| 1 | Author: | Phillips, David Graham, 1867-1911 | Requires cookie* | | Title: | Grain of Dust. | | | Published: | 1996 | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | Description: | INTO the offices of Lockyer, Sanders, Benchley,
Lockyer & Norman, corporation lawyers, there drifted
on a December afternoon a girl in search of work at
stenography and typewriting. The firm was about the
most important and most famous — radical orators often
said infamous — in New York. The girl seemed, at a
glance, about as unimportant and obscure an atom as
the city hid in its vast ferment. She was blonde — tawny
hair, fair skin, blue eyes. Aside from this hardly
conclusive mark of identity there was nothing positive,
nothing definite, about her. She was neither tall nor
short, neither fat nor thin, neither grave nor gay. She
gave the impression of a young person of the feminine
gender — that, and nothing more. She was plainly
dressed, like thousands of other girls, in darkish blue
jacket and skirt and white shirt waist. Her boots and
gloves were neat, her hair simply and well arranged.
Perhaps in these respects — in neatness and taste — she
did excel the average, which is depressingly low. But
in a city where more or less strikingly pretty women,
bent upon being seen, are as plentiful as the blackberries
of Kentucky's July — in New York no one would
have given her a second look, this quiet young woman
screened in an atmosphere of self-effacement. | | Similar Items: | Find |
2 | Author: | Phillips, David Graham, 1867-1911 | Requires cookie* | | Title: | The Price She Paid. | | | Published: | 1996 | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | Description: | HENRY GOWER was dead at sixty-one—the end of
a lifelong fraud which never had been suspected, and
never would be. With the world, with his acquaintances
and neighbors, with his wife and son and
daughter, he passed as a generous, warm-hearted,
good-natured man, ready at all times to do anything
to help anybody, incapable of envy or hatred or
meanness. In fact, not once in all his days had he ever
thought or done a single thing except for his own
comfort. Like all intensely selfish people who are wise,
he was cheerful and amiable, because that was the
way to be healthy and happy and to have those around
one agreeable and in the mood to do what one wished
them to do. He told people, not the truth, not the
unpleasant thing that might help them, but what they
wished to hear. His family lived in luxurious comfort
only because he himself was fond of luxurious comfort.
His wife and his daughter dressed fashionably and
went about and entertained in the fashionable,
expensive way only because that was the sort of life
that gratified his vanity. He lived to get what he
wanted; he got it every day and every hour of a life
into which no rain ever fell; he died, honored, respected,
beloved, and lamented. | | Similar Items: | Find |
10 | Author: | Prime, William C. | Requires cookie* | | Title: | Tent Life in the Holy Land | | | Published: | 1997 | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | Description: | To see the sun go down beyond the Sepulchre and rise over the mountain of the Ascension, to
bare my forehead to the cold dews of Gethsemane, and lave my dim eyes in the
waters of Siloam, to sleep in the company of the infinite host above the oaks of
Mamre, and to lie in the starlight of Bethlehem and catch, however faintly, some
notes of the voices of the angels, to wash off the dust of life in the Jordan,
to cool my hot lips at the well of Samaria, to hear the murmur of Gennesareth,
giving me blessed sleep — was not all this worth dreaming of
— worth living for — was it not worth dying for? | | Similar Items: | Find |
11 | Author: | Pyle, Howard | Requires cookie* | | Title: | Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates : fiction, fact & fancy concerning the
buccaneers & marooners of the Spanish Main | | | Published: | 1999 | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | Description: | JUST above the northwestern shore of the old island of Hispaniola—the Santo Domingo
of our day—and separated from it only by a narrow channel of some five or six miles
in width, lies a queer little hunch of an island, known, because of a distant resemblance to
that animal, as the Tortuga de Mar, or sea turtle. It is not more than twenty miles in length
by perhaps seven or eight in breadth; it is only a little spot of land, and as you look at it
upon the map a pin's head would almost cover it; yet from that spot, as from a center of
inflammation, a burning fire of human wickedness and ruthlessness and lust overran the world,
and spread terror and death throughout the Spanish
