89 Works in the "A" Index

An Old-fashioned Girl - Louisa May Alcott
ot going; it's too wet. Should n't have a crimp left if I went out such a day as this; and I want to look nice when Polly comes." "You don't expect me to go and bring home a strange girl alone, do you?" And Tom looked as much alarmed as if his sister had proposed to him to escort the wild woman of Australia. "Of course I do. It's your place to go and get her; and if you was n't a bear, you'd

A Little While, A Little - Emily Brontë
while I have holiday. Where wilt thou go, my harassed heart-- What thought, what scene invites thee now What spot, or near or far apart, Has rest for thee, my weary brow? There is a spot, 'mid barren hills, Where winter howls, and driving rain; But, if the dreary tempest chills, There is a light that warms again. The house is old, the trees are bare, Moonless above bends twilight'

A Daydream - Emily Brontë
ung lover, June. From her mother's heart seemed loath to part That queen of bridal charms, But her father smiled on the fairest child He ever held in his arms. The trees did wave their plumy crests, The glad birds carolled clear; And I, of all the wedding guests, Was only sullen there! There was not one, but wished to shun My aspect void of cheer; The very gray rocks, looking on,

A Death-scene - Emily Brontë
lly declining; He cannot leave thee now, While fresh west winds are blowing, And all around his youthful brow Thy cheerful light is glowing! Edward, awake, awake-- The golden evening gleams Warm and bright on Arden's lake-- Arouse thee from thy dreams! Beside thee, on my knee, My dearest friend, I pray That thou, to cross the eternal sea, Wouldst yet one hour delay: I hear its

Anticipation - Emily Brontë
ill, Or unreal phantoms of distress! How spring can bring thee glory, yet, And summer win thee to forget December's sullen time! Why dost thou hold the treasure fast, Of youth's delight, when youth is past, And thou art near thy prime? When those who were thy own compeers, Equals in fortune and in years, Have seen their morning melt in tears, To clouded, smileless day; Blest, had the

A Spirit Passed Before Me - Lord George Gordon Byron
came down on every eye save mine - And there it stood, -all formless -but divine: Along my bones the creeping flesh did quake; And as my damp hair stiffened, thus it spake: "Is man more just than God? Is man more pure Than He who deems even Seraphs insecure? Creatures of clay -vain dwellers in the dust! The moth survives you, and are ye more just? Things of a day! you wither ere the nig

About The Monk Amador - Honoré de Balzac
in--a time when the ladies remain gleefully at home, because they love the damp, and can have at their apron strings the men who are not disagreeable to them--the queen was in her chamber, at the castle of Amboise, against the window curtains. There, seated in her chair, she was working at a piece of tapestry to amuse herself, but was using her needle heedlessly, watching the rain fall into the Lo

A Poison Tree - William Blake
ot, my wrath did grow. And I watered it in fears Night and morning with my tears, And I sunned it with smiles And with soft deceitful wiles. And it grew both day and night, Till it bore an apple bright, And my foe beheld it shine, And he knew that it was mine - And into my garden stole When the night had veiled the pole; In the morning, glad, I see My foe outstretched beneath th

And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time - William Blake
od On England's pleasant pastures seen? And did the Countenance Divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here Among these dark satanic mills? Bring me my bow of burning gold! Bring me my arrows of desire! Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold! Bring me my chariot of fire! I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, Till we ha

Auguries of Innocence - William Blake
hand And eternity in an hour. A robin redbreast in a cage Puts all heaven in a rage. A dove-house filled with doves and pigeons Shudders hell through all its regions. A dog starved at his master's gate Predicts the ruin of the state. A horse misused upon the road Calls to heaven for human blood. Each outcry of the hunted hare A fibre from the brain does tear. A skylark wounded in the

Agnes Grey - Anne Brontë
y be hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quantity, that the dry, shrivelled kernel scarcely compensates for the trouble of cracking the nut. Whether this be the case with my history or not, I am hardly competent to judge. I sometimes think it might prove useful to some, and entertaining to others; but the world may judge for itself. Shielded by my own obscurity, and by the lapse of years,

