Jane Eyre

Lee el texto
There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in
the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there
was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so
sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the
question.
I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful to me
was the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart
saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my
physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.
The said Eliza, John, and Georgiana were now clustered round their mama in the
drawing-room: she lay reclined on a sofa by the fireside, and with her darlings about her
(for the time neither quarrelling nor crying) looked perfectly happy. Me, she had
dispensed from joining the group; saying, "She regretted to be under the necessity of
keeping me at a distance; but that until she heard from Bessie, and could discover by her
own observation, that I was endeavouring in good earnest to acquire a more sociable
and childlike disposition, a more attractive and sprightly manner --something lighter,
franker, more natural, as it were-- she really must exclude me from privileges intended
only for contented, happy, little children."
"What does Bessie say I have done?" I asked.
"Jane, I don't like cavillers or questioners; besides, there is something truly forbidding
in a child taking up her elders in that manner. Be seated somewhere; and until you can
speak pleasantly, remain silent."
A breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room, I slipped in there. It contained a
bookcase: I soon possessed myself of a volume, taking care that it should be one stored
with pictures. I mounted into the window-seat: gathering up my feet, I sat cross-legged,
like a Turk; and, having drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close, I was shrined in
double retirement.
Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left were the clear
panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear November day. At
intervals, while turning over the leaves of my book, I studied the aspect of that winter
afternoon. Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet lawn and
storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and
lamentable blast.
I returned to my book--Bewick's History of British Birds: the letterpress thereof I cared
little for, generally speaking; and yet there were certain introductory pages that, child as
I was, I could not pass quite as a blank. They were those which treat of the haunts of
sea-fowl; of "the solitary rocks and promontories" by them only inhabited; of the coast
of Norway, studded with isles from its southern extremity, the Lindeness, or Naze, to the
North Cape -

Wuthering Heights

1801. - I have just returned from a visit to my landlord - the solitary neighbour that I
shall be troubled with. This is certainly a beautiful country! In all England, I do not
believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of
society. A perfect misanthropist's heaven: and Mr. Heathcliff and I are such a suitable
pair to divide the desolation between us. A capital fellow! He little imagined how my
heart warmed towards him when I beheld his black eyes withdraw so suspiciously under
their brows, as I rode up, and when his fingers sheltered themselves, with a jealous
resolution, still further in his waistcoat, as I announced my name.
'Mr. Heathcliff?' I said.
A nod was the answer.
'Mr. Lockwood, your new tenant, sir. I do myself the honour of calling as soon as
possible after my arrival, to express the hope that I have not inconvenienced you by my
perseverance in soliciting the occupation of Thrushcross Grange: I heard yesterday you
had had some thoughts - '
'Thrushcross Grange is my own, sir,' he interrupted, wincing. 'I should not allow any
one to inconvenience me, if I could hinder it - walk in!'
The 'walk in' was uttered with closed teeth, and expressed the sentiment, 'Go to the
Deuce:' even the gate over which he leant manifested no sympathising movement to the
words; and I think that circumstance determined me to accept the invitation: I felt
interested in a man who seemed more exaggeratedly reserved than myself.
When he saw my horse's breast fairly pushing the barrier, he did put out his hand to
unchain it, and then sullenly preceded me up the causeway, calling, as we entered the
court, - 'Joseph, take Mr. Lockwood's horse; and bring up some wine.'
'Here we have the whole establishment of domestics, I suppose,' was the reflection
suggested by this compound order. 'No wonder the grass grows up between the flags,
and cattle are the only hedge- cutters.'
Joseph was an elderly, nay, an old man: very old, perhaps, though hale and sinewy. 'The
Lord help us!' he soliloquised in an undertone of peevish displeasure, while relieving
me of my horse: looking, meantime, in my face so sourly that I charitably conjectured
he must have need of divine aid to digest his dinner, and his pious ejaculation had no
reference to my unexpected advent.

