Literary texts

The following text is from Thomas Mann’s 1924 novel The Magic Mountain, translated by John E. Woods in 1995.

The story of Hans Castorp that we intend to tell here—not for his sake (for the reader will come to know him as a perfectly ordinary, if engaging young man), but for the sake of the story itself, which seems to us to be very much worth telling (although in Hans Castorp’s favor it should be noted that it is his story, and that not every story happens to everybody)—is a story that took place long ago, and is, so to speak, covered with the patina of history and must necessarily be told with verbs whose tense is that of the deepest past.

©1995 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

The following text is adapted from James Baldwin's 1956 novel Giovanni's Room. The narrator is riding in a taxi down a street lined with food vendors and shoppers in Paris, France.

The multitude of Paris seems to be dressed in blue every day but Sunday, when, for the most part, they put on an unbelievably festive black. Here they were now, in blue, disputing, every inch, our passage, with their wagons, handtrucks, their bursting baskets carried at an angle steeply self-confident on the back.

The following text is from Thomas Mann's 1924 novel The Magic Mountain, translated by John E. Woods in 1995.

The story of Hans Castorp that we intend to tell here—not for his sake (for the reader will come to know him as a perfectly ordinary, if engaging young man), but for the sake of the story itself, which seems to us to be very much worth telling (although in Hans Castorp's favor it should be noted that it is his story, and that not every story happens to everybody)—is a story that took place long ago, and is, so to speak, covered with the patina of history and must necessarily be told with verbs whose tense is that of the deepest past.

©1995 by Alfred A. Knopf. Inc

The following text is from William Shakespeare's circa 1611 play The Winter's Tale. Camillo has been away from his home in Sicily and serves in the court of Polixenes, the king of Bohemia. He has asked Polixenes for permission to return to Sicily.

POLIXENES: I pray thee, good Camillo, be no more importunate. ’Tis a sickness denying thee anything, a death to grant this.

CAMILLO: It is fifteen years since I saw my country. Though I have for the most part been aired abroad, I desire to lay my bones there. Besides, the penitent king, my master, hath sent for me, to whose feeling sorrows I might be some allay—or I o'erween [presume] to think so—which is another spur to my departure.

The following text is Vita Sackville‑West’s circa 1920 poem “Evening.” Spars are ships’ masts, moorings are ropes that hold docked ships in place, and a riding‑light is a light that a ship shines when it is anchored.​​​​​​​

When little lights in little ports come out,
Quivering down through water with the stars,
And all the fishing fleet of slender spars
Range at their moorings, veer with tide about;
When race of wind is stilled and sails are furled,
And underneath our single riding‑light
The curve of black‑ribbed deck gleams palely white,
And slumbrous waters pool a slumbrous world;
—Then, and then only, have I thought how sweet
Old age might sink upon a windy youth,
Quiet beneath the riding‑light of truth,
Weathered through storms, and gracious in retreat.

Scholars cite Men of Maize, the 1949 novel by Guatemalan author Miguel Angel Asturias, as a foundational text of magical realism, the Latin American style of fiction in which antirealistic plot devices often borrowed from the folkloric traditions of Indigenous and colonial societies in the Americas are deployed in an otherwise realistic mode of representation typical of the modern novel. This style has exerted a decisive influence on authors around the world, including Orhan Pamuk, whose 2001 novel My Name ls Red resembles classic magical realist novels in its juxtaposition of literary realism with folklore namely,  that of Turkey.

Scholars cite One Hundred Years of Solitude, the 1967 novel by Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez, as a foundational text of magical realism, the Latin American style of fiction in which antirealistic plot devices—often borrowed from the spiritual and narrative traditions of Indigenous and colonial societies in the Americas—are deployed in an otherwise realistic mode of representation typical of the modern novel. This style has exerted a decisive influence on authors in the United States, including Toni Morrison, whose 1987 novel Beloved resembles classic magical realist novels in its juxtaposition of literary realism with long-established cultural traditions—namely, those of the Black American community.

King Lear is a circa 1606 play by William Shakespeare. In the play, the character of King Lear attempts to test his three daughters' devotion to him. He later expresses regret for his actions, as is evident when he _____

The following text is adapted from Herman Melville's 1855 novel Israel Potter. Israel is a young man wandering through New England during the late eighteenth century.

