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• The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson
  There is nothing more disenchanting to man than to be shown the springs and mechanism of any art. All our arts and occupations lie wholly on the surface; it is on the surface that we perceive their beauty, fitness, and significance; and to pry below is to be appalled by their emptiness and shocked by the coarseness of the strings and pulleys.

• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes  by Arthur Conan Doyle
  To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex.

• The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood   by Howard Pyle
  Not only Robin himself but all the band were outlaws and dwelled apart from other men, yet they were beloved by the country people round about, for no one ever came to jolly Robin for help in time of need and went away again with an empty fist.

• The Swiss Family Robinson   by Johann David Wyss
  For many days we had been tempest-tossed. Six times had the darkness closed over a wild and terrific scene, and returning light as often brought but renewed distress, for the raging storm increased in fury until on the seventh day all hope was lost.

• The Blue Moon   by Laurence Housman
  With them it had been a case of love at first blindness since the day when they had tumbled into each other's arms in the same cradle. And Hands-pansy, when he first saw her, did not discover that Nillywill was a real princess hiding her birthright in the home of a poor peasant

• Margaret Ogilvy   by James M. Barrie
  She had a son who was far away at school. I remember very little about him, only that he was a merry-faced boy who ran like a squirrel up a tree and shook the cherries into my lap. When he was thirteen and I was half his age the terrible news came, and I have been told the face of my mother was awful in its calmness as she set off to get between Death and her boy

• Moonfleet   by J. Meade Falkner
  The village of Moonfleet lies half a mile from the sea on the right or west bank of the Fleet stream. This rivulet, which is so narrow as it passes the houses that I have known a good jumper clear it without a pole, broadens out into salt marshes below the village, and loses itself at last in a lake of brackish water.

• Three Men in a Boat  by Jerome K. Jerome
  It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most virulent form. The diagnosis seems in every case to correspond exactly with all the sensations that I have ever felt.

• The Spiral Stone  by Arthur Colton
  The Little One trotted around busily, putting his tiny finger in the lettering and patting the faces of the cherubs. The other two sat on the base of the spiral, which twisted in the moonlight over them.

• The Silent Bullet    by Arthur B. Reeve
  "Detectives in fiction nearly always make a great mistake," said Kennedy one evening after our first conversation on crime and science. "They almost invariably antagonize the regular detective force. Now in real life that's impossible--it's fatal."

• The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu  Sax Rohmer
  I pushed my writing aside and tilted the lamp-shade, as footsteps sounded on the landing. The next moment I had jumped to my feet, for a tall, lean man, with his square-cut, clean-shaven face sun-baked to the hue of coffee, entered and extended both hands, with a cry:

• Green Mansions:  A Romance of the Tropical Forest by W. H. Hudson
  Now that we are cool, he said, and regret that we hurt each other, I am not sorry that it happened. I deserved your reproach: a hundred times I have wished to tell you the whole story of my travels and adventures among the savages, and one of the reasons which prevented me was the fear that it would have an unfortunate effect on our friendship.

• Emma   by Jane Austen
  Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.

• In The Tennessee Mountains   by Charles Egbert Craddock
  Lost Creek Valley towers a wilderness of pine. So dense is this growth that it masks the mountain whence it springs. Even when the Cumberland spurs, to the east, are gaunt and bare in the wintry wind

• The Wonder Clock    by Howard Pyle
  Down I sat and watched it, for every time it struck it played a pretty song, and when the song was ended -- click! click! -- out stepped the drollest little puppet-figures and went through with a dance, and I saw it all (with my dream-cap upon my head).

• The History of the Thirty Years' War   by Friedrich Schiller
  From the beginning of the religious wars in Germany, to the peace of Munster, scarcely any thing great or remarkable occurred in the political world of Europe in which the Reformation had not an important share.

• A Night In Acadie   by Kate Chopin
  He wondered if she would speak to him. He feared she might have mistaken him for a Western drummer, in which event he knew that she would not; for the women of the country caution their daughters against speaking to strangers on the trains. But the girl was not one to mistake an Acadian farmer for a Western traveling man. She was not born in Avoyelles parish for nothing.

