{"title":"A Dark Night's Work","author":"Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn","text":"In the county town of a certain shire there lived (about forty years ago) one Mr. Wilkins, a conveyancing attorney of considerable standing. The certain shire was but a small county, and the principal town in it contained only about four thousand inhabitants; so in saying that Mr. Wilkins was the principal lawyer in Hamley, I say very little, unless I add that he transacted all the legal business of the gentry for twenty miles round.  His grandfather had established the connection; his father had consolidated and strengthened it, and, indeed, by his wise and upright conduct, as well as by his professional skill, had obtained for himself the position of confidential friend to many of the surrounding families of distinction. "}
{"title":"Adam Bede","author":"Eliot, George","text":"With a single drop of ink for a mirror, the Egyptian sorcerer 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 there, busy upon doors and window-frames and wainscoting. "}
{"title":"An Accursed Race","author":"Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn","text":"We have our prejudices in England.  Or, if that assertion offends any of my readers, I will modify it: we have had our prejudices in England.  We have tortured Jews; we have burnt Catholics and Protestants, to say nothing of a few witches and wizards.  We have satirized Puritans, and we have dressed-up Guys.  But, after all, I do not think we have been so bad as our Continental friends.  To be sure, our insular position has kept us free, to a certain degree, from the inroads of alien races; who, driven from one land of refuge, steal into another equally unwilling to receive them; and where, for long centuries, their presence is barely endured, and no pains is taken to conceal the repugnance which the natives of \"pure blood\" experience towards them."}
{"title":"Brother Jacob","author":"Eliot, George","text":"Among the many fatalities attending the bloom of young desire, that of blindly taking to the confectionery line has not, perhaps, been sufficiently considered.  How is the son of a British yeoman, who has been fed principally on salt pork and yeast dumplings, to know that there is satiety for the human stomach even in a paradise of glass jars full of sugared almonds and pink lozenges, and that the tedium of life can reach a pitch where plum-buns at discretion cease to offer the slightest excitement?  Or how, at the tender age when a confectioner seems to him a very prince whom all the world must envy--who breakfasts on macaroons, dines on meringues, sups on twelfth-cake, and fills up the intermediate hours with sugar-candy or peppermint--how is he to foresee the day of sad wisdom, when he will discern that the confectioner's calling is not socially influential, or favourable to a soaring ambition? "}
{"title":"Cousin Phillis","author":"Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn","text":"It is a great thing for a lad when he is first turned into the independence of lodgings. I do not think I ever was so satisfied and proud in my life as when, at seventeen, I sate down in a little three-cornered room above a pastry-cook's shop in the county town of Eltham. My father had left me that afternoon, after delivering himself of a few plain precepts, strongly expressed, for my guidance in the new course of life on which I was entering. I was to be a clerk under the engineer who had undertaken to make the little branch line from Eltham to Hornby. My father had got me this situation, which was in a position rather above his own in life; or perhaps I should say, above the station in which he was born and bred; for he was raising himself every year in men's consideration and respect. "}
{"title":"Curious, if True\nStrange Tales","author":"Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn","text":"You know, my dears, that your mother was an orphan, and an only child; and I daresay you have heard that your grandfather was a clergyman up in Westmoreland, where I come from. I was just a girl in the village school, when, one day, your grandmother came in to ask the mistress if there was any scholar there who would do for a nurse-maid; and mighty proud I was, I can tell ye, when the mistress called me up, and spoke of me being a good girl at my needle, and a steady, honest girl, and one whose parents were very respectable, though they might be poor. I thought I should like nothing better than to serve the pretty young lady, who was blushing as deep as I was, as she spoke of the coming baby, and what I should have to do with it."}
{"title":"Daniel Deronda","author":"Eliot, George","text":" Men can do nothing without the make-believe of a beginning. Even     science, the strict measurer, is obliged to start with a make-believe     unit, and must fix on a point in the stars' unceasing journey when his     sidereal clock shall pretend that time is at Nought. "}
{"title":"Emma","author":"Austen, Jane","text":"Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her. She was the youngest of the two daughters of a most affectionate, indulgent father; and had, in consequence of her sister's marriage, been mistress of his house from a very early period. Her mother had died too long ago for her to have more than an indistinct remembrance of her caresses; and her place had been supplied by an excellent woman as governess, who had fallen little short of a mother in affection. Sixteen years had Miss Taylor been in Mr. Woodhouse's family, less as a governess than a friend, very fond of both daughters, but particularly of Emma. Between _them_ it was more the intimacy of sisters. "}