Wuthering Heights is the name of Mr. Heathcliff's dwelling. 'Wuthering' being a

significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its
station is exposed in stormy weather. Pure, bracing ventilation they must have up there
at all times, indeed: one may guess the power of the north wind blowing over the edge,
by the excessive slant of a few stunted firs at the end of the house; and by a range of
gaunt thorns all stretching
their limbs one way, as if craving alms of the sun. Happily, the architect had foresight to
build it strong: the narrow windows are deeply set in the wall, and the corners defended
with large jutting stones.
Before passing the threshold, I paused to admire a quantity of grotesque carving
lavished over the front, and especially about the principal door; above which, among a
wilderness of crumbling griffins and shameless little boys, I detected the date '1500,'
and the name 'Hareton Earnshaw.' I would have made a few comments, and requested a
short history of the place from the surly owner; but his attitude at the door appeared to
demand my speedy entrance, or complete departure, and I had no desire to aggravate his
impatience previous to inspecting the penetralium.

The strange case of Dr. Jekyll

Lee el texto
Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance that was never lighted by a
smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long,
dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable. At friendly meetings, and when the wine was to
his taste, something eminently human beaconed from his eye; something indeed which
never found its way into his talk, but which spoke not only in these silent symbols of the
after-dinnerface, but more often and loudly in the acts of his life. He was austere with
himself; drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages; and though he
enjoyed the theater, had not crossed the doors of one for twenty years. But he had an
approved tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almost with envy, at the high
pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in any extremity inclined to help
rather than to reprove. "I inclineto Cain's heresy," he used to say quaintly: "I let my
brother go to the devil in his own way." In this character, it was frequently his fortune to
be the last reputable acquaintance and the last good influence in the lives of downgoing
men. And to such as these, so long as they came about his chambers, he never marked a
shade of change in his demeanour.
No doubt the feat was easy to Mr. Utterson; for he was undemonstrative at the best, and
even his friendship seemed to be founded in a similar catholicity of good-nature. It is
the mark of a modest man to accept his friendly circle ready-made from the hands of
opportunity; and that was the lawyer's way. His friends were those of his own blood or
those whom he had known the longest; his affections, like ivy, were the growth of time,
they implied no aptness in the object. Hence, no doubt the bond that united him to Mr.
Richard Enfield, his distant kinsman, the well-known man about town. It was a nut to
crack for many, what these two could see in each other, or what subject they could find
in common. It was reported by those who encountered them in their Sunday walks, that

they said nothing, looked singularly dull and would hail with obvious relief the
appearance of a friend. For all that, the two men put the greatest store by these
excursions, counted them the chief jewel of each week, and not only set aside occasions
of pleasure, but even resisted the calls of business, that they might enjoy them
uninterrupted.

The jungle book

Lee el texto
It was seven o'clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf
woke up from his day's rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one
after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips. Mother Wolf lay with her big
gray nose dropped across her four tumbling, squealing cubs, and the moon shone into
the mouth of the cave where they all lived.
"Augrh!" said Father Wolf. "It is time to hunt again." He was going to spring down hill
when a little shadow with a bushy tail crossed the threshold and whined: "Good luck go
with you, O Chief of the Wolves. And good luck and strong white teeth go with noble
children that they may never forget the hungry in this world."
It was the jackal--Tabaqui, the Dish-licker--and the wolves of India despise Tabaqui
because he runs about making mischief, and telling tales, and eating rags and pieces of
leather from the village rubbish-heaps. But they are afraid of him too, because Tabaqui,
more than anyone else in the jungle, is apt to go mad, and then he forgets that he was
ever afraid of anyone, and
runs through the forest biting everything in his way. Even the tiger runs and hides when
little Tabaqui goes mad, for madness is the most disgraceful thing that can overtake a
wild creature. We call it hydrophobia, but they call it dewanee--the madness-- and run.
"Enter, then, and look," said Father Wolf stiffly, "but there is no food here."
"For a wolf, no," said Tabaqui, "but for so mean a person as myself a dry bone is a good
feast. Who are we, the Gidur-log [the jackal people], to pick and choose?" He scuttled to
the back of the cave, where he found the bone of a buck with some meat on it, and sat
cracking the end merrily.
"All thanks for this good meal," he said, licking his lips.
"How beautiful are the noble children! How large are their eyes!
And so young too! Indeed, indeed, I might have remembered that the children of kings
are men from the beginning."