He hired himself out for three months; at the end of that time to receive for his wages two hundred acres of land lying in New Hampshire. [....] His employer proving false to the contract in the matter of the land, and there being no law in the country to force him to fulfil it, Israel—who, however brave-hearted, and even much of a dare-devil upon a pinch, seems nevertheless to have evinced, throughout many parts of his career, a singular patience and mildness—was obliged to look round for other means of livelihood than clearing out a farm for himself in the wilderness.

The following text is adapted from William Shakespeare’s 1597 play The Tragedy of King Richard III. Richard is reflecting on the recent arrest of his brother, the Duke of Clarence, on suspicion of treason against King Edward IV. Derby, Hastings, Buckingham, Rivers, Dorset, and Grey are also members of the English nobility.

RICHARD: I do the wrong, and first begin to brawl.
The secret mischiefs that I set [flowing]
I lay unto the grievous charge of others.
Clarence, whom I indeed have cast in darkness,
I do beweep to many simple [gullible people],
Namely, to Derby, Hastings, Buckingham;
And tell them ’tis the Queen and her allies
That stir the King against the Duke my brother.
Now they believe it, and withal whet me
To be revenged on Rivers, Dorset, Grey.

The following text is from Edward Gibbon's 1796 Memoirs of My Life and Writings. Gibbon reflects on publishing a volume of his series The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

I am at a loss how to describe the success of the work, without betraying the vanity of the writer. The first impression was exhausted in a few days; a second and third edition were scarcely adequate to the demand. 

Scholars cite Mr: President, the 1946 novel by Guatemalan author Miguel Angel Asturias, as a foundational text of magical realism, the Latin American style of fiction in which antirealistic plot devices--often borrowed from the spiritual and narrative traditions of Indigenous and colonial societies in the Americas--are deployed in an otherwise realistic mode of representation typical of the modern novel. This style has exerted a decisive influence on authors around the world,  including Olga Tokarczuk, whose 1996 novel Primeval and other Times resembles classic magical realist novels in its juxtaposition of literary realism with folklore-namely, that of Poland.

The following text is Emily Dickinson’s circa 1859 poem “Setting Sail.”

Exultation is the going
Of an inland soul to sea, —
Past the houses, past the headlands,
Into deep eternity!

Bred as we, among the mountains,
Can the sailor understand
The divine intoxication
Of the first league out from land?

The following text is from William Shakespeare’s circa 1611 play The Winter’s Tale. Camillo has been away from his home in Sicily and serves in the court of Polixenes, the king of Bohemia. He has asked Polixenes for permission to return to Sicily.

POLIXENES: I pray thee, good Camillo, be no more 
importunate. ’Tis a sickness denying thee anything, 
a death to grant this.

CAMILLO: It is fifteen years since I saw my country.
Though I have for the most part been aired abroad,
I desire to lay my bones there. Besides, the penitent
king, my master, hath sent for me, to whose feeling
sorrows I might be some allay—or I o’erween [presume] to
think so—which is another spur to my departure.

Uncle Vanya: Scenes from Country Life in Four Acts is an 1898 play by Anton Chekhov, originally written in Russian. In the play, Professor Serebrakoff and his wife Helena have come to stay at their country estate, which Vanya manages with the help of Sonia, the professor’s daughter from a previous marriage. Chekhov portrays the relationship between Vanya and Professor Serebrakoff as being much more strained than it once was, as is evident when ____

"Poetry" is a 1919 poem by Marianne Moore. The poem highlights an ambivalence toward poetry as the speaker acknowledges its merits while also expressing a sense of displeasure, writing ________

The following text is adapted from Mark Twain's 1876 novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Aunt Polly is having dinner with Tom, her mischievous young nephew.

Aunt Polly asked [Tom] questions that were full of guile, and very deep—for she wanted to trap him into damaging revealments. Like many other simple-hearted souls, it was her pet vanity to believe she was endowed with a talent for dark and mysterious diplomacy, and she loved to contemplate her most transparent devices as marvels of low cunning.

“Poetry” is a 1919 poem by Marianne Moore. The poem highlights an ambivalence toward poetry as the speaker acknowledges its merits while also expressing a sense of displeasure, writing ______

The following text is from William Carlos Williams’s 1925 creative nonfiction book In the American Grain. Williams is discussing how works by nineteenth-century US poet and fiction writer Edgar Allan Poe were received by American readers.