{"title":"Lady Susan","author":"Austen, Jane","text":"LADY SUSAN VERNON TO MR. VERNON Langford, Dec. MY DEAR BROTHER,--I can no longer refuse myself the pleasure of profiting by your kind invitation when we last parted of spending some weeks with you at Churchhill, and, therefore, if quite convenient to you and Mrs. Vernon to receive me at present, I shall hope within a few days to be introduced to a sister whom I have so long desired to be acquainted with. My kind friends here are most affectionately urgent with me to prolong my stay, but their hospitable and cheerful dispositions lead them too much into society for my present situation and state of mind; and I impatiently look forward to the hour when I shall be admitted into your delightful retirement. I long to be made known to your dear little children, in whose hearts I shall be very eager to secure an interest I shall soon have need for all my fortitude, as I am on the point of separation from my own daughter."}
{"title":"Lizzie Leigh","author":"Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn","text":"When Death is present in a household on a Christmas Day, the very contrast between the time as it now is, and the day as it has often been, gives a poignancy to sorrow--a more utter blankness to the desolation. James Leigh died just as the far-away bells of Rochdale Church were ringing for morning service on Christmas Day, 1836.  A few minutes before his death, he opened his already glazing eyes, and made a sign to his wife, by the faint motion of his lips, that he had yet something to say. She stooped close down, and caught the broken whisper, \"I forgive her, Annie!  May God forgive me!\" \"Oh, my love, my dear! only get well, and I will never cease showing my thanks for those words.  May God in heaven bless thee for saying them. Thou'rt not so restless, my lad! may be--Oh, God!\" For even while she spoke he died. "}
{"title":"Mansfield Park","author":"Austen, Jane","text":"About thirty years ago Miss Maria Ward, of Huntingdon, with only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield Park, in the county of Northampton, and to be thereby raised to the rank of a baronet's lady, with all the comforts and consequences of an handsome house and large income. All Huntingdon exclaimed on the greatness of the match, and her uncle, the lawyer, himself, allowed her to be at least three thousand pounds short of any equitable claim to it. She had two sisters to be benefited by her elevation; and such of their acquaintance as thought Miss Ward and Miss Frances quite as handsome as Miss Maria, did not scruple to predict their marrying with almost equal advantage. But there certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them."}
{"title":"My Lady Ludlow","author":"Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn","text":"I am an old woman now, and things are very different to what they were in my youth.  Then we, who travelled, travelled in coaches, carrying six inside, and making a two days' journey out of what people now go over in a couple of hours with a whizz and a flash, and a screaming whistle, enough to deafen one.  Then letters came in but three times a week: indeed, in some places in Scotland where I have stayed when I was a girl, the post came in but once a month;--but letters were letters then; and we made great prizes of them, and read them and studied them like books.  Now the post comes rattling in twice a day, bringing short jerky notes, some without beginning or end, but just a little sharp sentence, which well- bred folks would think too abrupt to be spoken.  Well, well! they may all be improvements,--I dare say they are; but you will never meet with a Lady Ludlow in these days. I will try and tell you about her. "}
{"title":"Persuasion","author":"Austen, Jane","text":"Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs changed naturally into pity and contempt as he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century; and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never failed. "}
{"title":"Pride and Prejudice","author":"Austen, Jane","text":"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters. \"My dear Mr. Bennet,\" said his lady to him one day, \"have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?\" Mr. Bennet replied that he had not. \"But it is,\" returned she; \"for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it.\" Mr. Bennet made no answer. \"Do you not want to know who has taken it?\" cried his wife impatiently. \"_You_ want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it.\" This was invitation enough."}
{"title":"Romola","author":"Eliot, George","text":"More than three centuries and a half ago, in the mid spring-time of 1492, we are sure that the angel of the dawn, as he travelled with broad slow wing from the Levant to the Pillars of Hercules, and from the summits of the Caucasus across all the snowy Alpine ridges to the dark nakedness of the Western isles, saw nearly the same outline of firm land and unstable sea--saw the same great mountain shadows on the same valleys as he has seen to-day--saw olive mounts, and pine forests, and the broad plains green with young corn or rain-freshened grass--saw the domes and spires of cities rising by the river-sides or mingled with the sedge-like masts on the many-curved sea-coast, in the same spots where they rise to-day.  "}
