| | 1 | Author: | Alcott, Louisa May, 1832-1888 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Blind Lark / Alcott, Louisa M.; illustrated by W. H. Drake  | | | | Published: | 1998 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | HIGH up in an old house, full of poor people, lived Lizzie, with her mother and
baby Billy. The street was a narrow, noisy place, where carts rumbled and dirty
children played; where the sun seldom shone, the fresh wind seldom blew, and the
white snow of winter was turned at once to black mud. One bare room was Lizzie's
home, and out of it she seldom went, for she was a prisoner. We all pity the
poor princesses who were shut up in towers by bad fairies, the men and women in
jails, and the little birds in cages, but Lizzie was a sadder prisoner than any
of these. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 7 | Author: | Freeman, Mary Eleanor Wilkins, 1852-1930 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Yates Pride | | | | Published: | 1998 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | OPPOSITE Miss Eudora Yates's old colonial mansion was the perky
modern Queen Anne residence of Mrs. Joseph Glynn. Mrs. Glynn had a
daughter, Ethel, and an un-married sister, Miss Julia Esterbrook. All
three were fond of talking, and had many callers who liked to hear the
feebly effervescent news of Well-wood. This afternoon three ladies
were there: Miss Abby Simson, Mrs. John Bates, and Mrs. Edward Lee.
They sat in the Glynn sitting-room, which shrilled with treble voices as
if a flock of sparrows had settled therein. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 8 | Author: | Locke, William John | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Fortunate Youth | | | | Published: | 1998 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | PAUL KEGWORTHY lived with his mother, Mrs. Button, his stepfather, Mr. Button,
and six little Buttons, his half brothers and sisters. His was not an ideal
home; it consisted in a bedroom, a kitchen and a scullery in a grimy little
house in a grimy street made up of rows of exactly similar grimy little houses,
and forming one of a hundred similar streets in a northern manufacturing town.
Mr. and Mrs. Button worked in a factory and took in as lodgers grimy single men
who also worked in factories. They were not a model couple; they were rather, in
fact, the scandal of Budge Street, which did not itself enjoy, in Bludston, a
reputation for holiness. Neither was good to look upon. Mr. Button, who was
Lancashire bred and born, divided the yearnings of his spirit between strong
drink and dog-fights. Mrs. Button, a viperous Londoner, yearned for noise. When
Mr. Button came home drunk he punched his wife about the head and kicked her
about the body, while they both exhausted the vocabulary of vituperation of
North and South, to the horror and edification of the neighbourhood. When Mr.
Button was sober Mrs. Button chastised little Paul. She would have done so when
Mr. Button was drunk, but she had not the time. The periods, therefore, of his
mother's martyrdom were those of Paul's enfranchisement. If he saw his
stepfather come down the street with
steady gait, he fled in terror; if he saw him reeling homeward he lingered about
with light and joyous heart. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 11 | Author: | Twain, Mark, 1835-1910 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Roughing It | | | | Published: | 1998 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | MY brother had just been appointed Secretary of Nevada
Territory—an office of such majesty that it concentrated in itself
the duties and dignities of Treasurer, Comptroller, Secretary of
State, and Acting Governor in the Governor's absence. A salary of
eighteen hundred dollars a year and the title of "Mr. Secretary,"
gave to the great position an air of wild and imposing grandeur. I
was young and ignorant, and I envied my brother. I coveted his
distinction and his financial splendor, but particularly and
especially the long, strange journey he was going to make, and the
curious new world he was going to explore. He was going to
travel! I never had been away from home, and that word "travel"
had a seductive charm for me. Pretty soon he would be hundreds
and hundreds of miles away on the great plains and deserts, and
among the mountains of the Far West, and would see buffaloes and
Indians, and prairie dogs, and antelopes, and have all kinds of
adventures, and may be get hanged or scalped, and have ever such
a fine time, and write home and tell us all about it, and be a hero.
And he would see the gold mines and the silver mines, and maybe
go about of an afternoon when his work was done, and pick up two
or three pailfuls of shining slugs, and nuggets of gold and silver on
the hillside. And by and by he would become very rich, and return
home by sea, and be able to talk as calmly about San Francisco and
the ocean, and "the isthmus" as if it was nothing of any
consequence to have seen those marvels face to face. What I
suffered in contemplating his happiness, pen cannot describe. And
so, when he offered me, in cold blood, the sublime position of
private secretary under him, it appeared to me that
the heavens and the earth passed away, and the firmament was
rolled together as a scroll! I had nothing more to desire. My
contentment was complete.
At the end of an hour or two I was ready for the journey. Not
much packing up was necessary, because we were going in the
overland stage from the Missouri frontier to Nevada, and
passengers were only allowed a small quantity of baggage apiece.
There was no Pacific railroad in those fine times of ten or twelve
years ago—not a single rail of it. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 13 | Author: | Zerbe, J. S. | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Aeroplanes | | | | Published: | 1998 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | THE "SCIENCE" OF AVIATION.—It may be
doubted whether there is such a thing as a "science
of aviation." Since Langley, on May 6,
1896, flew a motor-propelled tandem monoplane
for a minute and an half, without a pilot, and the
Wright Brothers in 1903 succeeded in flying a
bi-plane with a pilot aboard, the universal opinion
has been, that flying machines, to be successful,
must follow the structural form of birds, and
that shape has everything to do with flying. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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