A Dreary Story - Anton Chekhov
has so many Russian and foreign decorations that when he has occasion to put them on the students nickname him "The Ikonstand." His acquaintances are of the most aristocratic; for the last twenty-five or thirty years, at any rate, there has not been one single distinguished man of learning in Russia with whom he has not been intimately acquainted. There is no one for him to make friends with nowad

A Living Chattle - Anton Chekhov
k nails, and laid her on the couch covered with cheap velvet. Liza crossed one foot over the other, clasped her hands behind her head, and lay down. Groholsky sat down in a chair beside her and bent over. He was entirely absorbed in contemplation of her. How pretty she seemed to him, lighted up by the rays of the setting sun! There was a complete view from the window of the setting sun

At The Barber's - Anton Chekhov
r himself, an unwashed, greasy, but foppishly dressed youth of three and twenty, is busy clearing up; there is really nothing to be cleared away, but he is perspiring with his exertions. In one place he polishes with a rag, in another he scrapes with his finger or catches a bug and brushes it off the wall. The barber's shop is small, narrow, and unclean. The log walls are hung with paper sugge

An Enigmatic Nature - Anton Chekhov
sive fluffy fan trembles in her tightly closed fingers, a pince-nez keeps dropping off her pretty little nose, the brooch heaves and falls on her bosom, like a boat on the ocean. She is greatly agitated. On the seat opposite sits the Provincial Secretary of Special Commissions, a budding young author, who from time to time publishes long stories of high life, or "Novelli" as he calls them, in

A Classical Student - Anton Chekhov
as though it were upside down; there was a chill at his heart, while the heart itself throbbed and stood still with terror before the unknown. What would he get that day? A three or a two? Six times he went to his mother for her blessing, and, as he went out, asked his aunt to pray for him. On the way to school he gave a beggar two kopecks, in the hope that those two kopecks would atone for his ig

A Daughter Of Albion - Anton Chekhov
a landowner called Gryabov. Fyodor Andreitch Otsov, the district Marshal of Nobility, jumped out of the carriage. A drowsy footman met him in the hall. "Are the family at home?" asked the Marshal. "No, sir. The mistress and the children are gone out paying visits, while the master and mademoiselle are catching fish. Fishing all the morning, sir. Otsov stood a little, thought a little,

An Inquiry - Anton Chekhov
took off his overcoat, mopped his brow with his silk handkerchief, and somewhat diffidently went into the government office. There they were scratching away. . . . "Where can I make an inquiry here?" he said, addressing a porter who was bringing a trayful of glasses from the furthest recesses of the office. "I have to make an inquiry here and to take a copy of a resolution of the Council."

A Tragic Actor - Anton Chekhov
ragedian himself was playing Vyazemsky; Limonadov, the stage manager, was playing Morozov; Madame Beobahtov, Elena. The performance was a grand success. The tragedian accomplished wonders indeed. When he was carrying off Elena, he held her in one hand above his head as he dashed across the stage. He shouted, hissed, banged with his feet, tore his coat across his chest. When he refused to fight Mor

A Slander - Anton Chekhov
d geography. The wedding festivities were going off most successfully. In the drawing room there was singing, playing, and dancing. Waiters hired from the club were flitting distractedly about the rooms, dressed in black swallow-tails and dirty white ties. There was a continual hubbub and din of conversation. Sitting side by side on the sofa, the teacher of mathematics, Tarantulov, the French teac

A Chamelion - Anton Chekhov
carrying a parcel under his arm. A red-haired policeman strides after him with a sieve full of confiscated gooseberries in his hands. There is silence all around. Not a soul in the square. . . . The open doors of the shops and taverns look out upon God's world disconsolately, like hungry mouths; there is not even a beggar near them. "So you bite, you damned brute?" Otchumyelov hears suddenly.

A Country Cottage - Anton Chekhov
ntry station. His arm was round her waist, her head was almost on his shoulder, and both were happy. The moon peeped up from the drifting cloudlets and frowned, as it seemed, envying their happiness and regretting her tedious and utterly superfluous virginity. The still air was heavy with the fragrance of lilac and wild cherry. Somewhere in the distance beyond the line a corncrake was calling.

