Books

“This correspondence, by a meeting between some of the parties, and a separation between the others, could not, to the great detriment of the Post Office revenue, be continued any longer. Very little assistance to the State could be derived from the epistolary intercourse of Mrs. Vernon and her niece; for the former soon perceived, by the style of Frederica’s letters, that they were written under her mother’s inspection! and therefore, deferring all particular enquiry till she could make it personally in London, ceased writing minutely or often.” -an excerpt

Krakatoa is a little island in the Straits of Sunda, about thirty miles west of the island of Java, and nearly the same distance east of the island of Sumatra. It is uninhabited and very small, measuring about five miles in length and less than three miles in width. Its total area is only thirteen square miles. This little piece of land made itself famous by what took place on it during the month of August, 1883.

The Wonderful Visit is an 1895 novel by H. G. Wells. With an angel—a creature of fantasy unlike a religious angel—as protagonist and taking place in contemporary England, the book could be classified as contemporary fantasy, although the genre was not recognised in Wells’s time.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’ is an American children’s novel written by author L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow. It was first published in 1900. The story chronicles the adventures of a young farm girl named Dorothy in the magical Land of Oz, after she and her pet dog Toto are swept away from their Kansas home by a cyclone. The novel is one of the best-known stories in American literature and has been widely translated.

A traveller was making his way through the Black Forest in Germany. A pack was on his back, of a size which required a stout man to carry it, and a thick staff was in his hand. He had got out of his path by attempting to make a short cut, and in so doing had lost his way, and had been since wandering he knew not where. Yet he was stout of heart, as of limb, and a night spent in the depths of the forest would have concerned him but little had he not set a value upon time. “I have lost so much in my days of ignorance and folly,” he kept saying, “that I must make up by vigilance what has been thus misspent. I wish that I had known better. However, I am now ready to spend all, and be spent in the work of the Good Master I serve.”