In eine abgelegene Kleinstadt, irgendwo in Mexiko, verschlägt es die beiden Touristen Pete und Charly aus New York, Ihr Ziel ist es Urlaub zu machen, um von ihren stressigen Jobs als Anwalt und Versicherungsagent etwas Abstand zu gewinnen.
This is the final volume in Holmes's trio of what he called his "e;medicated novels"e; (Elsie Venner and The Guardian Angel being the first two); A Mortal Antipathy explores a young man's phobia about beautiful young women after being accidentally dropped into a thorn bush as a baby by an attractive young cousin.
This 1872 instalment in Holmes's popular Breakfast Table series is a fluent, gossipy exchange among the poet of the title and his breakfast companions-with the lion's share of conversation belonging to the poet, who delivers his somewhat eccentric and fitfully amusing opinions of books, people, and habits of thought.
This 1860 sequel to the author's popular 1858 collection of essays, The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, continues the genial, conversational quality of its predecessor.
Sparkling with wit and humor, The Guardian Angel-first serialized in The Atlantic Monthly-paints a charming portrait of society in a New England country town in the mid-nineteenth century.
Excerpt: "e;There is no country in the world whose scenery is more sweetly diversified, or more delicately shaded away into that exquisite variety of surface which presents us with those wavy outlines of beauty that softly melt into each other, than is that of our own green island.
Excerpt: "e;There are some griefs so deep and overwhelming, that even the best exertions of friendship and sympathy are unequal to the task of soothing or dispelling them.
Excerpt: "e;The town of Castle Cumber it is not our intention to describe at more length than simply to say, that it consists of two long streets, intersecting each other, and two or three lanes of cabins-many of them mud ones-that stretch out of it on each side at right angles.
Excerpt: "e;One day about the middle of November, in the year 18-, Dominick M'Evoy and his son Jemmy were digging potatoes on the side of a hard, barren hill, called Esker Dhu.
Excerpt: "e;My great-grandfather was killed in the Revolution; my grandfather fought in the War of 1812; my father sacrificed his health in the Civil War; but I, though born in New England, am the first of my family to emigrate to this country-the United States of America.
Excerpt: "e;Honest, blustering, good-humored Ned was the indefatigable merchant of the village; ever engaged in some ten or twenty pound speculation, the capital of which he was sure to extort, perhaps for the twelfth time, from the savings of Nancy's frugality, by the equivocal test of a month or six weeks' consecutive sobriety, and which said speculation he never failed to wind up by the total loss of the capital for Nancy, and the capital loss of a broken head for himself.
Excerpt: "e;After the reader shall, have perused the annexed startling and extraordinary narrative, on which I have founded the tale of the Tithe-Proctor, I am sure he will admit that there is very little left me to say in the shape of a preface.
Excerpt: "e;One evening in the beginning of the eighteenth century-as nearly as we can conjecture, the year might be that of 1720-some time about the end of April, a young man named Lamh Laudher O'Rorke, or Strong-handed O'Eorke, was proceeding from his father's house, with a stout oaken cudgel in his hand, towards an orchard that stood at the skirt of a country town, in a part of the kingdom which, for the present, shall be nameless.
Excerpt: "e;If there be one object in life that stirs the current of human feeling more sadly than another, it is a young and lovely woman, whose intellect has been blighted by the treachery of him on whose heart, as on a shrine, she offered up the incense of her first affection.
Excerpt: "e;It was one summer morning, about nine o'clock, when a little man, in the garb and trim of a mendicant, accompanied by a slender but rather handsome looking girl about sixteen, or it may be a year more, were upon their way to the house of a man, who, from his position in life, might be considered a wealthy agriculturist, and only a step or two beneath the condition of a gentleman farmer, although much more plain and rustic in his manners.
Young Denis O'Shaughnessy was old Denis's son; and old Denis, like many great men before him, was the son of his father and mother in particular, and a long line of respectable ancestors in general.
Excerpt: "e;Our readers are to suppose the Reverend Philemy M'Guirk, parish priest of Tir-neer, to be standing upon the altar of the chapel, facing the congregation, after having gone through the canon of the Mass; and having nothing more of the service to perform, than the usual prayers with which he closes the ceremony.
Excerpt: "e;Phelim O'Toole, who had the honour of being that interesting personage, an only son, was heir to a snug estate of half an acre, which had been the family patrimony since the time of his grandfather, Tyrrell O'Toole, who won it from the Sassenah at the point of his reaping-hook, during a descent once made upon England by a body of "e;spalpeens,"e; in the month of August.
No collection of nautical fiction would be complete without the inclusion of "e;Tom Cringle's Log"e;, a novel that, along with the works of Marryat, became a cornerstone of the genre upon its publication some 150 years ago.
Excerpt: "e;I had no small difficulty in carrying this point, as the extreme insalubrity of the climate, the chance of being plundered by the semi-piratical foreign slavers, to say nothing of the danger of a treacherous attack on the part of the natives themselves, weighed heavily against my going in my worthy uncle's mind; but I had set my heart on it, and where there's a will, there's a way.
Excerpt: "e;A solitary room at midnight: a single wax candle lighted on the table: the stiff dull crimson silken curtains of the bed close drawn: half a dozen phials and two or three glasses.
Excerpt: "e;At that time in the world's history when watches, in their decline from the fat comeliness of the turnip to the scanty meagreness of the half-crown, had arrived at the intermediate form of a biffin--when the last remnant of a chivalrous spirit instigated men to wear swords every day, and to take purses on horseback--when quadrupeds were preferred to steam, and sails were necessary to a ship--when Chatham and Blackstone appeared in the senate and at the bar, and Goldsmith, Johnson, and Burke, Cowper, Reynolds, Robertson Hume, and Smollett, were just beginning to cumber the highways of arts and sciences--at that period of the dark ages, the events which are about to be related undoubtedly took place, in a county which shall be nameless.
Excerpt: "e;Not many years ago, as the writer of this work was returning on horseback to Castellamare, from a visit to the Lactarian Hills, he overtook, just under the chestnut trees on the slope, which every one who has visited that part of Italy must remember, two gentlemen with their guide, who were on their way home after some expedition of a kind similar to his own.
Excerpt: "e;Among the minor trials of faith, few, perhaps, are more difficult to contend against than that growing conviction, which, commencing very soon after the holiday happiness of youth has been first tasted, becomes stronger every year, as experience unfolds to us the great, dark secrets of the world in which we are placed--the conviction of the general worthlessness of our fellow-men.
Excerpt: "e;The night was as black as ink; not a solitary twinkling star looked out through that wide expanse of shadow, which our great Poet has called the "e;blanket of the dark;"e; clouds covered the heaven; the moon had not risen to tinge them even with grey, and the sun had too long set to leave one faint streak of purple upon the edge of the western sky.
Excerpt: "e;It was an awfully dark and tempestuous night; the wind howled in fury through the trees, and round the towers; the large drops of rain dashed against the casements, the small lozenges of glass rattled and clattered in their leaden frames, and the thick boards of the oaken floor heaved and shivered under the force of the tempest.
Excerpt: "e;It was an hour past midnight - the sentries had just been relieved upon the castle wall - and Hugh de Monthermer sat by the window, looking out into the depth of night, and gazing at the far twinkling of the stars.
This book describes the rise and progress of superstition, laws against and trials of witches, ancient and modern delusions, together with strange customs, fables and tales.
Excerpt: "e;In one of those green woods which belong so peculiarly to our island (for the Continent has its forests, but England its woods) there lived, a short time ago, a charming little fairy called Nymphalin.