A Malefactor - Anton Chekhov
investigating magistrate. His face overgrown with hair and pitted with smallpox, and his eyes scarcely visible under thick, overhanging eyebrows have an expression of sullen moroseness. On his head there is a perfect mop of tangled, unkempt hair, which gives him an even more spider-like air of moroseness. He is barefooted. "Denis Grigoryev!" the magistrate begins. "Come nearer, and answer my

A Dead Body - Anton Chekhov
hing within eyesight. Lighted up by the moon, the mist gives the impression at one moment of a calm, boundless sea, at the next of an immense white wall. The air is damp and chilly. Morning is still far off. A step from the bye-road which runs along the edge of the forest a little fire is gleaming. A dead body, covered from head to foot with new white linen, is lying under a young oak-tree. A wood

Art - Anton Chekhov
here and there with snow, stand two peasants, scrubby little Seryozhka and the church beadle, Matvey. Seryozhka, a short-legged, ragged, mangy-looking fellow of thirty, stares angrily at the ice. Tufts of wool hang from his shaggy sheepskin like a mangy dog. In his hands he holds a compass made of two pointed sticks. Matvey, a fine-looking old man in a new sheepskin and high felt boots, looks wit

A Blunder - Anton Chekhov
On the other side in the little drawing-room a love scene was apparently taking place between two persons: their daughter Natashenka and a teacher of the district school, called Shchupkin. "He's rising!" whispered Peplov, quivering with impatience and rubbing his hands. "Now, Kleopatra, mind; as soon as they begin talking of their feelings, take down the ikon from the wall and we'll go in and

An Upheaval - Anton Chekhov
ing from a walk to the house of the Kushkins, with whom she was living as a governess, found the household in a terrible turmoil. Mihailo, the porter who opened the door to her, was excited and red as a crab. Loud voices were heard from upstairs. "Madame Kushkin is in a fit, most likely, or else she has quarrelled with her husband," thought Mashenka. In the hall and in the corridor she

An Actor's End - Anton Chekhov
uch distinguished by his talents as an actor as by his exceptional physical strength, had a desperate quarrel with the manager during the performance, and just when the storm of words was at its height felt as though something had snapped in his chest. Zhukov, the manager, as a rule began at the end of every heated discussion to laugh hysterically and to fall into a swoon; on this occasion, howeve

Anyuta - Anton Chekhov
is third year, was walking to and fro, zealously conning his anatomy. His mouth was dry and his forehead perspiring from the unceasing effort to learn it by heart. In the window, covered by patterns of frost, sat on a stool the girl who shared his room -- Anyuta, a thin little brunette of five-and-twenty, very pale with mild grey eyes. Sitting with bent back she was busy embroidering with red

A Story Without An End - Anton Chekhov
study and informed me that Madame Mimotih, the old woman who owned the house next door, was sitting in her kitchen. "She begs you to go in to her, sir . . ." said the cook, panting. "Something bad has happened about her lodger. . . . He has shot himself or hanged himself. . . ." "What can I do?" said I. "Let her go for the doctor or for the police!" "How is she to look for a doctor! S

A Joke - Anton Chekhov
ples and the down on her upper lip were covered with silvery frost. She was holding my arm and we were standing on a high hill. From where we stood to the ground below there stretched a smooth sloping descent in which the sun was reflected as in a looking-glass. Beside us was a little sledge lined with bright red cloth. "Let us go down, Nadyezhda Petrovna!" I besought her. "Only once! I assure

Agafya - Anton Chekhov
y Savka, in the kitchen gardens of Dubovo. These kitchen gardens were my favorite resort for so-called "mixed" fishing, when one goes out without knowing what day or hour one may return, taking with one every sort of fishing tackle as well as a store of provisions. To tell the truth, it was not so much the fishing that attracted me as the peaceful stroll, the meals at no set time, the talk with Sa