Poe must suffer by his originality. Invent that which is new, even if it be made of pine from your own yard, and there’s none to know what you have done. It is because there’s no name. This is the cause of Poe’s lack of recognition. He was American. He was the astounding, inconceivable growth of his locality.

A student is writing a paper about Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1844 short story "The Artist of the Beautiful." The main character, Owen Warland, has always had an aesthetic interest in and talent for creating very small, fine things. The student wants to include two pieces of textual evidence that demonstrate people reacting in similar ways to this sensibility of Owen's. The student has selected the following quotation, “But, at all events, this characteristic minuteness in his objects and accomplishments made the world even more incapable than it might otherwise have been of appreciating Owen Warland's genius.”

The following text is from William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, first performed in 1611. Miranda has lived on an island with her father, Prospero, since she was three years old. Prospero has stated that Miranda likely does not remember anything other than her life on the island.

MIRANDA: ’Tis far off,
And rather like a dream than an assurance
That my remembrance warrants. Had I not
Four or five women once that tended me?

PROSPERO: Thou hadst, and more, Miranda. But how is it
That this lives in thy mind? What seest thou else
In the dark backward and abysm of time?
If thou remember’st ought ere thou camest here,
How thou camest here thou mayst.

The following text is adapted from Edith Wharton’s 1911 novella Ethan Frome. The narrator has asked the woman he rents a room from about Ethan Frome, a town resident he encountered recently.

Her mind was a store-house of innocuous anecdote and any question about her acquaintances brought forth a volume of detail; but on the subject of Ethan Frome I found her unexpectedly reticent. There was no hint of disapproval in her reserve; I merely felt in her an insurmountable reluctance to speak of him.

King Lear is a circa 1606 play by William Shakespeare. In the play, the character of King Lear attempts to test his three daughters’ devotion to him. He later expresses regret for his actions, as is evident when he _______

Text 1 is T.L. Hulme’s 1912 poem “Above the Dock.” Text 2 is from Amy Lowell’s 1912 poem “The Crescent Moon.”

Text 1
Above the quiet dock in mid night,
Tangled in the tall mast’s corded height,
Hangs the moon. What seemed so far away
Is but a child’s balloon, forgotten after play.

Text 2
Slipping softly through the sky
Little horned, happy moon,
Can you hear me up so high?
Will you come down soon?

Text 1 is adapted from E.M. Forster's 1910 novel Howards End. Text 2 discusses Howards End. King's Cross and St. Pancras are adjacent railway termini in London from which trains travel to the countryside.

Text 1
To Margaret the station of King's Cross had always suggested infinity. Its very situation—withdrawn a little behind the facile splendours of St. Pancras—implied a comment on the materialism of life. Those two great arches, colourless, indifferent, shouldering between them an unlovely clock, were fit portals to some eternal adventure, whose issues might be prosperous, but would certainly not be expressed in the ordinary language of prosperity.

Text 2 
The interplay between opposing ideological positions in Howards End is broadly articulated in the novel's organization of geographic space. On the one hand, the modern metropolis of London represents capitalism's emphasis on pragmatism and the accumulation of material wealth; on the other, the English countryside, accessible via King's Cross, fosters an idealism that values tradition, authentic personal connection, and the aesthetic—what the novel calls "the infinite."

The following text is from William Shakespeare's play The Tempest, first performed in 1611. Miranda has lived on an island with her father, Prospero, since she was three years old. Prospero has stated that Miranda likely does not remember anything other than her life on the island.​​​​​​​

MIRANDA: Tis far off,

And rather like a dream than an assurance

That my remembrance warrants. Had I not

Four or five women once that tended me?

PROSPERO: Thou hadst, and more, Miranda. But how is it

That this lives in thy mind? What seest thou else

In the dark backward and abysm of time?

If thou remember'st ought ere thou camest here,

How thou camest here thou mayst.

The following text is adapted from William Wordsworth's 1798 poem "Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey."

Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
Which on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.

The following text is adapted from William Shakespeare’s 1598 play Henry IV, Part 1. King Henry is addressing several noblemen who are rumored to have been disloyal to him.

