First Across the Continentby Noah BrooksThe Story ofThe Exploring Expedition of Lewisand Clark in 1804-5-6Chapter IA Great Transaction in LandThe people of the young Republic of the United States were greatly astonished, in the summer of 1803, to learn that Napoleon Bonaparte, then First Consul of France, had sold to us the vast tract of land known as the country of Louisiana. The details of this purchase were arranged in Paris (on the part of the United States) by Robert R. Livingston and James Monroe. The French government was represented by Barbe-Marbois, Minister of the Public Treasury.The price to be paid for this vast domain was fifteen million dollars. The area of the country ceded　

OWL POSTHarry Potter was a highly unusual boy in many ways. For one thing, he hated the summer holidays more than any other time of year. For another, he really wanted to do his homework but was forced to do it in secret, in the dead of night. And he also happened to be a wizard.It was nearly midnight, and he was lying on his stomach in bed, the blankets drawn right over his head like a tent, a flashlight in one hand and a large leather-bound book (A History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot) propped open against the pillow. Harry moved the tip of his eagle-feather quill down the page, frowning as he looked for something that would help him write his essay, "Witch Burning in the Fourteenth Ce　

THE ODYSSEYby Homertranslated by Samuel ButlerBOOK I.TELL ME, O MUSE, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wideafter he had sacked the famous town of Troy. Many cities did he visit,and many were the nations with whose manners and customs he wasacquainted; moreover he suffered much by sea while trying to savehis own life and bring his men safely home; but do what he might hecould not save his men, for they perished through their own sheerfolly in eating the cattle of the Sun-god Hyperion; so the godprevented them from ever reaching home. Tell me, too, about all...　

　Winters on Ballybran were generally mild, so the fury of the first spring storms as they howled across the land was ever unexpected. This first one of the new season swept ferociously across the Milekey Ranges, bearing before its westward course the fleeing sleds of crystal singers like so much jetsam. Those laggard singers who had tarried too long at their claims were barely able to hold their bucking sleds on course as they bolted for the safety of the Heptite Guild plex.　Inside the gigantic Hangar, its baffles raised against the mach winds, ordered confusion reigned. Crystal singers lurched from their sleds, half deafened by windscream, exhausted by their turbulent flights. The Hangar c　

Zula Miller Crichton　We are entering a world where the old rules no longer apply.　 PHILLIP SANDERS　　Business is war.　 Japanese motto　　　LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT　CONFIDENTIAL TRANSCRIPT　OF INTERNAL RECORDS　　　　Contents: Transcript of Video InterrogationDetective Peter J. SmithMarch 13-15　　re: "Nakamoto Murder" (A8895-404)　　This transcript is the property of the Los Angeles Police Department and is for internal use only. Permission to copy, quote from, or otherwise reproduce or reveal the contents of this document is limited by law. Unauthorized use carries severe penalties.　　　Direct all inquiries to:　　manding Officer...　

The Chouansby Honore de BalzacTranslated by Katharine Prescott WormeleyDEDICATIONTo Monsieur Theodore Dablin, Merchant.To my first friend, my first work.De Balzac.THE CHOUANSIAN AMBUSCADEEarly in the year VIII., at the beginning of Vendemiaire, or, to conform to our own calendar, towards the close of September, 1799, a hundred or so of peasants and a large number of citizens, who had left Fougeres in the morning on their way to Mayenne, were going up the little mountain of La Pelerine, half-way between Fougeres and Ernee, a small town where travellers along that road are in the habit of resting. This company, divided into groups that were more or less numerous, presented a collection of suc　

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. Afterthe conflict at Actium, and when it became essential to peace, that...　

　　To even the least sensitive and perceptive beholder the Morning Rose, at this stage of her long and highly chequered career, must have seemed ill-named, for if ever a vessel could fairly have been said to be approaching, if not actually arrived at, the sunset of her days it was this one. Officially designated an Arctic Steam Trawler, the Morning Rose, 560 gross tons, 173 feet in length, 30 in beam and with a draught, unladen but fully provisioned with fuel and water, of 14.3 feet, had, in fact, been launched from the Jarrow slipways as far back as 1926, the year of the General Strike.　The Morning Rose, then, was far gone beyond the superannuation watershed; she was slow, creaking, unstabl　

Nada the Lilyby H. Rider HaggardDEDICATIONSompseu:For I will call you by the name that for fifty years has been honouredby every tribe between Zambesi and Cape Agulbas,I greet you!Sompseu, my father, I have written a book that tells of men andmatters of which you know the most of any who still look upon thelight; therefore, I set your name within that book and, such as it is,I offer it to you.If you knew not Chaka, you and he have seen the same suns shine, youknew his brother Panda and his captains, and perhaps even that veryMopo who tells this tale, his servant, who slew him with the Princes.You have seen the circle of the witch-doctors and the unconquerable...　

　　　　I was following Derry Welfram at a prudent fifty paces when he stumbled, fell face down on the wet tarmac and lay still. I stopped, watching, as nearer hands stretched to help him up, and saw the doubt, the apprehension, the shock flower in the opening mouths of the faces around him. The word that formed in consequence in my own brain was violent, of four letters and unexpressed.　　Derry Welfram lay face down, unmoving, while the fourteen runners for the three-thirty race at York stalked closely past him, the damp jockeys looking down and back with muted curiosity, minds on the business ahead, bodies shivering in the cold near-drizzle of early October. The man was drunk. One could read t　

Eminent Victoriansby Lytton StracheyPrefaceTHE history of the Victorian Age will never be written; we knowtoo much about it. For ignorance is the first requisite of thehistorianignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, whichselects and omits, with a placid perfection unattainable by thehighest art. Concerning the Age which has just passed, ourfathers and our grandfathers have poured forth and accumulated sovast a quantity of information that the industry of a Ranke wouldbe submerged by it, and the perspicacity of a Gibbon would quailbefore it. It is not by the direct method of a scrupulousnarration that the explorer of the past can hope to depict that...　

Father Goriotby Honore de BalzacTranslated by Ellen MarriageTo the great and illustrious Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, a tokenof admiration for his works and genius.DE BALZAC.Mme. Vauquer (nee de Conflans) is an elderly person, who for thepast forty years has kept a lodging-house in the Rue Nueve-Sainte-Genevieve, in the district that lies between the LatinQuarter and the Faubourg Saint-Marcel. Her house (known in theneighborhood as the Maison Vauquer) receives men and women, oldand young, and no word has ever been breathed against herrespectable establishment; but, at the same time, it must be saidthat as a matter of fact no young woman has been under her roof...