A Nightmare - Anton Chekhov
sburg to his district, Borisovo, immediately sent a mounted messenger to Sinkino, for the priest there, Father Yakov Smirnov. Five hours later Father Yakov appeared. "Very glad to make your acquaintance," said Kunin, meeting him in the entry. "I've been living and serving here for a year; it seems as though we ought to have been acquainted before. You are very welcome! But . . . how young

A Gentleman Friend - Anton Chekhov
kin," found herself, on leaving the hospital, in a position she had never been in before: without a home to go to or a farthing in her pocket. What was she to do? The first thing she did was to visit a pawn-broker's and pawn her turquoise ring, her one piece of jewellery. They gave her a rouble for the ring . . . but what can you get for a rouble? You can't buy for that sum a fashionable short

A Happy Man - Anton Chekhov
second-class smoking compartment five passengers sit dozing, shrouded in the twilight of the carriage. They had just had a meal, and now, snugly ensconced in their seats, they are trying to go to sleep. Stillness. The door opens and in there walks a tall, lanky figure straight as a poker, with a ginger-coloured hat and a smart overcoat, wonderfully suggestive of a journalist in Jules Verne or

A Day In The Country - Anton Chekhov
sky towards the sun. Red zigzags of lightning gleam here and there across it. There is a sound of far-away rumbling. A warm wind frolics over the grass, bends the trees, and stirs up the dust. In a minute there will be a spurt of May rain and a real storm will begin. Fyokla, a little beggar-girl of six, is running through the village, looking for Terenty the cobbler. The white-haired, barefoot

At A Summer Villa - Anton Chekhov
e strength to suffer and be silent. I ask not for love in return, but for sympathy. Be at the old arbour at eight o'clock this evening. . . . To sign my name is unnecessary I think, but do not be uneasy at my being anonymous. I am young, nice-looking . . . what more do you want?" When Pavel Ivanitch Vyhodtsev, a practical married man who was spending his holidays at a summer villa, read this l

A Troublesome Visitor - Anton Chekhov
ark ikon -- Artyom himself, a short and lean peasant with a wrinkled, aged-looking face and a little beard that grew out of his neck, and a well-grown young man in a new crimson shirt and big wading boots, who had been out hunting and come in for the night. They were sitting on a bench at a little three-legged table on which a tallow candle stuck into a bottle was lazily burning. Outside the w

A Misfortune - Anton Chekhov
lking slowly along a track that had been cleared in the wood, with Ilyin, a lawyer who was spending the summer in the neighbourhood. It was five o'clock in the evening. Feathery-white masses of cloud stood overhead; patches of bright blue sky peeped out between them. The clouds stood motionless, as though they had caught in the tops of the tall old pine-trees. It was still and sultry. Farther

A Pink Stocking - Anton Chekhov
in ceasing. Outside sleet, puddles, and drenched jackdaws. Indoors it is half dark, and so cold that one wants the stove heated. Pavel Petrovitch Somov is pacing up and down his study, grumbling at the weather. The tears of rain on the windows and the darkness of the room make him depressed. He is insufferably bored and has nothing to do. . . . The newspapers have not been brought yet; shootin

A Trivial Incident - Anton Chekhov
drove into the immense so-called Shabelsky pine-forest where we were intending to look for woodcocks. In virtue of the part he plays in this story my poor prince deserves a detailed description. He was a tall, dark man, still youngish, though already somewhat battered by life; with long moustaches like a police captain's; with prominent black eyes, and with the manners of a retired army man. He wa

A Tripping Tongue - Anton Chekhov
nner, and in a never-ceasing flow of babble was telling her husband of all the charms of the Crimea. Her husband, delighted, gazed tenderly at her enthusiastic face, listened, and from time to time put in a question. "But they say living is dreadfully expensive there?" he asked, among other things. "Well, what shall I say? To my thinking this talk of its being so expensive is exaggerated,

A Trifle From Life - Anton Chekhov
house property in Petersburg, and a devotee of the race-course, went one evening to see Olga Ivanovna Irnin, with whom he was living, or, to use his own expression, was dragging out a long, wearisome romance. And, indeed, the first interesting and enthusiastic pages of this romance had long been perused; now the pages dragged on, and still dragged on, without presenting anything new or of interes

