The Queen of the Pirate Isleby Bret HarteI first knew her as the Queen of the Pirate Isle. To the best ofmy recollection she had no reasonable right to that title. She wasonly nine years old, inclined to plumpness and good humor,deprecated violence, and had never been to sea. Need it be addedthat she did NOT live in an island and that her name was Polly?Perhaps I ought to explain that she had already known otherexperiences of a purely imaginative character. Part of herexistence had been passed as a Beggar Child,solely indicated by ashawl tightly folded round her shoulders, and chills; as aSchoolmistress, unnecessarily severe; as a Preacher, singularly...
AmphitryonAmphitryonTranslated by A.R. Waller, M.A.1- Page 2-AmphitryonPREFACEAmphitryon was played for the first time in Paris, at the Theatre duPalais-Royal, January 13, 1668. It was successfully received, holding theboards until the 18th of March, when Easter intervened. After the re-opening of the theatre, it was played half a dozen times more the sameyear, and continued to please.The first edition was published in 1668....
The Author of Beltraffioby Henry JamesCHAPTER IMuch as I wished to see him I had kept my letter of introductionthree weeks in my pocket-book. I was nervous and timid aboutmeeting himconscious of youth and ignorance, convinced that he wastormented by strangers, and especially by my country-people, and notexempt from the suspicion that he had the irritability as well as thedignity of genius. Moreover, the pleasure, if it should occurforI could scarcely believe it was near at handwould be so great thatI wished to think of it in advance, to feel it there against mybreast, not to mix it with satisfactions more superficial and usual.In the little game of new sensations that I was playing with
THE COMPARISON OF TIBERIUS AND CAIUS GRACCHUSWITH AGIS AND CLEOMENESby Plutarchtranslated by John DrydenHAVING given an account severally of these persons, it remainsonly that we should take a view of them in comparison with oneanother.As for the Gracchi, the greatest detractors and their worstenemies could not but allow that they had a genius to virtue beyondall other Romans, which was improved also by a generous education.Agis and Cleomenes may be supposed to have had stronger natural gifts,since, though they wanted all the advantages of good education, and...
The Chaperonby Henry JamesCHAPTER I.An old lady, in a high drawing-room, had had her chair moved close tothe fire, where she sat knitting and warming her knees. She wasdressed in deep mourning; her face had a faded nobleness, tempered,however, by the somewhat illiberal compression assumed by her lips inobedience to something that was passing in her mind. She was farfrom the lamp, but though her eyes were fixed upon her active needlesshe was not looking at them. What she really saw was quite anothertrain of affairs. The room was spacious and dim; the thick Londonfog had oozed into it even through its superior defences. It wasfull of dusky, massive, valuable things. The old lady sat mot
The Masque of the Red Deathby Edgar Allan PoeThe "Red Death" had long devastated the country. Nopestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was itsAvatar and its sealthe redness and the horror of blood. There weresharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at thepores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body andespecially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban whichshut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men.And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease,were the incidents of half an hour.But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious....
Modern Customs and Ancient Laws of Russiaby Maxime Kovalevsky1891Lecture IVOld Russian FolkmotesIt is a common saying among the Russian Conservatives, whohave lately been dignified in France by the name of"Nationalists," that the political aspirations of the Liberalsare in manifest contradiction with the genius and with thehistorical past of the Russian people.Sharing these ideas, the Russian Minister of Publicinstruction Count Delianov, a few years ago ordered theProfessors of Public Law and of Legal History to make theirteaching conform to a programme in which Tzarism, the unlimitedpower of the Russian emperors, was declared to be a truly...
End NotesNOTE TO CHAPTER I.Note A.-The Ranger or the Forest, that cuts theforeclaws off our dogs.A most sensible grievance of those aggrieved times were theForest Laws. These oppressive enactments were the produce ofthe Norman Conquest, for the Saxon laws of the chase weremild and humane; while those of William, enthusiastically attachedto the exercise and its rights, were to the last degreetyrannical. The formation of the New Forest, bears evidenceto his passion for hunting, where he reduced many a happy villageto the condition of that one commemorated by my friend,Mr William Stewart Rose:``Amongst the ruins of the church...
The Origination of Living Beingsby Thomas H. HuxleyIn the two preceding lectures I have endeavoured to indicate to you theextent of the subject-matter of the inquiry upon which we are engaged;and now, having thus acquired some conception of the Past and Presentphenomena of Organic Nature, I must now turn to that which constitutesthe great problem which we have set before ourselves;I mean, thequestion of what knowledge we have of the causes of these phenomena oforganic nature, and how such knowledge is obtainable.Here, on the threshold of the inquiry, an objection meets us. There arein the world a number of extremely worthy, well-meaning persons, whose...
THE LUTE PLAYEROnce upon a time there was a king and queen who lived happily andcomfortably together. They were very fond of each other and hadnothing to worry them, but at last the king grew restless. Helonged to go out into the world, to try his strength in battleagainst some enemy and to win all kinds of honour and glory.So he called his army together and gave orders to start for adistant country where a heathen king ruled who ill-treated ortormented everyone he could lay his hands on. The king then gavehis parting orders and wise advice to his ministers, took atender leave of his wife, and set off with his army across theseas.I cannot say whether the voyage was short or long; but at
ON LONGEVITY AND SHORTNESS OF LIFEby Aristotletranslated by G. R. T. Ross1THE reasons for some animals being long-lived and othersshort-lived, and, in a word, causes of the length and brevity oflife call for investigation.The necessary beginning to our inquiry is a statement of thedifficulties about these points. For it is not clear whether inanimals and plants universally it is a single or diverse cause thatmakes some to be long-lived, others short-lived. Plants too have insome cases a long life, while in others it lasts but for a year....
In the Carquinez Woodsby Bret HarteCHAPTER I.The sun was going down on the Carquinez Woods. The few shafts ofsunlight that had pierced their pillared gloom were lost inunfathomable depths, or splintered their ineffectual lances onthe enormous trunks of the redwoods. For a time the dull red oftheir vast columns, and the dull red of their cast-off bark whichmatted the echoless aisles, still seemed to hold a faint glow ofthe dying day. But even this soon passed. Light and color fledupwards. The dark interlaced treetops, that had all day made animpenetrable shade, broke into fire here and there; their lostspires glittered, faded, and went utterly out. A weird twilight...