KING HENRY: My blood hath been too cold and temperate,
Unapt to stir at these indignities,
And you have found me, for accordingly
You tread upon my patience; but be sure
I will from henceforth rather be myself,
Mighty and to be fear’d, than my [disposition],
Which hath been smooth as oil, soft as young down,
And therefore lost that title of respect
Which the proud soul ne’er pays but to the proud.

The following text is from E. Pauline Johnson’s 2002 poem “Shadow Lake.”

The little fern-leaf, bending
Upon the brink, its green reflection greets,
And kisses soft the shadow that it meets
With touch so fine,
The border line
The keenest vision can’t define;
So perfect is the blending.

The following text is from Frances Burney’s 1784 satirical play The Busy Salon. Clara, Lady Venom, and Edward Fairman are discussing their mutual acquaintance Lord Arthur Sharp.

CLARA: [Lord Arthur] has done nothing—but his talk is a perpetual slander on all his acquaintances.

FAIRMAN: Aye, and the worst of it is there is no advantage in not knowing him, for he’ll abuse a stranger just as soon as his closest friend—and [his cousin] is as bad.

LADY VENOM: Nay, but we should make allowance. Lord Arthur is a wit and a poet. 

CLARA: For my part—I admit, madam—wit loses its respect with me when I see it in company with malice. What say you, Mr. Fairman?

FAIRMAN: Certainly, madam, to smile at the jest that leaves a wound in another’s heart is to become a principal in the mischief.

“Poetry” is a 1919 poem by Marianne Moore. The poem highlights an ambivalence toward poetry as the speaker acknowledges its merits while also expressing a sense of displeasure, writing _____

Scholars cite Pedro Páramo, the 1955 novel by Mexican author Juan Rulfo, as a foundational text of magical realism, the Latin American style of fiction in which antirealistic plot devices—often borrowed from the folkloric traditions of Indigenous and colonial societies in the Americas—are deployed in an otherwise realistic mode of representation typical of the modern novel. This style has exerted a decisive influence on authors around the world, including Keri Hulme, whose 1984 novel The Bone People resembles classic magical realist novels in its juxtaposition of literary realism with folklore-namely, that of the Maori, the Indigenous people of New Zealand.

The following text is adapted from Countee Cullen’s 1926 poem “Thoughts in a Zoo.”​​​​​​​

They in their cruel traps, and we in ours,
Survey each other’s rage, and pass the hours
Commiserating each the other’s woe,
To mitigate his own pain’s fiery glow.
Man could but little proffer in exchange
Save that his cages have a larger range.
That lion with his lordly, untamed heart
Has in some man his human counterpart,
Some lofty soul in dreams and visions wrapped,
But in the stifling flesh securely trapped.

The following text is from Kenneth Grahame’s 1908 novel The Wind in the Willow. The Rat is looking for the Mole, his friend, in the woods.
[The Rat] had patiently hunted through the wood for an hour or more, when at last to his joy he heard a little answering cry. Guiding himself by the sound, he made his way through the gathering darkness to the foot of an old beech tree.

Scholars cite One Hundred Years of Solitude, the 1967 novel by Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, as a foundational text of magical realism, the Latin American style of fiction in which antirealistic plot devices—often borrowed from the spiritual and narrative traditions of Indigenous and colonial societies in the Americas—are deployed in an otherwise realistic mode of representation typical of the modern novel. This style has exerted a decisive influence on authors around the world, including Keri Hulme, whose 1984 novel The Bone People resembles classic magical realist novels in its juxtaposition of literary realism with cultural traditions—namely, those of the Maori, the Indigenous people of New Zealand.

The following text is from Anthony Trollope's 1855 novel The Warden. The narrator is describing a rectory, the residence of a clergyperson.
There was an air of heaviness about the rooms which might have been avoided without any sacrifice of propriety; colours might have been better chosen and lights more perfectly diffused; but perhaps in doing so the thorough clerical aspect of the whole might have been somewhat marred; at any rate, it was not without ample consideration that those thick, dark, costly carpets were put down; those embossed, but sombre [wallpapers] hung up; those heavy curtains draped so as to half exclude the light of the sun. 

The following text is from William Shakespeare’s circa 1601 play Twelfth Night. Viola is speaking to a ship captain who has come to her aid.

There is a fair behaviour in thee, Captain;
And though that nature with a beauteous wall
Doth oft close in pollution, yet of thee
I will believe thou hast a mind that suits
With this thy fair and outward character.