A Peculiar Man - Anton Chekhov
fore the door of Marya Petrovna Koshkin, a midwife and an old maid. Neither face nor hand can be distinguished in the autumn darkness, but in the very manner of his coughing and the ringing of the bell a certain solidity, positiveness, and even impressiveness can be discerned. After the third ring the door opens and Marya Petrovna herself appears. She has a man's overcoat flung on over her white p

An Incident - Anton Chekhov
sery. Vanya, a boy of six, with a cropped head and a nose like a button, and his sister Nina, a short, chubby, curly-headed girl of four, wake up and look crossly at each other through the bars of their cots. "Oo-oo-oo! naughty children!" grumbles their nurse. "Good people have had their breakfast already, while you can't get your eyes open." The sunbeams frolic over the rugs, the walls, a

A Work Of Art - Anton Chekhov
the Financial News, assumed a sentimental expression, and went into Dr. Koshelkov's consulting-room. "Ah, dear lad!" was how the doctor greeted him. "Well! how are we feeling? What good news have you for me?" Sasha blinked, laid his hand on his heart and said in an agitated voice: "Mamma sends her greetings to you, Ivan Nikolaevitch, and told me to thank you. . . . I am the only son of my

An Inadvertence - Anton Chekhov
oshes were stolen last year, -- came home from a christening party at two o'clock in the morning. To avoid waking the household he took off his things in the lobby, made his way on tiptoe to his room, holding his breath, and began getting ready for bed without lighting a candle. Strizhin leads a sober and regular life. He has a sanctimonious expression of face, he reads nothing but religious a

A Defenseless Creature - Anton Chekhov
nt in the morning to his office and began punctually seeing the clients of the bank and persons who had come with petitions. He looked languid and exhausted, and spoke in a faint voice hardly above a whisper, as though he were dying. "What can I do for you?" he asked a lady in an antediluvian mantle, whose back view was extremely suggestive of a huge dung-beetle. "You see, your Excellency,

A Bad Business - Anton Chekhov
trees distinctly hears someone walking along the avenue ahead of him. A March night, cloudy and foggy, envelopes the earth, and it seems to the watchman that the earth, the sky, and he himself with his thoughts are all merged together into something vast and impenetrably black. He can only grope his way. "Who goes there?" the watchman repeats, and he begins to fancy that he hears whispering an

A Mystery - Anton Chekhov
s, picked up the sheet of paper on which visitors had inscribed their names in the hall, and went with it into his study. After taking off his outer garments and drinking some seltzer water, he settled himself comfortably on a couch and began reading the signatures in the list. When his eyes reached the middle of the long list of signatures, he started, gave an ejaculation of astonishment and snap

An Adventure - Anton Chekhov
n be his, was taking five hundred roubles to the master; in those days our fellows and the Shepelevsky peasants used to rent land from the master, so father was taking money for the half-year. He was a God-fearing man, he used to read the scriptures, and as for cheating or wronging anyone, or defrauding -- God forbid, and the peasants honoured him greatly, and when someone had to be sent to the to

Aborigines - Anton Chekhov
e time or other been wounded in the head, and now lives on his pension in a town in one of the southern provinces, is sitting in his lodgings at the open window talking to Franz Stepanitch Finks, the town architect, who has come in to see him for a minute. Both have thrust their heads out of the window, and are looking in the direction of the gate near which Lyashkevsky's landlord, a plump little

A Play - Anton Chekhov
d hour. . . ." Pavel Vassilyevitch had only just finished lunch. Hearing of the lady, he frowned and said: "Oh, damn her! Tell her I'm busy." "She has been here five times already, Pavel Vassilyevitch. She says she really must see you. . . . She's almost crying." "H'm . . . very well, then, ask her into the study." Without haste Pavel Vassilyevitch put on his coat, took a pen i

