| | 263 | Author: | Peattie, Elia Wilkinson, 1862-1935 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Thorkild Viborg  | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | AT the north of the Ringkjobing Fjord, not far from Nysogn, a
wild, ragged-looking castle has dug its talons into the rocks, and
stands with a haggard defiance fronting the fjord, which is as
immobile and as chill as death. Here for centuries have dwelt the
Viborgs, a melancholy race of men born with a prescience of doom.
Reckless with their lives, mad in their loves, cursed with disease,
they are born for sorrow. And now, in the new time, out of this
comfortless home,—for it is never warm enough or light enough or
gay enough in Viborg Hold,—all save the eldest born are crowded.
Only for him does the jaded ground yield sufficient substance; only
for his needs can the work-worn peasants pay sufficient tax. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 264 | Author: | Saint-Pierre, Bernadin de | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Studies of Nature | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | The wretchedness of the lower orders is, therefore, the
principal source of our physical and moral maladies. There
is another, no less fertile in mischief, I mean the education
of children. This branch of political economy engaged,
among the ancients, the attention of the greatest legislators;
with us education has no manner of reference to the constitution
of the state. In early life are formed the inclinations
and aversions which influence the whole of our existence.
Our first affections are likewise the last; they accompany us
through life, reappear in old age, and then revive the sensibilities
of childhood with still greater force than those of
mature age. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 266 | Author: | Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Black Cat | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about
to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be
to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own
evidence. Yet, mad am I not — and very surely do I not dream. But
to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburden my soul. My immediate
purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and
without comment, a series of mere household events. In their
consequences, these events have terrified — have tortured — have
destroyed me. Yet I will not attempt to expound them. To me, they
have presented little but horror — to many they will seem less
terrible than baroques. Hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may
be found which will reduce my phantasm to the commonplace — some
intellect more calm, more logical, and far less excitable than my
own, which will perceive, in the circumstances I detail with
awe, nothing more than an ordinary succession of very natural
causes and effects. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 267 | Author: | Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Cask of Amontillado | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could;
but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. You, who
so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that
I gave utterance to a threat. AT LENGTH I would be avenged; this was a
point definitively settled — but the very definitiveness with which it
was resolved precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but
punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution
overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger
fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 268 | Author: | Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | A Tale of the Ragged Mountains | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | During the fall of the year 1827, while residing near
Charlottesville, Virginia, I casually made the acquaintance of Mr
Augustus Bedloe. This young gentleman was remarkable in every
respect, and excited in me a profound interest and curiosity. I
found it impossible to comprehend him either in his moral or his
physical relations. Of his family I could obtain no satisfactory
account. Whence he came, I never ascertained. Even about his
age — although I call him a young gentleman — there was something
which perplexed me in no little degree. He certainly seemed
young — and he made a point of speaking about his youth — yet there
were moments when I should have had little trouble in imagining
him a hundred years of age. But in no regard was he more
peculiar than in his personal appearance. He was singularly tall
and thin. He stooped much. His limbs were exceedingly long and
emaciated. His forehead was broad and low. His complexion was
absolutely bloodless. His mouth was large and flexible, and his
teeth were more wildly uneven, although sound, than I had ever
before seen teeth in a human head. The expression of his smile,
however, was by no means unpleasing, as might be supposed: but it
had no variation whatever. It was one of profound melancholy — of
a phaseless and
unceasing gloom. His eyes were abnormally large,
and round like those of a cat. The pupils, too, upon any
accession or diminution of light, underwent contraction or
dilation, just such as is observed in the feline tribe. In
moments of excitement the orbs grew bright to a degree almost
inconceivable; seeming to emit luminous rays, not of a reflected
but of an intrinsic lustre, as does a candle or the sun; yet
their ordinary condition was to totally vapid, filmy, and dull,
as to convey the idea of the eyes of a long-interred corpse. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 269 | Author: | Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Pit and the Pendulum | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | I was sick — sick unto death with that long agony; and when
they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that
my senses were leaving me. The sentence — the dread sentence of
death — was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears.
After that, the sound of the inquisitorial voices seemed merged in
one dreamy indeterminate hum. It conveyed to my soul the idea of
revolution — perhaps from its association in fancy with the burr
of a mill-wheel. This only for a brief period; for presently I
heard no more. Yet, for a while, I saw; but with how terrible an
exaggeration! I saw the lips of the black-robed judges. They
appeared to me white — whiter than the sheet upon which I trace
these words — and thin even to grotesqueness; thin with the
intensity of their expression
of firmness — of immoveable
resolution — of stern contempt of human torture. I saw that the
decrees of what to me was Fate, were still issuing from those lips.
I saw them writhe with a deadly locution. I saw them fashion the
syllables of my name; and I shuddered because no sound succeeded.