Now, Tabaqui knew as well as anyone else that there is nothing so unlucky as to
compliment children to their faces. It pleased him to see Mother and Father Wolf look
uncomfortable.
Tabaqui sat still, rejoicing in the mischief that he had made, and then he said spitefully:
"Shere Khan, the Big One, has shifted his hunting grounds. He will hunt among these
hills for the next moon, so he has told me."
Shere Khan was the tiger who lived near the Waingunga River, twenty miles away.
"He has no right!" Father Wolf began angrily--"By the Law of the Jungle he has no right
to change his quarters without due warning. He will frighten every head of game within
ten miles, and I--I have to kill for two, these days."
"His mother did not call him Lungri [the Lame One] for nothing," said Mother Wolf
quietly. "He has been lame in one foot from his birth. That is why he has only killed
cattle. Now the villagers of the Waingunga are angry with him, and he has come here to
make our villagers angry. They will scour the jungle for him when he is far away, and
we and our children must run when the
grass is set alight. Indeed, we are very grateful to Shere Khan!"
"Shall I tell him of your gratitude?" said Tabaqui.
"Out!" snapped Father Wolf. "Out and hunt with thy master. Thou hast done harm
enough for one night."
"I go," said Tabaqui quietly. "Ye can hear Shere Khan below in the thickets. I might
have saved myself the message."
Father Wolf listened, and below in the valley that ran down to a little river he heard the
dry, angry, snarly, singsong whine of a tiger who has caught othing and does not care if
all the jungle knows it.
"The fool!" said Father Wolf. "To begin a night's work with that noise! Does he think
that our buck are like his fat Waingunga bullocks?"
"H'sh. It is neither bullock nor buck he hunts to-night," said Mother Wolf. "It is Man."
The whine had changed to a sort of humming purr that seemed to come from every
quarter of the compass. It was the noise that bewilders woodcutters and gypsies sleeping
in the open, and makes them run sometimes into the very mouth of the tiger.

Drcula
Just as I had come to this conclusion I heard a heavy step approaching behind the great
door, and saw through the chinks the gleam of a coming light. Then there was the sound

of rattling chains and the clanking of massive bolts drawn back. A key was turned with
the loud grating noise of long disuse, and the great door swung back.
Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in
black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere. He held
in his hand an antique silver lamp, in which the flame burned without a chimney or
globe of any kind, throwing long quivering shadows as it flickered in the draught of the
open door.
The old man motioned me in with his right hand with a courtly gesture, saying in
excellent English, but with a strange intonation.
"Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own free will!"
He made no motion of stepping to meet me, but stood like a statue, as though his
gesture of welcome had fixed him into stone.
The instant, however, that I had stepped over the threshold, he moved impulsively
forward, and holding out his hand grasped mine with a strength which made me wince,
an effect which was not lessened by the fact that it seemed cold as ice, more like the
hand of a dead than a living man.
Again he said.
"Welcome to my house! Enter freely. Go safely, and leave something of the happiness
you bring!" The strength of the handshake was so much akin to that which I had noticed
in the driver, whose face I had not seen, that for a moment I doubted if it were not the
same person to whom I was speaking.
So to make sure, I said interrogatively, "Count Dracula?" He bowed in a courtly was as
he replied, "I am Dracula, and I bid you welcome, Mr. Harker, to my house. Come in,
the night air is chill, and you must need to eat and rest." As he was speaking, he put the
lamp on a bracket on the wall, and stepping out, took my luggage. He had carried it in
before I could forestall him. I protested, but he insisted. "Nay, sir, you are my guest. It is
late, and my people are not available.
Let me see to your comfort myself. "He insisted on carrying my traps along the passage,
and then up a great winding stair, and along another great passage, on whose stone floor
our steps rang heavily.
At the end of this he threw open a heavy door, and I rejoiced to see within a well-lit
room in which a table was spread for supper, and on whose mighty hearth a great fire of
logs, freshly replenished, flamed and flared.
The Count halted, putting down my bags, closed the door, and crossing the room,
opened another door, which led into a small octagonal room lit by a single lamp, and
seemingly without a window of any sort. Passing through this, he opened another door,
and motioned me to enter. It was a welcome sight. For here was a great bedroom well
lighted and warmed with another log fire, also added to but lately, for the top logs were

