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Our mother was once present at a meeting where there was talk of ancestry and heredity. One of the speakers dwelt largely upon the sins of the fathers. He drew stern pictures of the vice, the barbarism, the heathenism of the “good old times,” and ended by saying with emphasis that he felt himself “bowed down beneath the burden of the sins of his ancestors.”

Our mother was on her feet in a flash.

“Mr. So-and-So,” she said, “is bowed down by the sins of his ancestors. I wish to say that all my life I have been buoyed up and lifted on by the remembrance of the virtues of mine!”

These words are so characteristic of her, that in beginning the story of her life it seems proper to dwell at some length on the ancestors whose memory she cherished with such reverence.

A homeless New York City boy is taken west by a benefactor to work on a farm and ends up rescuing a little girl kidnapped by a vengeful Indian. Aka: Julius the Street Boy, A Waif’s Rise from Poverty, Life in the West, Out West.

He was the famous Brody Carmical, and rumor had it he was worth a million credits for each of the many richly mounted heads.

“So you’re fresh out of school with a degree in Extra-terrestrial zoology,” Carmical grumbled. “Am I supposed to turn cartwheels?”

Steve cleared his throat. “The Placement Service thought you might have a job—”

“I do, I do. That doesn’t mean any young pup who comes along can fill it. Ever been off the Earth, Mr. Stedman?”

“No.”

“Ever been off the North American continent?”

“No.”

“But you want to go galavanting around the Solar System in search of big game. Tell me—do you think they have a Harvard club on every stinking satellite you’ll visit? Do you think you can eat beefsteak and drink martinis in every frontier-world dive? Let me tell you, Mr. Stedman, the answer is no.”

Now each regardless of a fall,
With crooked stick, oft strikes the ball,
Which o’er the icy surface flies,
The adventr’us game, with ardour plies.

A continuation of the classic Oz series, this book is as fascinating and humorous as the the earlier series was. This story is about Kabumpo. Kabumpo is an Elegant Elephant. He is very old and wise, and has a kindly heart, as have all the Oz folks. In this book, you’ll meet Prince Pompa and Peg Amy, a charming Wooden Doll. There are new countries, strange adventures and the most surprising Box of Magic you have ever heard of. Ruggedo, the wicked old Gnome King, does a lot of mischief with this before Princess Ozma can stop him.

A 19th century novel by Mrs Alexander, ‘Kate Vernon’ is about a woman who was so close to her grandfather that his demise left her shattered and helpless. She gets shocked and depressed, and was left alone to head a life that she had never thought of. A story of her finding a life for herself.

To keep fit is to maintain perfect health; and perfect health depends upon a perfect balance of mind and body, unimpaired physical vigor and absolute inner harmony, and a calm, mental poise which nothing can disturb.

A boy with light blue eyes that just about matched the slightly hazy June sky sat on the float below the town landing at Greenhaven, L. I., and stared thoughtfully across harbor and bay to where, two miles northward, the village of Johnstown stretched along the farther shore. He had a round, healthy, and deeply tanned face of which a short nose, many freckles, the aforementioned blue eyes, and a somewhat square chin were prominent features. There was, of course, a mouth, as well, and that, too, was prominent just now, for it was puckered with the little tune that the boy was softly whistling. Under a sailor’s hat of white canvas the hair was brown, but a brown that only escaped being red by the narrowest of margins. That fact was a sore subject with Toby Tucker.

Key to Health. Anyone who observes the rules of health mentioned in this book will find that he has got in it a real key to unlock the gates leading him to health. He will not need to knock at the doors of doctors or vaidyas from day to day.

Kidnapped’ is an historical fiction adventure novel by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson. It was first published in the magazine Young Folks in 1886. The story is set around 18th-century Scottish events, notably the “Appin Murder”, which occurred near Ballachulish in 1752 in the aftermath of the Jacobite rising of 1745. Many of the characters were real people, including one of the principals, Alan Breck Stewart. The political situation of the time is portrayed from multiple viewpoints, and the Scottish Highlanders are treated sympathetically.

Among many accounts, Shakespeare’s was the most ambitious, dramatically innovative and radical. The Second Part of King Henry VI is concerned with the nature of history, the role of conscience and the relation between law and equity. It contains a complex reading of a popular uprising, led by Jack Cade.

King Midas A Romance was first published under the title Springtime and Harvest. “I find a fine current of feeling through the pages. They are touched throughout with the hues of poetry and the noblest ideals of life.”–Edwin Markham. Upton Sinclair was a Pulitzer Prize-winning who wrote over 90 books, best known for his muckraking novel, The Jungle.

King Solomon’s Mines’ was published in 1885. It is a popular novel by the Victorian adventure writer and fabulist Sir H. Rider Haggard. It is about a search of an unexplored region of Africa by a group of adventurers led by Allan Quatermain for the missing brother of one of the party. It is the first English adventure novel set in Africa, and is considered to be the genesis of the Lost World literary genre.

We all settled down in a circle and our good friend Alexandr Vassilyevitch Ridel (his surname was German but he was Russian to the marrow of his bones) began as follows:

I am going to tell you a story, friends, of something that happened to me in the ‘thirties … forty years ago as you see. I will be brief–and don’t you interrupt me.

I was living at the time in Petersburg and had only just left the University. My brother was a lieutenant in the horse-guard artillery. His battery was stationed at Krasnoe Selo–it was summer time. My brother lodged not at Krasnoe Selo itself but in one of the neighbouring villages; I stayed with him more than once and made the acquaintance of all his comrades. He was living in a fairly decent cottage, together with another officer of his battery, whose name was Ilya Stepanitch Tyeglev. I became particularly friendly with him.

Her voice was like rose-fragrance waltzing in the wind.
She seemed a shadow, stained with shadow colors,
Swimming through waves of sunlight.…
The sole precedent I can find for the broken style of my prologue is Longinus on the Sublime and that one far-fetched.
When my mother was in Rome on that rare journey forever to be remembered, she lived in a small pension near the Pincio gardens. The place had been chosen by my brother as one notably easy of access, being in a quarter free from confusion of traffic, on a street close to the park and furthermore the tram to the American Academy passed at the corner. Yet never did my mother go out but she was in fear of being lost. By turning to the left when she should have turned right, actually she did once manage to go so far astray that it was nearly an hour before she extricated herself from the strangeness of every new vista and found a landmark.

La Grenadiere is a little house on the right bank of the Loire as you go down stream, about a mile below the bridge of Tours. At this point the river, broad as a lake, and covered with scattered green islands, flows between two lines of cliff, where country houses built uniformly of white stone stand among their gardens and vineyards. The finest fruit in the world ripens there with a southern exposure. The patient toil of many generations has cut terraces in the cliff, so that the face of the rock reflects the rays of the sun, and the produce of hot climates may be grown out of doors in an artificially high temperature.

Lysimachus, the son of Aristides the Just, and Melesias, the son of the elder Thucydides, two aged men who live together, are desirous of educating their sons in the best manner. Their own education, as often happens with the sons of great men, has been neglected; and they are resolved that their children shall have more care taken of them, than they received themselves at the hands of their fathers.

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.
This was more or less Constance Chatterley’s position. The war had brought the roof down over her head. And she had realized that one must live and learn.

First published in 1871, the present book ‘Lady Susan’ by celebrated English novelist Jane Austen is about Lady Susan Vernon, a beautiful and charming recent widow, who visits her brother- and sister-in-law, Charles and Catherine Vernon, with little advance notice at Churchill, their country residence. Catherine is far from pleased, as Lady Susan had tried to prevent her marriage to Charles and her unwanted guest has been described to her as “the most accomplished coquette in England”. Among Lady Susan’s conquests in London is the married Mr. Mainwaring.

Lady Windermere’s Fan’ is a four-act comedy by Oscar Wilde. The story concerns Lady Windermere, who suspects that her husband is having an affair with another woman. She confronts him with it but although he denies it, he invites the other woman, Mrs Erlynne, to his wife’s birthday ball. Angered by her husband’s supposed unfaithfulness, Lady Windermere decides to leave her husband for another lover. After discovering what has transpired, Mrs Erlynne follows Lady Windermere and attempts to persuade her to return to her husband and in the course of this, Mrs Erlynne is discovered in a compromising position. It is then revealed Mrs Erlynne is Lady Windermere’s mother, who abandoned her family twenty years before the time the play is set. Mrs Erlynne sacrifices herself and her reputation to save her daughter’s marriage. The best-known line of the play sums up the central theme: We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. — Lord Darlington (courtesy: Wikipedia)

Language an Introduction to the Study of Speech” from Edward Sapir. Edward Sapir, american anthropologist-linguist (1884-1939).

“Two men sat by the sea waves.
“Well, I know I’m not handsome,” said one gloomily. He was poking holes in the sand with a discontented cane.
The companion was watching the waves play. He seemed overcome with perspiring discomfort as a man who is resolved to set another man right.
Suddenly his mouth turned into a straight line. “To be sure you are not,” he cried vehemently. “You look like thunder. I do not desire to be unpleasant, but I must assure you that your freckled skin continually reminds spectators of white wall paper with gilt roses on it. The top of your head looks like a little wooden plate. and your figure—heavens!”
For a time they were silent. They stared at the waves that purred near their feet like sleepy sea-kittens.” -an excerpt

The remarks which Emily had made regarding the share Laura Middleton had had in opening up her ideas on the subject of the mysteries in which she had now been fully initiated had not escaped my observation. It so happened that at that very time I was under an engagement to pay a visit to the Middletons, who were very distant relations of my mother. It of course occurred to me that it was possible I might be able to turn the information I had thus acquired to some account. Laura and I were old friends. She was about two years older than I, a very handsome, fine-looking girl but, as I had then fancied, upon rather a larger scale than quite suited my taste. We had always been on very good terms as children, but she had a sort of haughty, imperious air which, joined to the difference in our ages, had operated in a manner that would have prevented me from thinking of taking any liberties with her; and she was about the last person in the world I should have been disposed to imagine addicted to the amusements in which Emily had participated with her.