I saw, too, for a few moments of delirious horror, the soft and
nearly imperceptible waving of the sable draperies which enwrapped
the walls of the apartment. And then my vision fell upon the seven
tall candles upon the table. At first they wore the aspect of
charity, and seemed white slender angels who would save me; but
then, all at once, there came a most deadly nausea over my spirit,
and I felt every fibre in my frame thrill as if I had touched the
wire of a galvanic battery, while the angel forms became
meaningless spectres, with heads of flame, and I saw that from them
there would be no help. And there stole into my fancy, like a rich
musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the
grave. The thought came gently and stealthily, and it seemed long
before it attained full appreciation; but just as my spirit came at
length properly to feel and entertain it, the figures of the judges
vanished, as if magically, from before me; the tall candles sank
into nothingness; their flames went out utterly; the blackness of
darkness supervened; all sensation appeared swallowed up in that
mad rushing descent as of the soul into Hades. Then silence, and
stillness, and night were the universe. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 270 | Author: | Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Spectacles | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | Many years ago, it was the fashion to ridicule the idea of
'love at first sight'; but those who think, not less than those
who feel deeply, have always advocated its existence. Modern
discoveries, indeed, in what may be termed ethical magnetism or
magneto-aesthetics, render it probable that the most natural,
and, consequently, the truest and most intense of the human
affections are those which arise in the heart as if by electric
sympathy — in a word, that the brightest and most enduring of the
psychal fetters are those which are riveted by a glance. The
confession I am about to make will add another to the already
almost innumerable instances of the truth of the position. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 271 | Author: | Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Tell-Tale Heart | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | TRUE! nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous
I had been and am; but why WILL you say
that I am mad? The disease had sharpened
my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above
all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things
in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things
in hell. How then am I mad? Hearken! and observe
how healthily, how calmly, I can tell you the
whole story. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 272 | Author: | Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | "Thou Art the Man" | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | I will now play the Oedipus to the Rattleborough enigma. I will
expound to you — as I alone can — the secret of the enginery that effected
the Rattleborough miracle — the one, the true, the admitted, the undisputed,
the indisputable miracle, which put a definite end to infidelity among the
Rattleburghers, and converted to the orthodoxy of the grandames all the
carnal-minded who had ventured to be sceptical before. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 273 | Author: | Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | William Wilson | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | Let me call myself, for the present, William Wilson. The fair
page now lying before me need not be sullied with my real
appellation. This has been already too much an object for the
scorn — for the horror — for the detestation of my race. To the
uttermost regions of the globe have not the indignant winds bruited
its unparalleled infamy? Oh, outcast of all outcasts most
abandoned! — to the earth art thou not forever dead? to its honours,
to its flowers, to its golden aspirations? — and a cloud, dense,
dismal, and limitless, does it not hang eternally between thy hopes
and heaven? | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 274 | Author: | Pokagon, Simon | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Future of the Red Man | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | OFTEN in the stillness of the night, when all nature seems
asleep about me, there comes a gentle rapping at the door of my
heart. I open it; and a voice inquires, "Pokagon, what of your
people? What will their future be?" My answer is: "Mortal man has
not the power to draw aside the veil of unborn time to tell the
future of his race. That gift belongs to the Divine alone. But it
is given to him to closely judge the future by the present and the
past." Hence, in order to approximate the future of our race, we
must consider our natural capabilities and our environments, as
connected with the dominant race which outnumbers us — three hundred
to one — in this land of our fathers. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 276 | Author: | Pope, J. Worden | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | "The North American Indian—The Disappearance of the Race A
Popular Fallacy" | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | There undoubtedly exists a deeply-rooted conviction, supposed
to rest upon a firm historical basis, that the race of North
American Indians is rapidly disappearing before the advance of
civilization; and this conviction, coupled with the twin conception
that the noble red man has been the victim of the abuse of the
European conqueror, has long formed a theme for the writers of
poetry, romance, and history. For so many generations has this
theme formed part of the traditions of our race, and so firm a hold
has it taken upon the imagination, the sympathy, and the sentiments
of the populace, that any attempt to dislodge it would doubtless be
regarded with complete incredulity, and any data adduced to
disprove the belief would be disbelieved as absurd by the average
well-read American. To assert, therefore, that there is no proof
to sustain the popular belief, that on the contrary there is reason
to doubt that the Indian race has materially diminished, would be
considered by such persons simply as an iconoclastic attempt to
subvert the basal facts of history. It may therefore be startling,
but it is true, not only that there exists no substantial proof
that the red man is disappearing before the encroachments of
civilization, but that many solid facts indicate that there has
been no material diminution of the Indian population, or at least
in the quantity of Indian blood, within the historic period. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 277 | Author: | Prescott, Harriet E. | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | In a Cellar | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | IT was the day of Madame de St. Cyr's dinner, an event I never
missed; for, the mistress of a mansion in the Faubourg St. Germain,
there still lingered about her the exquisite grace and good-breeding peculiar to the old regime, that insensibly
communicates itself to the guests till they move in an atmosphere
of ease that constitutes the charm of home. One was always sure of
meeting desirable and well-assorted people here, and a contre-temps was impossible. Moreover, the house was not at the command
of all; and Madame de St. Cyr, with the daring strength which, when
found in a woman at all, should, to be endurable, be combined with
a sweet but firm restraint, rode rough-shod over the parvenus
of the Empire, and was resolute enough to insulate herself even
among the old noblesse, who, as all the world knows, insulate
themselves from the rest of France. There were rare qualities in
this woman, and were I to have selected one who with an even hand
should carry a snuffy candle through a magazine of powder, my
choice would have devolved upon her; and she would have done it. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 278 | Author: | Prescott, Harriet E. | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Dark Ways | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | WHEN God's curse forsook my country, it fell on me. I had
been young and heroic; I had fought well; what portion of the
clock-work of Fate had been allotted me I had utterly performed.
Twelve years ago I became a man and strove for my country's
freedom; now she has attained her heights without me, and I—what
am I? A shapeless hulk, that stays in the shadow, and that hates
the world and the people of the world, and verily the God above the
world! | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 280 | Author: | Rogers, E. Mandevill | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Steadfast Falters | | | | Published: | 1995 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | Randolph Crosby's philosophy of life forbade his feeling or
expressing emotion, except for the slender, fair-haired girl who
stood beside him, and who had in a measure taken the place of the
wife whose memory she perpetuated. Nevertheless, the sight of
the thoroughbreds as they filed past the club enclosure, their
jockeys perching like monkeys on their glossy backs, made the
muscles of his throat contract a little. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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