Scholars cite The Kingdom of This World, the 1949 novel by Cuban author Alejo Carpentier, as a foundational test of magical realism, the Lation American style of fiction in which antirealistic plot devices—often borrowed from the folkloric traditions of Indigenous and colonial societies in the Americas—are deployed in an otherwise realistic mode of representation typical of the modern novel. This style has exerted a decisive influence on authors around the world, including Orhan Pamuk, whose 2001 novel My Name is Red resembles classic magical realist novels in its juxtaposition of literary realism with folklore—namely, that of Turkey.

The following text is from Mick Herron's 2023 novel The Secret Hours. The narrator is describing members of a government committee.

Finally, and adding much-needed gravitas, was Sir Winston Day, whose features seemed moulded to adorn a bust, or possibly a stamp, and whose forehead was so evidently bulging with grey matter that it would have been impertinent to inquire too closely into the actual achievements his half century of public service had produced. His recently published memoirs possibly cast light on this enigma, but given that such details were not provided until after the thirty-page mark, they might as well have remained state secrets.

©2023 by Mick Herron

The following text is from Mick Herron's 2023 novel The Secret Hours. The narrator is describing members of a government committee. ​​​​​​​

Finally, and adding much-needed gravitas, was Sir Winston Day, whose features seemed moulded to adorn a bust, or possibly a stamp, and whose forehead was so evidently bulging with grey matter that it would have been impertinent to inquire too closely into the actual achievements his half-century of public service had produced. His recently published memoirs partly cast light on this enigma, but given that such details were not provided until after the thirty-page mark, they might as well have remained state secrets.

©2023 by Mick Herron

The following text is from William Carlos Williams’s 1925 creative nonfiction book In the American Grain. Williams is discussing how works by nineteenth-century US poet and fiction writer Edgar Allan Poe were received by American readers.

Poe must suffer by his originality. Invent that which is new, even if it be made of pine from your own yard, and there’s none to know what you have done. It is because there’s no name. This is the cause of Poe’s lack of recognition. He was American. He was the astounding, inconceivable growth of his locality. Gape at him they did, and he at them in amazement. Afterward with mutual hatred; he in disgust, they in mistrust. It is only that which is under your nose which seems inexplicable.

The Clouds is a 423 BCE play by Aristophanes, originally written in ancient Greek. At the time, professional intellectuals called sophists taught customers rhetorical techniques to use in public speaking, along with providing instruction in other subjects. In the play, Aristophanes satirizes sophists as having an exaggerated sense of their own wisdom, as seen when the character ______

The following text is adapted from Matthew Arnold's 1869 nonfiction book Culture and Anarchy.

The Times [a British newspaper], replying to some foreign strictures on the dress, looks, and behaviour of the English abroad, urges that the English idea is that every one should be free to do and to look just as he likes. But culture indefatigably tries, not to make what each raw person may like the rule by which he fashions himself; but to draw ever nearer to a sense of what is indeed beautiful, graceful, and becoming, and to get the raw person to like that.

Scholars cite Mr. President, the 1946 novel by Guatemalan author Miguel Angel Asturias, as a foundational text of magical realism, the Latin American style of fiction in which antirealistic plot devices—often borrowed from the folkloric traditions of Indigenous and colonial societies in the Americas—are deployed in an otherwise realistic mode of representation typical of the modern novel. This style has exerted a decisive influence on authors around the world, including Olga Tokarczuk, whose 1996 novel Primeval and Other Times resembles classic magical realist novels in its juxtaposition of literary realism with folklore—namely, that of Poland.

The Clouds is a 423 BCE play by Aristophanes, originally written in ancient Greek. At the time, professional intellectuals called sophists taught customers rhetorical techniques to use in public speaking, along with providing instruction in other subjects. In the play, Aristophanes satirizes sophists as having an exaggerated sense of their own wisdom, as seen when the character ____

"The Young Girl" is a 1920 short story by Katherine Mansfield.In the story, the narrator takes an unnamed seventeen-year-old girl and her younger brother out for a meal.In describing the teenager, Mansfield frequently contrasts the character's pleasant appearance with her unpleasant attitude, as when Mansfield writes of the teenager, _____

A student is writing an essay about how writers of the late 1700s responded to the French Revolution and wants to include two pieces of textual evidence that show closely aligned attitudes toward the revolution. The student has selected the following quotation, adapted from Helen Maria Williams's 1791 poem “A Farewell, for Two Years, to England”:

In new‑born majesty [France] seems to rise,
While sudden from the land oppression flies.
So, at the solemn hour of Nature's birth,
When brooding darkness veil'd the beauteous earth,
Heaven's awful mandate pierc'd the solid night,
“Let there be light,” it said, “and there was light!”