• The Memoirs of an American Citizen   by Robert Herrick
  In 1876 there were no large hotels or skyscrapers fronting a tidy park; nothing but some wooden or brick houses, and, across the tracks, the waves lapped away at the railroad embankment. I was something more than twenty, old enough, at any rate, to have earned a better bed than a few feet of sand and sooty grass in a vacant lot.

• The Awakening   by Kate Chopin
  Mr. Pontellier had forgotten the bonbons and peanuts for the boys. Notwithstanding he loved them very much, and went into the adjoining room where they slept to take a look at them and make sure that they were resting comfortably. The result of his investigation was far from satisfactory. He turned and shifted the youngsters about in bed. One of them began to kick and talk about a basket full of crabs.

• The Big Town   by Ring W. Lardner
  Even after we got into it and he begin to clean up, with the factory running day and night, all as we knew was that he had contracts with the U. S. Government, but he never confided in us what special stuff he was turning out. For all as we knew, it may of been medals for the ground navy.

• City At World's End   by Edmond Hamilton
  It split wide open, and above the whole town there was a burn and blaze of light so swift, so violent, that it seemed the air itself had burst into instantaneous flame. In that fraction of a second, as the sky flared and the ground heaved wildly under his feet, Kenniston knew that the surprise attack had come

• The Common Lot   by Robert Herrick
  At the Beaux Arts he worked, also, though he did not forget the amenities of life. The two years first talked of expanded into two and a half, then rounded to a full three.

• The Prophet Of The Great Smoky Mountains   by Charles Egbert Craddock
  . . . enwrapped in the illusory mists, always touching the evasive clouds, the peaks of the Great Smoky Mountains are like some barren ideal, that has bartered for the vague isolations of a higher atmosphere the material values of the warm world below. Upon those mighty and majestic domes no tree strikes root, no hearth is alight; humanity is an alien thing, and utility set at naught.

• The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse   From the Spanish of Vicente Blasco Ibanez
  The hour of the appointment was always five and Julio was accustomed to see his beloved approaching by the reflection of the recently lit street lamps, her figure enveloped in furs, and holding her muff before her face as if it were a half-mask.

• The Friendly Road   by David Grayson
  I knew that I must soon step aside and put down, if I could, some faint impression of the feeling of this time and place. I cannot hope to convey any adequate sense of it all --

• The Foolish Virgin   by Thomas Dixon
  Can't you have a little common-sense? There are a few brutes among artists, as there are in all professions--even among the superintendents of your schools. Gordon's a great creative genius. If you'd try to flirt with him, he'd stop his work and send you home.

• Historic Girls   by E. S. Brooks
  many miles and many days' journey toward the rising sun, over seas and mountains and deserts,--farther to the east than Rome, or Constantinople, or even Jerusalem and old Damascus,--stand the ruins of a once mighty city, scattered over a mountain-walled oasis of the great Syrian desert

• The Hidden Children   by Robert W. Chambers
  In the middle of the Bedford Road we three drew bridle. Boyd lounged in his reeking saddle, gazing at the tavern and at what remained of the tavern sign, which seemed to have been a new one, yet now dangled mournfully by one hinge, shot to splinters.

• Of Human Bondage   by W. Somerset Maugham
  The day broke gray and dull. The clouds hung heavily, and there was a rawness in the air that suggested snow. A woman servant came into a room in which a child was sleeping and drew the curtains. She glanced mechanically at the house opposite, a stucco house with a portico, and went to the child's bed.

• Ida Hauchawout   by Theodore Dreiser
  This Hauchawout was a rude, crude, bear-like soul, stocky, high-booted, sandy-haired, gray-eyed and red-skinned, as well as inhospitable.

