE had followed the trail of his fleeing people for eleven days,and his pursuit had been in itself a flight; for behind him he knewfull well were the dreaded Russians, toiling through the swampylowlands and over the steep divides, bent on no less than theextermination of all his people. He was travelling light. Arabbit-skin sleeping-robe, a muzzle-loading rifle, and a few poundsof sun-dried salmon constituted his outfit. He would havemarvelled that a whole people - women and children and aged - couldtravel so swiftly, had he not known the terror that drove them on....
On a ridge above Texas Flat upon a rock shaped like flame, a hand moved upon the lava. The hand moved and then was still. In all that vast beige-gray silence there was no other movement and no sound. A buzzard swinging in lazy circles above the serrated ridge had glimpsed that moving hand. Swinging lower, he saw a man who lay among the rocks atop the ridge. He was a long-bodied man in worn boots and jeans, a man with wide shoulders and a lean tough face. It was the face of a hunter but now of a man hunted. A man who lay with his rifle beside him and who wore a belted gun; but the man still l
THE TRUE HISTORY OF LITTLE GOLDENHOODYOU know the tale of poor Little Red Riding-hood, that the Wolfdeceived and devoured, with her cake, her little butter can,and her Grandmother; well, the true story happened quite differently,as we know now. And first of all the little girl was called andis still called Little Golden-hood; secondly, it was not she, nor thegood grand-dame, but the wicked Wolf who was, in the end, caughtand devoured.Only listen.The story begins something like the tale.There was once a little peasant girl, pretty and nice as a star in...
The Castle of Otrantoby Horace WalpolePREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.THE following work was found in the library of an ancient Catholic family in the north of England. It was printed at Naples, in the black letter, in the year 1529. How much sooner it was written does not appear. The principal incidents are such as were believed in the darkest ages of Christianity; but the language and conduct have nothing that savours of barbarism. The style is the purest Italian.If the story was written near the time when it is supposed to have happened, it must have been between 1095, the era of th
THE SKETCH BOOKA ROYAL POETby Washington IrvingThough your body be confined,And soft love a prisoner bound,Yet the beauty of your mindNeither check nor chain hath found.Look out nobly, then, and dareEven the fetters that you wear.FLETCHER.ON A soft sunny morning in the genial month of May, I made anexcursion to Windsor Castle. It is a place full of storied and...
EURASIAEURASIAChris. Evans1- Page 2-EURASIAPREFACE.In "Eurasia" the author describes an ideal republic where many of theproblems that confront us are worked out. The book describes in aninteresting and readable way how government is administered in this idealrepublic. The government is one in which women take their full share ofresponsibility, the school children are trained in the problems they will...
109 ADHISTORIESby P. Cornelius Tacitustranslated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson BrodribbBOOK I, January - March, A.D. 69I BEGIN my work with the time when Servius Galba was consul forthe second time with Titus Vinius for his colleague. Of the formerperiod, the 820 years dating from the founding of the city, manyauthors have treated; and while they had to record the transactions ofthe Roman people, they wrote with equal eloquence and freedom. After...
SolitudeThis is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense,and imbibes delight through every pore. I go and come with astrange liberty in Nature, a part of herself. As I walk along thestony shore of the pond in my shirt-sleeves, though it is cool aswell as cloudy and windy, and I see nothing special to attract me,all the elements are unusually congenial to me. The bullfrogs trumpto usher in the night, and the note of the whip-poor-will is borneon the rippling wind from over the water. Sympathy with the...
New Yorkby James Fenimore CooperTHE increase of the towns of Manhattan, as, for the sake ofconvenience, we shall term New York and her adjuncts, in all thatcontributes to the importance of a great commercial mart, rendersthem one of the most remarkable places of the present age. Withinthe distinct recollections of living men, they have grown from acity of the fifth or sixth class to be near the head of all thepurely trading places of the known world. That there aresufficient causes for this unparalleled prosperity, will appear...