A Transgression - Anton Chekhov
heaved a deep sigh. A week before, as he was returning home from his evening walk, he had been overtaken at that very spot by his former housemaid, Agnia, who said to him viciously: "Wait a bit! I'll cook you such a crab that'll teach you to ruin innocent girls! I'll leave the baby at your door, and I'll have the law of you, and I'll tell your wife, too. . . ." And she demanded that he sho

A Father - Anton Chekhov
s it was so hot had a couple of bottles. It's hot, my boy." Old Musatov took a nondescript rag out of his pocket and wiped his shaven, battered face with it. "I have come only for a minute, Borenka, my angel," he went on, not looking at his son, "about something very important. Excuse me, perhaps I am hindering you. Haven't you ten roubles, my dear, you could let me have till Tuesday? You

A Happy Ending - Anton Chekhov
ers of which it is usual to speak only in whispers, had come to see Stytchkin, the head guard, on a day when he was off duty. Stytchkin, somewhat embarrassed, but, as always, grave, practical, and severe, was walking up and down the room, smoking a cigar and saying: "Very pleased to make your acquaintance. Semyon Ivanovitch recommended you on the ground that you may be able to assist me in a d

An Avenger - Anton Chekhov
ck and Co.'s, the gunsmiths, selecting a suitable revolver. His countenance expressed wrath, grief, and unalterable determination. "I know what I must do," he was thinking. "The sanctities of the home are outraged, honour is trampled in the mud, vice is triumphant, and therefore as a citizen and a man of honour I must be their avenger. First, I will kill her and her lover and then myself."

A Problem - Anton Chekhov
ally known. Half of the servants were sent off to the theatre or the circus; the other half were sitting in the kitchen and not allowed to leave it. Orders were given that no one was to be admitted. The wife of the Colonel, her sister, and the governess, though they had been initiated into the secret, kept up a pretence of knowing nothing; they sat in the dining-room and did not show themselves in

A Lady's Story - Anton Chekhov
ing time to fetch the letters from the station. The weather was magnificent, but on our way back we heard a peal of thunder, and saw an angry black storm-cloud which was coming straight towards us. The storm-cloud was approaching us and we were approaching it. Against the background of it our house and church looked white and the tall poplars shone like silver. There was a scent of rain an

A Story Without A Title - Anton Chekhov
the morning, when the first rays kissed the dew, the earth revived, the air was filled with the sounds of rapture and hope; while in the evening the same earth subsided into silence and plunged into gloomy darkness. One day was like another, one night like another. From time to time a storm-cloud raced up and there was the angry rumble of thunder, or a negligent star fell out of the sky, or a pale

A Nervous Breakdown - Anton Chekhov
cture called Rybnikov, went one evening to see their friend Vassilyev, a law student, and suggested that he should go with them to S. Street. For a long time Vassilyev would not consent to go, but in the end he put on his greatcoat and went with them. He knew nothing of fallen women except by hearsay and from books, and he had never in his life been in the houses in which they live. He knew th

After The Theatre - Anton Chekhov
"Yevgeny Onyegin." As soon as she reached her own room she threw off her dress, let down her hair, and in her petticoat and white dressing-jacket hastily sat down to the table to write a letter like Tatyana's. "I love you," she wrote, "but you do not love me, do not love me!" She wrote it and laughed. She was only sixteen and did not yet love anyone. She knew that an officer called Go

An Anonymous Story - Anton Chekhov
ersburg official called Orlov, in the capacity of a footman. He was about five and thirty, and was called Georgy* Ivanitch. *Both g's hard, as in "Gorgon"; e like ai in rain. I entered this Orlov's service on account of his father, a prominent political man, whom I looked upon as a serious enemy of my cause. I reckoned that, living with the son, I should -- from the conversations I should

A Woman's Kingdom - Anton Chekhov
he wrote that he was sending fifteen hundred roubles, which he had been awarded as damages, having won an appeal. Anna Akimovna disliked and feared such words as "awarded damages" and "won the suit." She knew that it was impossible to do without the law, but for some reason, whenever Nazaritch, the manager of the factory, or the bailiff of her villa in the country, both of whom frequently went to