fresh, which sent a hollow roar up the wide chimney. The Count himself left my
luggage inside and withdrew, saying, before he closed the door.
"You will need, after your journey, to refresh yourself by making your toilet. I trust you
will find all you wish. When you are ready, come into the other room, where you will
find your supper prepared."
The light and warmth and the Count's courteous welcome seemed to have dissipated all
my doubts and fears. Having then reached my normal state, I discovered that I was half
famished with hunger. So making a hasty toilet, I went into the other room.

The Prisoner of Zenda

It was a maxim of my Uncle William's that no man should pass through Paris without
spending four-and-twenty hours there.
My uncle spoke out of a ripe experience of the world, and I honoured his advice by
putting up for a day and a night at "The Continental" on my way to--the Tyrol. I called
on George Featherly at the Embassy, and we had a bit of dinner together at Durand's,
and afterwards dropped in to the Opera; and after that we had a little supper, and after
that we called on Bertram Bertrand, a versifier of some repute and Paris correspondent
to The Critic. He had a very comfortable suite of rooms, and we found some pleasant
fellows smoking and talking. It struck me, however, that Bertram himself was absent
and in low spirits, and when everybody except ourselves had gone, I rallied him on his
moping preoccupation. He fenced with me for a while, but at last, flinging himself on a
sofa, he exclaimed:
"Very well; have it your own way. I am in love--infernally in love!"
"Oh, you'll write the better poetry," said I, by way of consolation.
He ruffled his hair with his hand and smoked furiously. George Featherly, standing with
his back to the mantelpiece, smiled unkindly.
"If it's the old affair," said he, "you may as well throw it up, Bert. She's leaving Paris
tomorrow."
"I know that," snapped Bertram.
"Not that it would make any difference if she stayed," pursued the relentless George.
"She flies higher than the paper trade, my boy!"
"Hang her!" said Bertram.
"It would make it more interesting for me," I ventured to observe, "if I knew who you
were talking about."
"Antoinette Mauban," said George.

"De Mauban," growled Bertram.

"Oho!" said I, passing by the question of the `de'. "You don't mean to say, Bert--?"
"Can't you let me alone?"
"Where's she going to?" I asked, for the lady was something of a celebrity.
George jingled his money, smiled cruelly at poor Bertram, and answered pleasantly:
"Nobody knows. By the way, Bert, I met a great man at her house the other night--at
least, about a month ago. Did you ever meet him--the Duke of Strelsau?"
"Yes, I did," growled Bertram.
"An extremely accomplished man, I thought him."
It was not hard to see that George's references to the duke were intended to aggravate
poor Bertram's sufferings, so that I drew the inference that the duke had distinguished
Madame de Mauban by his attentions. She was a widow, rich, handsome, and, according
to repute, ambitious. It was quite possible that she, as George put it, was flying as high
as a personage who was everything he could be, short of enjoying strictly royal rank: for
the duke was the son of the late King of Ruritania by a second and morganatic marriage,
and half-brother to the new King. He had been his father's favourite, and it had
occasioned some unfavourable comment when he had been created a duke, with a title
derived from no less a city than the capital itself. His mother had been of good, but not
exalted, birth.