• Indian Why Stories   by Frank B. Linderman
  It was the moon when leaves were falling, for Napa had finished painting them for their dance with the North wind. Just over the ragged mountain range the big moon hung in an almost starless sky, and in shadowy outline every peak lay upon the plain like a giant pattern. Slowly the light spread and as slowly the shadows stole away until the October moon looked down on the great Indian camp --

• Java Head   by Joseph Hergesheimer
  Until yesterday, almost, she had regarded the various chairs of the house as beings endowed with life and character; she had held conversations with some, and, with a careless exterior not warranted by an inner dread, avoided others in gloomy dusks.

• The House Behind The Cedars   by Charles W. Chesnutt
  Time touches all things with destroying hand; and if he seem now and then to bestow the bloom of youth, the sap of spring, it is but a brief mockery, to be surely and swiftly followed by the wrinkles of old age, the dry leaves and bare branches of winter.

• The King of the Golden River   by John Ruskin
  In a secluded and mountainous part of Stiria there was in old time a valley of the most surprising and luxuriant fertility. It was surrounded on all sides by steep and rocky mountains rising into peaks which were always covered with snow and from which a number of torrents descended in constant cataracts.

• Madame Bovary   by Gustave Flaubert
  We were in class when the head-master came in, followed by a "new fellow," not wearing the school uniform, and a school servant carrying a large desk. Those who had been asleep woke up, and every one rose as if just surprised at his work.

• A Simple Soul   by Gustave Flaubert
  For a hundred francs a year, she cooked and did the housework, washed, ironed, mended, harnessed the horse, fattened the poultry, made the butter and remained faithful to her mistress--although the latter was by no means an agreeable person.

• Salammbo   by Gustave Flaubert
  It was at Megara, a suburb of Carthage, in the gardens of Hamilcar. The soldiers whom he had commanded in Sicily were having a great feast to celebrate the anniversary of the battle of Eryx, and as the master was away, and they were numerous, they ate and drank with perfect freedom.

• Twilight Land   by Howard Pyle
  There I was in Twilight Land. The birds were singing their good-night song, and the little frogs were piping "peet, peet." The sky overhead was full of still brightness, and the moon in the east hung in the purple gray like a great bubble as yellow as gold. All the air was full of the smell of growing things. The high-road was gray, and the trees were dark.

• The Poisoned Pen   by Arthur B. Reeve
  I did not wait to hear any more. The mere mention of the name of the quaint and quiet little Connecticut town was sufficient. For Danbridge was on everybody's lips at that time. It was the scene of the now famous Danbridge poisoning case - a brutal case in which the pretty little actress, Vera Lytton, had been the victim.

• Herodias   by Gustave Flaubert
  The Jordan wound its way through the arid plains that met his gaze; white and glittering under the clear sky, it dazzled the eye like snow in the rays of the sun.

• Freckles   by Gene Stratton-Porter
  Freckles came down the corduroy that crosses the lower end of the Limberlost. At a glance he might have been mistaken for a tramp, but he was truly seeking work. He was intensely eager to belong somewhere and to be attached to almost any enterprise that would furnish him food and clothing.

• Men of Iron   by Howard Pyle
  Their plan had been to fall upon the King and his adherents, and to massacre them during a great tournament, to be held at Oxford. But Henry did not appear at the lists; whereupon, knowing that he had been lodging at Windsor with only a few attendants, the conspirators marched thither against him. In the mean time the King had been warned of the plot, so that, instead of finding him in the royal castle

• The Counterpane Fairy   by Katharine Pyle
  The little boy had always enjoyed being ill, for then he was read aloud to and had lemonade, but this had been a real illness, and though he was better now, the doctor still would not let him have anything but milk and gruel. He was feeling rather lonely, too, though the fire crackled cheerfully, and he could hear Hannah singing to herself in the kitchen below.

• Boyhood in Norway   by Hjalmar Boyesen
  The hostile parties had played at war so long that they had forgotten that it was play; and now were actually inspired with the emotions which they had formerly simulated. Under the leadership of their chieftains, Halvor Reitan and Viggo Hook, they held councils of war, sent out scouts, planned midnight surprises, and fought at times mimic battles.

