Historical Books

INTRODUCTION I have sometimes wondered whether it was accident or intention which made Balzac so frequently combine early and late work in the same volume. The question is certainly insoluble, and perhaps not worth solving, but it presents itself once more in the present instance. L'Illustre Gaudissart is a story of 1832, the very heyday of Balzac's creative period, when even his pen could... more...

In the Old Armoury. “See these here spots o’ red rust, Master Roy?” “I should be blind as poor old Jenkin if I couldn’t, Ben.” “Ay, that you would, sir. Poor old Jenk, close upon ninety he be; and that’s another thing.” “What do you mean?” said the boy addressed. “What do I mean, sir? Why, I mean as that’s another thing as shows as old England’s wore out, and rustin’ and... more...

AN EXCURSION I am going ahead two years. Two years during which a nation struggled in agony with sickness, and even the great strength with which she was endowed at birth was not equal to the task of throwing it off. In 1620 a Dutch ship had brought from Guinea to his Majesty's Colony of Virginia the germs of that disease for which the Nation's blood was to be let so freely. During these... more...

PROLOGUE. "For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" At Surat, by a window of his private office in the East India Company's factory, a middle-aged man stared out upon the broad river and the wharves below. Business in the factory had ceased for the day: clerks and porters had gone about their own... more...

Chapter 1: A Shipwreck. A few miles to the south of Bray Head, on the crest of a hill falling sharply down to the sea, stood Castle Davenant, a conspicuous landmark to mariners skirting the coast on their way from Cork or Waterford to Dublin Bay. Castle Davenant it was called, although it had long since ceased to be defensible; but when it was built by Sir Godfrey Davenant, who came over with... more...

CHAPTER I The Bruised Reed The fair girl who was playing a banjo and singing to the wounded soldiers suddenly stopped, and, turning to the surgeon, whispered: “What’s that?” “It sounds like a mob——” With a common impulse they moved to the open window of the hospital and listened. On the soft spring air came the roar of excited thousands sweeping down the avenue from the Capitol toward the... more...

I unpacked my things and went down to await luncheon. It was good to be here again in this little old sleepy hostel by the sea. Hostel I say, though it spelt itself without an "s" and even placed a circumflex above the "o." It made no other pretension. It was very cozy indeed. I had been here just a year before, in mid-February, after an attack of influenza. And now I had returned,... more...

The Introduction Brilliant and magnetic as are these two studies by Ambrose Bierce, and especially significant as coming from one who was a boy soldier in the Civil War, they merely reflect one side of his original and many-faceted genius. Poet, critic, satirist, fun-maker, incomparable writer of fables and masterly prose sketches, a seer of startling insight, a reasoner mercilessly logical, with the... more...

THE CRAFT OF FICTION To grasp the shadowy and fantasmal form of a book, to hold it fast, to turn it over and survey it at leisure—that is the effort of a critic of books, and it is perpetually defeated. Nothing, no power, will keep a book steady and motionless before us, so that we may have time to examine its shape and design. As quickly as we read, it melts and shifts in the memory; even at the... more...

The Valiant Runaways I Roldan Castanada walked excitedly up and down the verandah of his father's house, his thumbs thrust into the red silk sash that was knotted about his waist, his cambric shirt open at the throat as if pulled impatiently apart; the soft grey sombrero on the back of his curly head making a wide frame for his dark, flushed, scowling face. There was nothing in the surroundings to... more...