Alice in Wonderland
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having
nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it
had no pictures or conversations in it, 'and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice
'without pictures or conversation?'
So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her
feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be
worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit
with pink eyes ran close by her.
There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so very much out of
the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, 'Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!' (when she
thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but
at the time it all seemed quite natural); but when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of
its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it

flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoatpocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field
after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the
hedge.
In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world
she was to get out again.
The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then dipped suddenly
down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before
she found herself falling down a very deep well.
Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she
went down to look about her and to wonder what was going to happen next. First, she
tried to look down and make out what she was coming to, but it was too dark to see
anything; then she looked at the sides of the well, and noticed that they were filled with
cupboards and book-shelves; here and there she saw maps and pictures hung upon pegs.
She took down a jar from one of the shelves as she passed; it was labelled 'ORANGE
MARMALADE', but to her great disappointment it was empty: she did not like to drop
the jar for fear of killing somebody, so managed to put it into one of the cupboards as
she fell past it.

Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

"I am afraid, Watson, that I shall have to go," said Holmes, as we sat down together to
our breakfast one morning.
"Go! Where to?"
"To Dartmoor; to King's Pyland."
I was not surprised. Indeed, my only wonder was that he had not already been mixed
upon this extraordinary case, which was the one topic of conversation through the
length and breadth of England. For a whole day my companion had rambled about the
room with his chin upon his chest and his brows knitted, charging and recharging his
pipe with the strongest black tobacco, and absolutely deaf to any of my questions or
remarks.
Fresh editions of every paper had been sent up by our news agent, only to be glanced
over and tossed down into a corner. Yet, silent as he was, I knew perfectly well what it
was over which he was brooding. There was but one problem before the public which
could challenge his powers of analysis, and that was the singular disappearance of the
favourite for the Wessex Cup, and the tragic murder of its trainer.
When, therefore, he suddenly announced his intention of setting out for the scene of the
drama it was only what I had both expected and hoped for.

"I should be most happy to go down with you if I should not be in the way," said I.
"My dear Watson, you would confer a great favor upon me by coming. And I think that
your time will not be misspent, for there are points about the case which promise to
make it an absolutely unique one. We have, I think, just time to catch our train at
Paddington, and I will go further into the matter upon our journey. You would oblige me
by bringing with you your very excellent field-glass."
And so it happened that an hour or so later I found myself in the corner of a first-class
carriage flying along en route for Exeter, while Sherlock Holmes, with his sharp, eager
face framed in his ear-flapped travelling-cap, dipped rapidly into the bundle of fresh
papers which he had procured at Paddington. We had left Reading far behind us before
he thrust the last one of them under the seat, and offered me his cigar-case.
"We are going well," said he, looking out the window and glancing at his watch. "Our
rate at present is fifty-three and a half miles an hour."
"I have not observed the quarter-mile posts," said I.
"Nor have I. But the telegraph posts upon this line are sixty yards apart, and the
calculation is a simple one. I presume that you have looked into this matter of the
murder of John Straker and the disappearance of Silver Blaze?"
"I have seen what the Telegraph and the Chronicle have to say."
"It is one of those cases where the art of the reasoner should be used rather for the
sifting of details than for the acquiring of fresh evidence. The tragedy has been so
uncommon, so complete and of such personal importance to so many people, that we
are suffering from a plethora of surmise, conjecture, and hypothesis. The difficulty is to
detach the framework of fact--of absolute undeniable fact--from the embellishments of
theorists and reporters. Then, having established ourselves upon this sound basis, it is
our duty to see what inferences may be drawn and what are the special points upon
which the whole mystery turns. On Tuesday evening I received telegrams from both
Colonel Ross, the owner of the horse, and from Inspector Gregory, who is looking after
the case, inviting my cooperation.

The prince and the pauper

Lee el texto
Tom was conducted to the principal apartment of a noble suite, and made to sit down--a
thing which he was loth to do, since there were elderly men and men of high degree
about him. He begged them to be seated also, but they only bowed their thanks or
murmured them, and remained standing. He would have insisted, but his 'uncle' the Earl
of Hertford whispered in his ear--