• Lincoln's First Inaugural Address
  Fellow citizens of the United States: in compliance with a custom as old as the government itself, I appear before you to address you briefly and to take, in your presence, the oath prescribed by the Constitution of the United States, to be taken by the President "before he enters on the execution of his office."

• Maggie: A Girl of the Streets  by Stephen Crane
  A very little boy stood upon a heap of gravel for the honor of Rum Alley. He was throwing stones at howling urchins from Devil's Row who were circling madly about the heap and pelting at him.

• Erewhon  by Samuel Butler
  It is true, I imagine myself to have made a discovery which, if I can be the first to profit by it, will bring me a recompense beyond all money computation, and secure me a position such as has not been attained by more than some fifteen or sixteen persons

• Dr. Johnson and Fanny Burney  by Fanny Burney
  She then received me, taking both my hands, and with mixed politeness and cordiality welcoming me to Streatham. She led me into the house, and addressed herself almost wholly for a few minutes to my father

• Evelina  by Fanny Burney
  The language of adulation, and the incense of flattery, though the natural inheritance, and constant resource, from time immemorial, of the Dedicator, to me offer nothing but the wistful regret that I dare not invoke their aid.

• The White Moll   by Frank L. Packard
  She went on, traversing block after block, entering a less deserted, though no less unsavory, neighborhood. Here, a saloon flung a sudden glow of yellow light athwart the sidewalk as its swinging doors jerked apart; and a form lurched out into the night; there, from a dance-hall came the rattle of a tinny piano, the squeak of a raspy violin, a high-pitched, hectic burst of laughter; while, flanking the street on each side, like interjected inanimate blotches, rows of squalid tenements and cheap, tumble-down frame houses silhouetted themselves in broken, jagged points against the sky-line. And now and then a man spoke to her - his untrained fingers fumbling in clumsy homage at the brim of his hat.

• The Adventures of Jimmie Dale   by Frank L. Packard
  It required money, it is true, to keep up one's membership, but there were many members who were not wealthy, as wealth is measured nowadays--there were many, even, who were pressed sometimes to meet their dues and their house accounts, but the accounts were invariably promptly paid. No man, once in, could ever afford, or ever had the desire, to resign from the St. James Club.

• The Zincali    by George Borrow
  They are found in all parts of Russia, with the exception of the government of St. Petersburg, from which they have been banished. In most of the provincial towns they are to be found in a state of half-civilisation, supporting themselves by trafficking in horses, or by curing the disorders incidental to those animals

• Clotel or The President's Daughter   by William Wells Brown
  WITH the growing population of slaves in the Southern States of America, there is a fearful increase of half whites, most of whose fathers are slaveowners and their mothers slaves.

• Aurora Floyd A Novel   by M. E. Braddon
  The Kentish rustics knew very little of this city banking-house, for Archibald Martin, the senior partner, has long retired from any active share in the business, which is carried on entirely by his nephews, Andrew and Alexander Floyd

• Alice of Old Vincennes   by Maurice Thompson
  What was it that drew people away from the old countries, from the cities, the villages and the vineyards of beautiful France, for example, to dwell in the wilderness, amid wild beasts and wilder savage Indians

• After the Rain   by Sam Vaknin
  The Balkans' -- I say -- 'is the unconscious of the world'. People stop to digest this metaphor and then they nod enthusiastically. It is here that the repressed memories of history, its traumas and fears and images reside.

• Helen's Babies   by John Habberton
  As he spoke, the offending youth came panting beside our carriage, and in a very dirty sailor-suit, and under a broad-brimmed straw hat, with one stocking about his ankle, and two shoes, averaging about two buttons each, I recognized my nephew, Budge!

• The Cold Embrace   by Mary E. Braddon
  Did he love her? Yes, when he first swore it. It soon wore out, this passionate love; how threadbare and wretched a sentiment it became at last in the selfish heart of the student!

• The House Of The Wolf   by Stanley Weyman
  But let me explain how we four, whose united ages scarce exceeded seventy years, came to be lounging on the terrace in the holiday stillness of that afternoon. It was the summer of 1572.

