M. B. Manwell

If anybody wanted to go down and have a look round Northbourne for himself, it would be necessary to take a railway journey as far as Brattlesby town, and then tramp the rest of the road, unless a friendly chance befell the traveller of a lift in some passing vehicle.

It is said of those who are small and crooked-backed in their bodies, that their minds are equally cross-grained and their tempers as ungainly as their stature. But no one had ever said this of Mary Belton. Her friends, indeed, were very few in number; but those who knew her well loved her as they knew her, and there were three or four persons in the world who were ready at all times to swear that she was faultless. It was the great happiness of her life that among those three or four her own brother was the foremost. Will Belton's love for his sister amounted almost to veneration, and his devotion to her was so great, that in all the affairs of his life he was prepared to make her comfort one of his first considerations.

Beowulf is an Old English epic poem consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It may be the oldest surviving long poem in Old English and is commonly cited as one of the most important works of Old English literature.

Turgenev is an author who no longer belongs to Russia only. During the last fifteen years of his life he won for himself the reading public, first in France, then in Germany and America, and finally in England.

"Such is this delicious Isle - this unkempt, unrestrained garden where the centuries gaze upon perpetual summer. Small it is, and of varied charms - set in the fountain of time-defying youth." By the popular Australian author who wrote "Confessions of a Beachcomber."

“What about?” There are some houses whereof the outward aspect is sealed with the seal of respectability — houses which inspire confidence in the minds of the most sceptical of butchers and bakers — houses at whose area-gates the tradesman delivers his goods undoubtingly, and from whose spotless door-steps the vagabond children of the neighbourhood recoil as from a shrine too sacred for their gambols.

Romola (1862–63) is a historical novel by George Eliot set in the fifteenth century, and is "a deep study of life in the city of Florence from an intellectual, artistic, religious, and social point of view". It first appeared in fourteen parts published in Cornhill Magazine from July 1862 (vol. 6, no. 31) to August 1863 (vol. 8, no. 44). The story takes place amidst actual historical events during the Italian Renaissance, and includes in its plot several notable figures from Florentine history.

The scene was the side-show tent of the "Big Consolidated," Boss Burton's "Tented Aggregation of the World's Marvels." The show had raised its "tops" at Reid's Lake, near the city of Grand Rapids. A high wind had prevented Motor Matt from giving his outdoor exhibition of a?roplane flying, and the disappointed crowds were besieging the side show, eager to beguile the time until the doors for the big show were open.

That is like Calliope. And that is like the village. Blunt and sometimes bitter speech there is, and now and again what we gently call “words”; but the faith of my experience is that these are facile, and need never trouble one. These are born of circumscription, of little areas, of teasing tasks, of lack of exercise, of that curious mingling which we call social life; but any one who takes seriously our faint feuds or even our narrow judgments does not know and love the Middle Western villages, nor understand that seeds and buds are not the norm of bloom. Instance, if you will, this case and that to show the contrary.

It may be that women have no positive appreciation of what is beautiful in form and color--or it may be that they have no opinions of their own when the laws of fashion have spoken. This at least is certain, that not one of them in a thousand sees anything objectionable in the gloomy and hideous evening costume of a gentleman in the nineteenth century. A handsome man is, to their eyes, more seductive than ever in the contemptible black coat and the stiff white cravat.

If anybody wanted to go down and have a look round Northbourne for himself, it would be necessary to take a railway journey as far as Brattlesby town, and then tramp the rest of the road, unless a friendly chance befell the traveller of a lift in some passing vehicle.