| | 281 | Author: | Merritt, Abraham, 1882-1943 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Metal Monster / by Abraham Merritt  | | | | Published: | 2000 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | IN THIS great crucible of life we call the world—in the
vaster one we call the universe—the mysteries lie close
packed, uncountable as grains of sand on ocean's shores.
They thread gigantic, the star-flung spaces; they creep,
atomic, beneath the microscope's peering eye. They walk
beside us, unseen and unheard, calling out to us, asking
why we are deaf to their crying, blind to their wonder. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 286 | Author: | Raine, William McLeod | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | "At the Dropping-off Place" | | | | Published: | 2000 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | IN THE cabin situated on Lot 10, Block E, Water Street, Eagle City,
Alaska, four men were striving to wear away the torment-laden, sleepless
Yukon night. It was twelve o'clock by the Waterbury watch which hung on
the wall, but save for a slight murkiness there was no sign of darkness.
The mosquitoes hummed with a fiendish pertinacity that effectually
precluded sleep. The thermometer registered one hundred degrees of
torture. A thick smoke from four pipes and a smudge-fire hung cloudlike
over the room, but entirely failed to disturb the countless pests. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 287 | Author: | Sadlier, Anna T. | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Arabella | | | | Published: | 2000 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | Arabella stood thoughtfully there on that ridge of land, where the brown
earth was studded with daisies and mulleins, the common children of the soil.
The sky was a clear gold at the horizon, and Arabella, gazing thereon, pondered
on something she had just heard. She had suddenly become an heiress. She
looked down on her plain, brown frock, at her coarse shoes, and at her hands
roughened by work about the house. She had been the orphan, the charity-child,
and now — | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 289 | Author: | Sinclair, Upton, 1878-1968 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Jungle | | | | Published: | 2000 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | It was four o'clock when the ceremony was over and the carriages began
to arrive. There had been a crowd following all the way, owing to the
exuberance of Marija Berczynskas. The occasion rested heavily upon
Marija's broad shoulders—it was her task to see that all things went
in due form, and after the best home traditions; and, flying wildly
hither and thither, bowling every one out of the way, and scolding and
exhorting all day with her tremendous voice, Marija was too eager to
see that others conformed to the proprieties to consider them herself.
She had left the church last of all, and, desiring to arrive first at
the hall, had issued orders to the coachman to drive faster. When that
personage had developed a will of his own in the matter, Marija had
flung up the window of the carriage, and, leaning out, proceeded to tell
him her opinion of him, first in Lithuanian, which he did not understand,
and then in Polish, which he did. Having the advantage of her in altitude,
the driver had stood his ground and even ventured to attempt to speak;
and the result had been a furious altercation, which, continuing all the
way down Ashland Avenue, had added a new swarm of urchins to the cortege
at each side street for half a mile. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 290 | Author: | Stevenson, Robert Louis, 1850-1894 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Across the Plains: With Other Memories and Essays | | | | Published: | 2000 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | MONDAY. -It was, if I remember rightly, five o'clock when we were
all signalled to be present at the Ferry Depot of the railroad. An
emigrant ship had arrived at New York on the Saturday night,
another on the Sunday morning, our own on Sunday afternoon, a
fourth early on Monday; and as there is no emigrant train on Sunday
a great part of the passengers from these four ships was
concentrated on the train by which I was to travel. There was a
babel of bewildered men, women, and children. The wretched little
booking-office, and the baggage-room, which was not much larger,
were crowded thick with emigrants, and were heavy and rank with the
atmosphere of dripping clothes. Open carts full of bedding stood
by the half-hour in the rain. The officials loaded each other with
recriminations. A bearded, mildewed little man, whom I take to
have been an emigrant agent, was all over the place, his mouth full
of brimstone, blustering and interfering. It was plain that the
whole system, if system there was, had utterly broken down under
the strain of so many passengers. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 291 | Author: | Stevenson, Robert Louis, 1850-1894 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Silverado Squatters | | | | Published: | 2000 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | THE scene of this little book is on a high mountain. There
are, indeed, many higher; there are many of a nobler outline.
It is no place of pilgrimage for the summary globe-trotter;
but to one who lives upon its sides, Mount Saint Helena soon
becomes a centre of interest. It is the Mont Blanc of one
section of the Californian Coast Range, none of its near
neighbours rising to one-half its altitude. It looks down on
much green, intricate country. It feeds in the spring-time
many splashing brooks. From its summit you must have an
excellent lesson of geography: seeing, to the south, San
Francisco Bay, with Tamalpais on the one hand and Monte
Diablo on the other; to the west and thirty miles away, the
open ocean; eastward, across the corn-lands and thick tule
swamps of Sacramento Valley, to where the Central Pacific
railroad begins to climb the sides of the Sierras; and
northward, for what I know, the white head of Shasta looking
down on Oregon. Three counties, Napa County, Lake County,
and Sonoma County, march across its cliffy shoulders. Its
naked peak stands nearly four thousand five hundred feet
above the sea; its sides are fringed with forest; and the
soil, where it is bare, glows warm with cinnabar. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 293 | Author: | Thanet, Octave | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Day of The Cyclone | | | | Published: | 2000 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | IT was a warm day.