• A Gentleman of France   by Stanley Weyman
  I drew up a petition, and lying in wait one day for M. Forget, the King of Navarre's secretary, placed it in his hand, begging him to lay it before that prince.

• The Damnation of Theron Ware   by Harold Frederic
  But a more important issue hung now imminent in the balance -- was Tecumseh to be fairly and honorably rewarded for her hospitality by being given the pastor of her choice?

• Confessions of A Justified Sinner   by James Hogg
  He sprung up and opened the casement: the day-light was beginning to streak the east, for it was spring, and the nights were short, and the mornings very long. The laird half dressed himself in an instant, and strode through every room in the house, opening the windows as he went

• Old Rose and Silver   by Myrtle Reed
  Great news, my dears, great news!" cried Madame Bernard, gaily waving an open letter as she came into the room where Rose was sewing and Isabel experimenting with a new coiffure. "I'll give you three guesses!"

• On Our Selection   by Steele Rudd
  It's twenty years ago now since we settled on the Creek. Twenty years! I remember well the day we came from Stanthorpe, on Jerome's dray -- eight of us, and all the things -- beds, tubs, a bucket, the two cedar chairs with the pine bottoms and backs that Dad put in them, some pint-pots and old Crib.

• Notes by the Way in A Sailor's Life   by Captain Arthur E. Knights
  After the last voyage which I gave you an account of I accepted an offer made me by my late employers, and became superintendent of a business under their management in New York. Unfortunately, at the close of the war, this business was temporarily suspended and my contract was annulled.

• From the Memoirs of a Minister of France   by Stanley Weyman
  One day, about a fortnight after the quarrel between the King and the Duchess of Beaufort, which I have described, and which arose, it will be remembered, out of my refusal to pay the christening expenses of her second son on the scale of a child of France

• Lavender and Old Lace   by Myrtle Reed
  He flourished the discarded fish-pole which served as a whip, and pointed out a small white house on the brow of the hill. Reflection brought him the conviction that his remark concerning Miss Hathaway was a social mistake, since his passenger sat very straight, and asked no more questions.

• Mopsa The Fairy   by Jean Ingelow
  While the boy was eating, he observed that this hedge was very high and thick, and that there was a great hollow in the trunk of the old thorn-tree, and he heard a twittering, as if there was a nest somewhere inside; so he thrust his head in, twisted himself round, and looked up.

• Lavengro, The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest   by George Borrow
  'Yes,' said the old man, 'or something much the same, and a queer one he is; not quite so big as King George, they say, but quite as terrible a fellow. What of him?'

• Under the Red Robe   by Stanley Weyman
  when the fool, little knowing the man with whom he had to deal, and as little how to lose like a gentleman, flung the words in my teeth.

• Shearing In The Riverina, New South Wales   by Rolf Boldrewood
  Let us give a glance at the small army of working-men assembled at Anabanco -- one out of hundreds of stations in the colony of New South Wales, ranging from 100,000 sheep downwards.

• The Story Of Creation   by T. S. Ackland
  1. When this record was committed to writing, language was in a very different condition from that in which it is now. We have an account of the first recorded exercise of the faculty of speech in Gen. ii. 19.

• The Romany Rye   by George Borrow
  I awoke at the first break of day, and, leaving the postillion fast asleep, stepped out of the tent. The dingle was dank and dripping. I lighted a fire of coals, and got my forge in readiness. I then ascended to the field, where the chaise was standing as we had left it on the previous evening.

• The Rise Of Silas Lapham   by William Dean Howells
  He did not rise from the desk at which he was writing, but he gave Bartley his left hand for welcome, and he rolled his large head in the direction of a vacant chair. "Sit down! I'll he with you in just half a minute."

• Lady Audley's Secret   Vol 1,2,3   by M.E. Braddon
  Sir Michael Audley was fifty-six years of age, and he had married a second wife three months after his fifty-fifth birthday. He was a big man, tall and stout, with a deep sonorous voice, handsome black eyes, and a white beard -- a white beard which made him look venerable against his will, for he was as active as a boy, and one of the hardest riders in the county.

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