"Prithee, insist not, my lord; it is not meet that they sit in thy presence."
The Lord St. John was announced, and after making obeisance to Tom, he said-"I come upon the King's errand, concerning a matter which requireth privacy. Will it
please your royal highness to dismiss all that attend you here, save my lord the Earl of
Hertford?"
Observing that Tom did not seem to know how to proceed, Hertford whispered him to
make a sign with his hand, and not trouble himself to speak unless he chose. When the
waiting gentlemen had retired, Lord St. John said-"His majesty commandeth, that for due and weighty reasons of state, the prince's grace
shall hide his infirmity in all ways that be within his power, till it be passed and he be as
he was before. To wit, that he shall deny to none that he is the true prince, and heir to
England's greatness; that he shall uphold his princely dignity, and shall receive, without
word or sign of protest, that reverence and observance which unto it do appertain of
right and ancient usage; that he shall cease to speak to any of that lowly birth and life
his malady hath conjured out of the unwholesome imaginings of o'er-wrought fancy;
that he shall strive with diligence to bring unto his memory again those faces which he
was wont to know--and where he faileth he shall hold his peace, neither betraying by
semblance of surprise or other sign that he hath forgot; that upon occasions of state,
whensoever any matter shall perplex him as to the thing he should do or the utterance he
should make, he shall show nought of unrest to the curious that look on, but take advice
in that matter of the Lord Hertford, or my humble self, which are commanded of the
King to be upon this service and close at call, till this commandment be dissolved. Thus
saith the King's majesty, who sendeth greeting to your royal highness, and prayeth that
God will of His mercy quickly heal you and have you now and ever in His holy
keeping."
The Lord St. John made reverence and stood aside. Tom replied resignedly-"The King hath said it. None may palter with the King's command, or fit it to his ease,
where it doth chafe, with deft evasions. The King shall be obeyed."
Lord Hertford said-"Touching the King's majesty's ordainment concerning books and such like serious
matters, it may peradventure please your highness to ease your time with lightsome
entertainment, lest you go wearied to the banquet and suffer harm thereby."
Tom's face showed inquiring surprise; and a blush followed when he saw Lord St.
John's eyes bent sorrowfully upon him. His lordship said-"Thy memory still wrongeth thee, and thou hast shown surprise--but suffer it not to
trouble thee, for 'tis a matter that will not bide, but depart with thy mending malady. My
Lord of Hertford speaketh of the city's banquet which the King's majesty did promise,
some two months flown, your highness should attend. Thou recallest it now?"

"It grieves me to confess it had indeed escaped me," said Tom, in a hesitating voice; and
blushed again.

The picture of Dorian Gray

Lee el texto
The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind
stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent
of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.
From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as
was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam
of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous
branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; and
now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk
curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of
momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid, jade-faced painters of
Tokyo who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey
the sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way
through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty
gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive.
The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.
In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the full-length portrait of a
young man of extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it, some little distance
away, was sitting the artist himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some
years ago caused, at the time, such public excitement and gave rise to so many strange
conjectures.
As the painter looked at the gracious and comely form he had so skilfully mirrored in
his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his face, and seemed about to linger there. But
he suddenly started up, and closing his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though
he sought to imprison within his brain some curious dream from which he feared he
might awake.
"It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done," said Lord Henry
languidly. "You must certainly send it next year to the Grosvenor. The Academy is too
large and too vulgar. Whenever I have gone there, there have been either so many
people that I have not been able to see the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many
pictures that I have not been able to see the people, which was worse. The Grosvenor is
really the only place."
"I don't think I shall send it anywhere," he answered, tossing his head back in that odd
way that used to make his friends laugh at him at Oxford.

"No, I won't send it anywhere."

Lord Henry elevated his eyebrows and looked at him in amazement through the thin
blue wreaths of smoke that curled up in such fanciful whorls from his heavy, opiumtainted cigarette. "Not send it anywhere? My dear fellow, why? Have you any reason?
What odd chaps you painters are! You do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As
soon as you have one, you seem to want to throw it away. It is silly of you, for there is
only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked
about. A portrait like this would set you far above all the young men in England, and
make the old men quite jealous, if old men are ever capable of any emotion."
"I know you will laugh at me," he replied, "but I really can't exhibit it. I have put too
much of myself into it."