The following text is from George Eliot's 1857 short story "The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton." The Countess Czerlaski is a newcomer to the town of Milby.

It is true, the Countess was a little vain, a little ambitious, a little selfish, a little shallow and frivolous, a little given to white lies,—But who considers such slight blemishes, such moral pimples as these, disqualifications for entering into the most respectable society! Indeed, the severest ladies in Milby would have been perfectly aware that these characteristics would have created no wide distinction between the Countess Czeriaski and themselves: and since it was clear there was a wide distinction—why, it must lie in the possession of some vices from which they were undeniably free.

“To You” is an 1856 poem by Walt Whitman. In the poem, Whitman suggests that he deeply understands the reader, whom he addresses directly, writing, ______

"The Poet Walt Whitman" is an 1887 essay by Jose Marti, a Cuban author and political activist, originally written in Spanish. In the essay, Marti explores the value of literature, arguing that a society's spiritual well-being depends on the character of its literary culture:_____

The following text is adapted from the 1895 poem “Shadow River” by Emily Pauline Johnson(Tekahionwake).  The speaker is looking at the reflections of plants in a river. 

The little fern-leaf, bending 
Upon the brink, its green reflection greets, 
And kisses soft the shadow that it meets 
With touch so fine,
The border line 
The keenest vision can’t define;
So perfect is the blending.

“The Monster” is an 1898 story by Stephen Crane. In the story, the character of Jim, a young boy, is playing in his yard while his father mows the lawn; while playing, Jim accidentally damages a peony (a flower). Crane emphasizes Jim’s energy and his distracted absorption in his play by writing, ______ 

The following text is from Virginia Woolf's 1919 novel Night and Day. The narrator describes a gathering of artists and intellectuals.

One person after another rose, and, as with an ill-balanced axe, attempted to hew out his conception of art a little more clearly, and sat down with the feeling that, for some reason which he could not grasp, his strokes had gone awry. As they sat down they turned almost invariably to the person sitting next them, and rectified and continued what they had just said in public.

The following text is from Anne Spencer’s 1922 poem “Translation.”

We trekked into a far country,
My friend and I.
Our deeper content was never spoken,
But each knew all the other said.
He told me how calm his soul was laid
By the lack of anvil and strife.
“The wooing kestrel,” I said, “mutes his mating-note
To please the harmony of this sweet silence.”

The following text is from Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein. Victor Frankenstein, who narrates this portion of text, describes the state of scientific knowledge as he began his own study of the natural world.
The untaught peasant beheld the elements around him and was acquainted with their practical uses. The most learned philosopher knew little more. He had partially unveiled the face of Nature, but her immortal lineaments were still a wonder and a mystery. He might dissect, anatomise, and give names; but, not to speak of a final cause, causes in their secondary and tertiary grades were utterly unknown to him. I had gazed upon the fortifications and impediments that seemed to keep human beings from entering the citadel of nature, and rashly and ignorantly I had repined.

The following text is adapted from the 1895 poem "Ojistoh" by Emily Pauline Johnson, a Kanienkahagen (Mohawk) writer also known as Tekahionwake.

I am Ojistoh, I am she, the wife
Of him whose name breathes bravery and life
And courage to the tribe who calls him chief.
I am Ojistoh, his white star, and he
Is land, and lake, and sky-and soul to me.

The following text is adapted from Lewis Carroll's 1889 satirical novel Sylvie and Bruno.A crowd has gathered outside a room belonging to the Warden, an official who reports to the Lord Chancellor.
One man, who was more excited than the rest, flung his hat high into the air, and shouted (as well as I could make out)"Who roar for the Sub-Warden? "Everybody roared, but whether it was for the Sub-Warden, or not, did not clearly appear: some were shouting "Bread!”and some “Taxes!”, but no one seemed to know what it was they really wanted.
All this I saw from the open window of the Warden's breakfast-saloon, looking across the shoulder of the Lord Chancellor.
"What can it all mean? ”he kept repeating to himself."I never heard such shouting before—and at this time of the morning, too! And with such unanimity!”