West Indies, from St. Augustine to the island of Trinidad, and from Panama to the coasts of
Peru. | | Similar Items: | Find |
13 | Author: | Rinehart, Mary Roberts | Requires cookie* | | Title: | The Circular Staircase | | | Published: | 1994 | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | Description: | THIS is the story of how a middle-aged spinster lost her mind,
deserted her domestic gods in the city, took a furnished house
for the summer out of town, and found herself involved in one of
those mysterious crimes that keep our newspapers and detective
agencies happy and prosperous. For twenty years I had been
perfectly comfortable; for twenty years I had had the window-boxes filled in the spring, the carpets lifted, the awnings put
up and the furniture covered with brown linen; for as many
summers I had said good-by to my friends, and, after watching
their perspiring hegira, had settled down to a delicious quiet in
town, where the mail comes three times a day, and the water
supply does not depend on a tank on the roof. | | Similar Items: | Find |
15 | Author: | Romeyn, Henry | Requires cookie* | | Title: | 'Little Africa': The Last Slave Cargo Landed in the United States | | | Published: | 1996 | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | Description: | Among the passengers of the "Roger B. Taney," Captain Timothy Meaher, plying
between Mobile and Montgomery, Ala. in April, 1858, were a number of Northern
gentlemen returning to their homes after a winter spent in the South. The trip
occupied several days, and as might have been expected, the slavery question was
a fruitful theme of discussion. Captain Meaher, though born in Gardiner, Maine,
had removed, when a mere lad, to the Gulf States, and accumulated quite a
fortune for those days; a large portion of which was in "chattels" employed on
his half dozen steamboats, or on cotton plantations in the interior of the
state, and in lumbering among the pines and cypress lands near the coast. Of
course he was a defender of "the institution," and, in reply to the expressed
belief of one of his passengers that "with the supply by importation from Africa
cut off and any further spread in the Territories denied, the thing was doomed,"
he declared that, despite the stringent measures taken by most of the civilized
powers to crush out the over-sea traffic, it could be still carried on
successfully. In response to the disbelief expressed by his opponent, he offered
to wager any amount of money that he would "import a cargo in less than two
years, and no one be hanged for it." | | Similar Items: | Find |
16 | Author: | Schurz, Carl, 1829-1906 | Requires cookie* | | Title: | Abraham Lincoln : an essay | | | Published: | 2000 | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | Description: | NO American can study the character and career of Abraham Lincoln without being
carried away by sentimental emotions. We are always inclined to idealize that
which we love,—a state of mind very unfavorable to the exercise of
sober critical judgment. It is therefore not surprising that most of those who
have written or spoken on that extraordinary man, even while conscientiously
endeavoring to draw a lifelike portraiture of his being, and to form a just
estimate of his public conduct, should have drifted into more or less
indiscriminating eulogy, painting his great features in the most glowing colors,
and covering with tender shadings whatever might look like a blemish. | | Similar Items: | Find |
18 | Author: | Shillaber, Benjamin Penhallow | Requires cookie* | | Title: | Life and Sayings of Mrs. Partington and others of the family | | | Published: | 1997 | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | Description: | NOW, Isaac," said Mrs. Partington, as she came into the room with a
basket snugly covered over, "take our Tabby, and drop her somewhere, and see
that she don't come back again, for I am sick and tired of driving her out of
the butter. She is the thievinest creatur! But don't hurt her, Isaac; only take
care that she don't come back." | | Similar Items: | Find |
19 | Author: | Smith, F. Hopkinson | Requires cookie* | | Title: | Tom Grogan | | | Published: | 2001 | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | Description: | SOMETHING worried Babcock. One could see that from the impatient gesture with
which he turned away from the ferry window on learning he had half an hour to
wait. He paced the slip with hands deep in his pockets, his head on his chest.
Every now and then he stopped, snapped open his watch and shut it again quickly,
as if to hurry the lagging minutes. | | Similar Items: | Find |
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