Perhaps but for that
it might not have
happened, since Captain Barris is a most
temperate man. Unluckily the day was
warm, very warm,
and Archy was tired with a long ride in
the "accommodation train:" and a vision of a glass of beer — cool, foaming,
pleasantly stinging — rose before him.
He had just been stationed at Rock
Island Arsenal, and all his knowledge of
the town of Grinnell was the fact that he
had inherited some property within its
limits. Quite innocently, therefore, he
stared about him for some sign of refreshment. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 295 | Author: | Tolstoy, Count Ilya | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | My Last Visit to My Mother | | | | Published: | 2000 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | WITH all the other appalling news from Russia comes word of the
devastation of the home of Leo Tolstoy and the burning of his
manuscripts. This news is so horrible that I cannot believe it is true.
I cannot believe the people can be so blinded as to attack a helpless
old woman, the widow of the greatest man of Russia, and destroy the
precious relics that have no other value except that of preserving the
memory of this man. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 296 | Author: | Twain, Mark, 1835-1910 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Great Revolution in Pitcairn | | | | Published: | 2000 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | LET me refresh the reader's memory a little. Nearly
a hundred years ago the crew of the British ship
Bounty mutinied, set the captain and his officers adrift
upon the open sea, took possession of the ship, and
sailed southward. They procured wives for themselves
among the natives of Tahiti, then proceeded to a lonely
little rock in mid-Pacific, called Pitcairn's Island,
wrecked the vessel, stripped her of everything that
might be useful to a new colony, and established themselves
on shore. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 297 | Author: | Twain, Mark, 1835-1910 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Life on the Mississippi | | | | Published: | 2000 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | THE Mississippi is well worth reading about. It is not a
commonplace river, but on the contrary is in all ways remarkable.
Considering the Missouri its main branch, it is the longest
river in the world—four thousand three hundred miles.
It seems safe to say that it is also the crookedest river in the world,
since in one part of its journey it uses up one thousand three hundred
miles to cover the same ground that the crow would fly over in six
hundred and seventy-five. It discharges three times as much water
as the St. Lawrence, twenty-five times as much as the Rhine,
and three hundred and thirty-eight times as much as the Thames.
No other river has so vast a drainage-basin: it draws its water
supply from twenty-eight States and Territories; from Delaware,
on the Atlantic seaboard, and from all the country between that and Idaho
on the Pacific slope—a spread of forty-five degrees of longitude.
The Mississippi receives and carries to the Gulf water from
fifty-four subordinate rivers that are navigable by steamboats,
and from some hundreds that are navigable by flats and keels.
The area of its drainage-basin is as great as the combined areas
of England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany,
Austria, Italy, and Turkey; and almost all this wide region is fertile;
the Mississippi valley, proper, is exceptionally so. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 298 | Author: | Brock: Webbe, John | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | A discourse concerning paper money: in which its principles are laid open; and a method, plain and easy, for
introducing and continuing a plenty, without lessening the present value of it, is demonstrated. / by John Webbe | | | | Published: | 2000 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | The value of the paper-money of Pennsylvania notwithstanding
the obvious manner of accounting for it, is attributed by many to the
land-security on which it is lent; and in support of this notion, the
following argument, whoever first broached it, has been printed; which I
shall particularly examine; for as it has been generally
adopted, it cannot with decency be condemned in the
lump. It runs thus. As those who take bills out of the
banks in Europe put in money for security, so here we engage
our Land. And as bills issued upon money security are money, so bills
issued upon land security are, in effect, coined land. Now the
Banks of Europe do actually borrow the money lodged
with them, and therefore give their notes as a security for the
repayment. But the paper-money-bank of Pennsylvania, to which
the argument is applied, does not borrow but lend money, and
therefore takes security from the borrowers for the repayment
at the times stipulated. The two cases then, instead of having the
least resemblance, being essentially opposite; it is
impossible that any conclusion drawn from the one should be applicable
to the other. Indeed the bills given by an European bank have
the same power as the silver promised by 'em; because the possessors
have a right to receive, and do also receive on demand the very
sums expressed by such bills. But those of Pennsylvania
cannot, for a like reason, nor for any reason, be considered as
land; for tho' they be lent upon land, yet the possessors have no
right to demand from any man, or any body of men, any land for
'em. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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