{"title":"Sense and Sensibility","author":"Austen, Jane","text":"The family of Dashwood had long been settled in Sussex.  Their estate was large, and their residence was at Norland Park, in the centre of their property, where, for many generations, they had lived in so respectable a manner as to engage the general good opinion of their surrounding acquaintance.  The late owner of this estate was a single man, who lived to a very advanced age, and who for many years of his life, had a constant companion and housekeeper in his sister.  But her death, which happened ten years before his own, produced a great alteration in his home; for to supply her loss, he invited and received into his house the family of his nephew Mr. Henry Dashwood, the legal inheritor of the Norland estate, and the person to whom he intended to bequeath it."}
{"title":"Silas Marner","author":"Eliot, George","text":"In the days when the spinning-wheels hummed busily in the farmhouses--and even great ladies, clothed in silk and thread-lace, had their toy spinning-wheels of polished oak--there might be seen in districts far away among the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the hills, certain pallid undersized men, who, by the side of the brawny country-folk, looked like the remnants of a disinherited race.  The shepherd's dog barked fiercely when one of these alien-looking men appeared on the upland, dark against the early winter sunset; for what dog likes a figure bent under a heavy bag?--and these pale men rarely stirred abroad without that mysterious burden.  "}
{"title":"The Doom of the Griffiths","author":"Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn","text":"I HAVE always been much interested by the traditions which are scattered up and down North Wales relating to Owen Glendower (Owain Glendwr is the national spelling of the name), and I fully enter into the feeling which makes the Welsh peasant still look upon him as the hero of his country. There was great joy among many of the inhabitants of the principality, when the subject of the Welsh prize poem at Oxford, some fifteen or sixteen years ago, was announced to be “Owain Glendwr.”  It was the most proudly national subject that had been given for years. Perhaps, some may not be aware that this redoubted chieftain is, even in the present days of enlightenment, as famous among his illiterate countrymen for his magical powers as for his patriotism.  "}
{"title":"The Half-Brothers","author":"Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn","text":"My mother was twice married.  She never spoke of her first husband, and it is only from other people that I have learnt what little I know about him.  I believe she was scarcely seventeen when she was married to him: and he was barely one-and-twenty.  He rented a small farm up in Cumberland, somewhere towards the sea-coast; but he was perhaps too young and inexperienced to have the charge of land and cattle: anyhow, his affairs did not prosper, and he fell into ill health, and died of consumption before they had been three years man and wife, leaving my mother a young widow of twenty, with a little child only just able to walk, and the farm on her hands for four years more by the lease, with half the stock on it dead, or sold off one by one to pay the more pressing debts, and with no money to purchase more, or even to buy the provisions needed for the small consumption of every day.  "}
{"title":"The Lifted Veil","author":"Eliot, George","text":" The time of my end approaches.  I have lately been subject to attacks of _angina pectoris_; and in the ordinary course of things, my physician tells me, I may fairly hope that my life will not be protracted many months.  Unless, then, I am cursed with an exceptional physical constitution, as I am cursed with an exceptional mental character, I shall not much longer groan under the wearisome burthen of this earthly existence.  If it were to be otherwise--if I were to live on to the age most men desire and provide for--I should for once have known whether the miseries of delusive expectation can outweigh the miseries of true provision.  "}
{"title":"The Poor Clare","author":"Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn","text":"My life has been strangely bound up with extraordinary incidents, some of which occurred before I had any connection with the principal actors in them, or indeed, before I even knew of their existence.  I suppose, most old men are, like me, more given to looking back upon their own career with a kind of fond interest and affectionate remembrance, than to watching the events—though these may have far more interest for the multitude—immediately passing before their eyes.  If this should be the case with the generality of old people, how much more so with me! . . . If I am to enter upon that strange story connected with poor Lucy, I must begin a long way back.  I myself only came to the knowledge of her family history after I knew her; but, to make the tale clear to any one else, I must arrange events in the order in which they occurred—not that in which I became acquainted with them."}