Robinson Crusoe
Lee el texto
I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, though not of that
country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull. He got a good
estate by merchandise, and leaving off his trade, lived afterwards at York, from whence
he had married my mother, whose relations were named Robinson, a very good family
in that country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but, by the usual
corruption of words in England, we are now called - nay we call ourselves and write our
name - Crusoe; and so my companions always called me.
I had two elder brothers, one of whom was lieutenant-colonel to an English regiment of
foot in Flanders, formerly commanded by the famous Colonel Lockhart, and was killed
at the battle near Dunkirk against the Spaniards. What became of my second brother I
never knew, any more than my father or mother knew what became of me.
Being the third son of the family and not bred to any trade, my head began to be filled
very early with rambling thoughts. My father, who was very ancient, had given me a
competent share of learning, as far as house-education and a country free school
generally go, and designed me for the law; but I would be satisfied with nothing but
going to sea; and my inclination to this led me so strongly against the will, nay, the
commands of my father, and against all the entreaties and persuasions of my mother
and other friends, that there seemed to be something fatal in that propensity of nature,
tending directly to the life of misery which was to befall me.
My father, a wise and grave man, gave me serious and excellent counsel against what he
foresaw was my design. He called me one morning into his chamber, where he was
confined by the gout, and expostulated very warmly with me upon this subject. He
asked me what reasons, more than a mere wandering inclination, I had for leaving
father's house and my native country, where I might be well introduced, and had a
prospect of raising my fortune by application and industry, with a life of ease and
pleasure. He told me it was men of desperate fortunes on one hand, or of aspiring,
superior fortunes on the other, who went abroad upon adventures, to rise by enterprise,

and make themselves famous in undertakings of a nature out of the common road; that
these things were all either too far above me or too far below me; that mine was the
middle state, or what might be called the upper station of low life, which he had found,
by long experience, was the best state in the world, the most suited to human happiness,
not exposed to the miseries and hardships, the labour and sufferings of the mechanic
part of mankind, and not embarrassed with the pride, luxury, ambition, and envy of the
upper part of mankind. He told me I might judge of the happiness of this state by this
one thing - viz. that this was the state of life which all other people envied; that kings
have frequently lamented the miserable consequence of being born to great things, and
wished they had been placed in the middle of the two extremes, between the mean and
the great; that the wise man gave his testimony to this, as the standard of felicity, when
he prayed to have neither poverty nor riches.

The Scarlet Letter

The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they
might originally project, have invariably recognised it among their earliest practical
necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the
site of a prison. In accordance with this rule it may safely be assumed that the
forefathers of Boston had built the first prison-house somewhere in the Vicinity of
Cornhill, almost as seasonably as they marked out the first burial-ground, on Isaac
Johnson's lot, and round about his grave, which subsequently became the nucleus of all
the congregated sepulchres in the old churchyard of King's Chapel. Certain it is that,
some fifteen or twenty years after the settlement of the town, the wooden jail was
already marked with weather-stains and other indications of age, which gave a yet
darker aspect to its beetle-browed and gloomy front. The rust on the ponderous ironwork of its oaken door looked more antique than anything else in the New World. Like
all that pertains to crime, it seemed never to have known a youthful era. Before this ugly
edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much
overgrown with burdock, pig-weed, apple-pern, and such unsightly vegetation, which
evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower
of civilised society, a prison. But on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the
threshold, was a wild rose-hush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems,
which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he
went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the
deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him.
This rose-bush, by a strange chance, has been kept alive in history; but whether it had
merely survived out of the stern old wilderness, so long after the fall of the gigantic
pines and oaks that originally overshadowed it, or whether, as there is far authority for
believing, it had sprung up under the footsteps of the sainted Ann Hutchinson as she
entered the prison-door, we shall not take upon us to determine. Finding it so directly on
the threshold of our narrative, which is now about to issue from that inauspicious portal,
we could hardly do otherwise than pluck one of its flowers, and present it to the reader.
It may serve, let us hope, to symbolise some sweet moral blossom that may be found
along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow.