| | 41 | Author: | Burnett, Frances Hodgson | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Secret Garden  | | | | Published: | 2000 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle
everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen. It was
true, too. She had a little thin face and a little thin body, thin light hair
and a sour expression. Her hair was yellow, and her face was yellow because she
had been born in India and had always been ill in one way or another. Her father
had held a position under the English Government and had always been busy and
ill himself, and her mother had been a great beauty who cared only to go to
parties and amuse herself with gay people. She had not wanted a little girl at
all, and when Mary was born she handed her over to the care of an Ayah, who was
made to understand that if she wished to please the Mem Sahib she must keep the
child out of sight as much as possible. So when she was a sickly, fretful, ugly
little baby she was kept out of the way, and when she became a
sickly, fretful, toddling thing she was kept out of the way also. She never
remembered seeing familiarly anything but the dark faces of her Ayah and the
other native servants, and as they always obeyed her and gave her her own way in
everything, because the Mem Sahib would be angry if she was disturbed by her
crying, by the time she was six years old she was as tyrannical and selfish a
little pig as ever lived. The young English governess who came to teach her to
read and write disliked her so much that she gave up her place in three months,
and when other governesses came to try to fill it they always went away in a
shorter time than the first one. So if Mary had not chosen to really want to
know how to read books she would never have learned her letters at all. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 42 | Author: | Burnett, Frances Hodgson | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Shuttle | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | NO man knew when the Shuttle began its slow and heavy weaving from shore to shore,
that it was held and guided by the great hand of Fate. Fate alone saw the meaning of
the web it wove, the might of it, and its place in the making of a world's history.
Men thought but little of either web or weaving, calling them by other names and
lighter ones, for the time unconscious of the strength of the thread thrown across
thousands of miles of leaping, heaving, grey or blue ocean. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 43 | Author: | Burnett, Frances Hodgson | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | T. Tembarom | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | THE boys at the Brooklyn public school which
he attended did not know what the "T."
stood for. He would never tell them. All
he said in reply to questions was: "It don't
stand for nothin'. You+'ve gotter have a'
'nitial, ain't you?" His name was, in fact,
an almost inevitable school-boy modification
of one felt to be absurd and pretentious.
His Christian name was Temple, which became
"Temp." His surname was Barom,
so he was at once "Temp Barom." In the natural tendency to
avoid waste of time it was pronounced as one word, and the
letter p being superfluous and cumbersome, it easily settled itself
into "Tembarom," and there remained. By much less inevitable
processes have surnames evolved themselves as centuries rolled
by. Tembarom liked it, and soon almost forgot he had ever
been called anything else. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 44 | Author: | Burnett, Frances Hodgson | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The White People | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | PERHAPS the things which happened could only have happened to me. I do not know.
I never heard of things like them happening to any one else. But I am not sorry
they did happen. I am in secret deeply and strangely glad. I have heard other
people say things—and they were not always sad people,
either—which made me feel that if they knew what I know it would seem
to them as though some awesome, heavy load they had always dragged about with
them had fallen from their shoulders. To most people everything is so uncertain
that if they could only see or hear and know something
clear they would drop upon their knees and give thanks. That was what I felt myself before I found out so strangely, and I was only a girl.
That is why I intend to write this down as well as I can. It will not be very
well done, because I never was clever at all, and always found it difficult to
talk. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 45 | Author: | Canfield, Dorothy | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Ivanhoe and the German Measles | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | HIS name was Reginald Gerald Whitefield, and he was the sort of little boy who
surprised observers by not having freckles. He had the honest look that goes
with freckles and a turned-up nose, although his complexion was irreproachable
and his nose neither turned up or down but was quite uninterestingly straight.
He was the sort of little boy who endures a scientific and expensive bringing up
and is not spoiled by it. He had a French house-governess, he took "talking
walks" with a spectacled and conscientious German, he was sent in a black velvet
suit to dancing-school, he took riding lessons from a severe ex-cavalryman who
contrived in a miraculous way to exclude from the exercise all the fun that
naturally goes with it; he was taken to the concerts of the Boston Symphony, and
bore with fortitude lectures on "What the Nibelungenlied may mean to a child,"
and he became neither priggish nor misanthropic. It must be plain, therefore,
that he was a remarkable little boy. In short he did not deserve his exuberant
name. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 46 | Author: | Canfield, Dorothy | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Playmate | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | MRS. O'HERN looked about her with beaming eyes. "Well, it may
seem queer to think of living in a barn," she observed to her old
friend, "but it suits me fine! Ever since I left Ireland I've lived too
much indoors, and it does seem good to be cooking half in the air
again." | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 47 | Author: | Canfield, Dorothy | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Ugly Duckling | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | THE fire on the nursery hearth gave a little flicker and the sleepy
child opened his eyes as the story finished. "—arching his neck and
looking down into the clear water the ugly duckling saw that he had
become a beautiful white swan, and all the sorrows he had suffered
while he was an ugly duckling vanished away and he was as happy
as sunshine and—" The fire fell together with a soft purr and the
child was asleep. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 59 | Author: | Davis, Rebecca Harding, 1831-1910 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Frances Waldeaux | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | In another minute the Kaiser Wilhelm would push off from
her pier in Hoboken. The last bell had rung, the last uniformed officer and
white-jacketed steward had scurried up the gangway. The pier was massed with
people who had come to bid their friends good-by. They were all Germans, and
there had been unlimited embracing and kissing and sobs of "Ach! mein lieber Sckatz!" and "Gott bewahre
Dick!" | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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