At A Country House - Anton Chekhov
n plaids, and casting a long shadow on the wall and ceiling while his guest, Meier, the deputy examining magistrate, sat on the sofa with one leg drawn up under him smoking and listening. The clock already pointed to eleven, and there were sounds of the table being laid in the room next to the study. "Say what you like," Rashevitch was saying, "from the standpoint of fraternity, equality, and

Ariadne - Anton Chekhov
little round beard, came up to me to smoke, and said: "Notice those Germans sitting near the shelter? Whenever Germans or Englishmen get together, they talk about the crops, the price of wool, or their personal affairs. But for some reason or other when we Russians get together we never discuss anything but women and abstract subjects -- but especially women." This gentleman's face was fam

An Artist's Story - Anton Chekhov
-, on the estate of a young landowner called Byelokurov, who used to get up very early, wear a peasant tunic, drink beer in the evenings, and continually complain to me that he never met with sympathy from any one. He lived in the lodge in the garden, and I in the old seigniorial house, in a big room with columns, where there was no furniture except a wide sofa on which I used to sleep, and a tabl

At Home - Anton Chekhov
aking in the sun, without a speck of shade, and, it seems, without a human being. The train goes on after leaving one here; the sound of it is scarcely audible and dies away at last. Outside the station it is a desert, and there are no horses but one's own. One gets into the carriage -- which is so pleasant after the train -- and is borne along the road through the steppe, and by degrees there are

About Love - Anton Chekhov
Nikanor, the cook, came up to ask what the visitors would like for dinner. He was a man of medium height, with a puffy face and little eyes; he was close-shaven, and it looked as though his moustaches had not been shaved, but had been pulled out by the roots. Alehin told us that the beautiful Pelagea was in love with this cook. As he drank and was of a violent character, she did not want to marry

A Doctor's Visit - Anton Chekhov
ssible. The daughter of some Madame Lyalikov, apparently the owner of the factory, was ill, and that was all that one could make out of the long, incoherent telegram. And the Professor did not go himself, but sent instead his assistant, Korolyov. It was two stations from Moscow, and there was a drive of three miles from the station. A carriage with three horses had been sent to the station to

At Christmas Time - Anton Chekhov
er daughter for four years. Her daughter Yefimya had gone after her wedding to Petersburg, had sent them two letters, and since then seemed to vanish out of their lives; there had been no sight nor sound of her. And whether the old woman were milking her cow at dawn, or heating her stove, or dozing at night, she was always thinking of one and the same thing -- what was happening to Yefimya, whethe

A Book - Emily Dickinson
oetry. This traverse may the poorest take Without oppress of toll; How frugal is the chariot That bears a human soul!

A Charm Invests A Face - Emily Dickinson
led. But peers beyond her mesh, And wishes, and denies, 'Lest interview annul a want That image satisfies

A Narrow Fellow in the Grass - Emily Dickinson
udden is. The grass divides as with a comb, A spotted shaft is seen; And then it closes at your feet And opens further on. He likes a boggy acre, A floor too cool for corn. Yet when a child, and barefoot, I more than once, at morn, Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash Unbraiding in the sun,-- When, stooping to secure it, It wrinkled, and was gone. Several of nature's people I

A Thunderstorm - Emily Dickinson
, A menace at the sky. The leaves unhooked themselves from trees And started all abroad; The dust did scoop itself like hands And throw away the road. The wagons quickened on the streets, The thunder hurried slow; The lightning showed a yellow beak, And then a livid claw. The birds put up the bars to nests, The cattle fled to barns; There came one drop of giant rain, And then, a

A wounded deer leaps highest, - Emily Dickinson
the brake is still. The smitten rock that gushes, The trampled steel that springs: A cheek is always redder Just where the hectic stings! Mirth is mail of anguish, In which its cautious arm Lest anybody spy the blood And, "you're hurt" exclaim

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the perio

American Notes - Charles Dickens
shment, with which, on the morning of the third of January eighteen-hundred-and-forty-two, I opened the door of, and put my head into, a ‘state-room’ on board the Britannia steam-packet, twelve hundred tons burthen per register, bound for Halifax and Boston, and carrying Her Majesty’s mails. That this state-room had been specially engaged for ‘Charles Dickens, Esquire, and Lady,’ was rendered s

Adam Bede - George Eliot
undertakes to reveal to any chance comer far-reaching visions of the past. This is what I undertake to do for you, reader. With this drop of ink at the end of my pen, I will show you the roomy workshop of Mr. Jonathan Burge, carpenter and builder, in the village of Hayslope, as it appeared on the eighteenth of June, in the year of our Lord 1799. The afternoon sun was warm on the five workmen th

A Room With a View - E.M. Forster
o business at all. She promised us south rooms with a view close together, instead of which here are north rooms, looking into a courtyard, and a long way apart. Oh, Lucy!" "And a Cockney, besides!" said Lucy, who had been further saddened by the Signora's unexpected accent. "It might be London." She looked at the two rows of English people who were sitting at the table; at the row of white bot

A Pair of Blue Eyes - Thomas Hardy
the surface. Their nature more precisely, and as modified by the creeping hours of time, was known only to those who watched the circumstances of her history. Personally, she was the combination of very interesting particulars, whose rarity, however, lay in the combination itself rather than in the individual elements combined. As a matter of fact, you did not see the form and substance of her

A Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
NTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State's motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY. The enormous room on the ground floor faced towards the north. Cold for all the summer beyond the panes, for all the tropical heat of the room itself, a harsh thin light glared through the windows, hungrily seeking some draped lay figure, some pallid shape of academic goose

Anne of Avonlea - Lucy Maud Montgomery
hair which her friends called auburn, had sat down on the broad red sandstone doorstep of a Prince Edward Island farmhouse one ripe afternoon in August, firmly resolved to construe so many lines of Virgil. But an August afternoon, with blue hazes scarfing the harvest slopes, little winds whispering elfishly in the poplars, and a dancing slendor of red poppies outflaming against the dark coppic

Anne of Green Gables - Lucy Maud Montgomery
ad dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies' eardrops and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in its earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool and cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde's Hollow it was a quiet, well-conducted little stream, for not

Anne of the Island - Lucy Maud Montgomery
ng across the shorn fields dreamily. She and Diana Barry had been picking apples in the Green Gables orchard, but were now resting from their labors in a sunny corner, where airy fleets of thistledown drifted by on the wings of a wind that was still summer-sweet with the incense of ferns in the Haunted Wood. But everything in the landscape around them spoke of autumn. The sea was roaring hollo

Anne's House of Dreams - Lucy Maud Montgomery
g it," said Anne Shirley, a trifle vindictively, as she thumped a somewhat battered volume of Euclid into a big chest of books, banged the lid in triumph, and sat down upon it, looking at Diana Wright across the Green Gables garret, with gray eyes that were like a morning sky. The garret was a shadowy, suggestive, delightful place, as all garrets should be. Through the open window, by which An

Animal Farm - George Orwell
ber to shut the popholes. With the ring of light from his lantern dancing from side to side, he lurched across the yard, kicked off his boots at the back door, drew himself a last glass of beer from the barrel in the scullery, and made his way up to bed, where Mrs. Jones was already snoring. As soon as the light in the bedroom went out there was a stirring and a fluttering all through the farm

Around the World in Eighty Days - Jules Verne
MAN Mr. Phileas Fogg lived, in 1872, at No. 7, Saville Row, Burlington Gardens, the house in which Sheridan died in 1814. He was one of the most noticeable members of the Reform Club, though he seemed always to avoid attracting attention; an enigmatical personage, about whom little was known, except that he was a polished man of the world. People said that he resembled Byron--at least that h

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court - Mark Twain
t seem to remember hearing of it before. Name of the asylum, likely." It was a soft, reposeful summer landscape, as lovely as a dream, and as lonesome as Sunday. The air was full of the smell of flowers, and the buzzing of insects, and the twittering of birds, and there were no people, no wagons, there was no stir of life, nothing going on. The road was mainly a winding path with hoof-prints i