The following text is from Virginia Woolf's 1919 novel Night and Day. The text describes a gathering of aspiring young artists and intellectuals.
One person after another rose, and, as with an ill balanced axe, attempted to hew out his conception of art a little more clearly, and sat down with the feeling that, for some reason which he could not grasp, his strokes had gone awry. As they sat down they turned almost invariably to the person sitting next them, and rectified and continued what they had just said in public.

The following text is from Virginia Woolf’s 1919 novel Night and Day. The text describes a gathering of aspiring young artists and intellectuals.
One person after another rose, and, as with an ill- balanced axe, attempted to hew out his conception of art a little more clearly, and sat down with the feeling that, for some reason which he could not grasp, his strokes had gone awry. As they sat down they turned almost invariably to the person sitting next them, and rectified and continued what they had just said in public.

Richard II is a play from the 1590s by William Shakespeare. Although King Richard has been vanquished by his cousin Henry Bolingbroke, he intimates that he is not entirely ready to show subservience to his cousin, saying, ______

Hedda Gabler is an 1890 play by Henrik Tbsen. As a woman in the Victorian era, Hedda, the play's central character, is unable to freely determine her own future.Instead, she seeks to influence another person's fate, as is evident when she says to another character,____

“The Young Girl” is a 1920 short story by Katherine Mansfield. In the story, the narrator takes an unnamed seventeen-year-old girl and her younger brother out for a meal. In describing the teenager, Mansfield frequently contrasts the character’s pleasant appearance with her unpleasant attitude, as when Mansfield writes of the teenager, _______

The Age of Innocence is a 1920 novel by Edith Wharton set in New York City in the 1870s. In the novel, Newland Archer arrives late to an opera performance, which the narrator attributes to Newland's enjoyment of anticipation: ______

The following text is from Mark Twain's 1876 novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Tom, a child, has been told by his aunt to paint their house's fence.

Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high.

The following text is from Mark Haber’s 2022 novel Saint Sebastian’s Abyss. The narrator and Schmidt are both art critics.

When my first wife admitted to Schmidt over dinner that she didn’t find art, painting in particular, especially compelling, Schmidt winced, set down his fork, and sighed dramatically; he then excused himself, explaining an appointment he’d forgotten about had suddenly and inexplicably been remembered, while making it abundantly clear there was no appointment at all.

©2022 by Mark Haber

The following text is from Alice Wong’s 2022 memoir Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life. Wong has just described her tendency to procrastinate when she has a writing deadline.

In the middle of these distractions, a vibe will emerge, a point I want to make, a phrase, a hook, a title for a story, an image. A connection or epiphany can happen while watching or reading something brilliant. By doing “nothing” and daydreaming, I am actually composing, even if words don’t immediately materialize.

©2022 by Alice Wong

The Underdogs is a 1915 novel by Mariano Azuela, originally written in Spanish. In the novel, Azuela makes a comparison using natural imagery to convey the mental state of the protagonist, Demetrio: ______ 

The following text is from a 1955 translation of Samuel Beckett's 1951 novel Molloy (translated by the author and Patrick Bowles). In the text, Molloy has arrived at the town ramparts, an elevated walkway atop the city walls.

And having cleared the ramparts I had to confess the sky was clearing, prior to its winding in the other shroud, night. Yes, the great cloud was ravelling, discovering here and there a pale and dying sky, and the sun, already down, was manifest in the livid tongues of fire darting towards the zenith, falling and darting again, ever more pale and languid, and doomed no sooner lit to be extinguished.

©1955 by Grove Press, Inc.

“Loon Point" is a 1912 poem by Amy Lowell. In the poem, which presents a nighttime scene on a body of water, Lowell describes an element of nature as an active participant in the experience, writing,_____

The Post office is a 1912 play by Rabindranath Tagore, originally written in Bengali. The character Amal is a young boy who imagines that the people he sees passing the window of his home are carefree even when engaged in work or chores, as is evident when he says to the daughter of a flower seller, _____

The following text is adapted from Guy de Maupassant's 1884 short story “A Recollection,” from the collection Guy de Maupassant Short Stories (translated by Albert M.C. McMaster et al. in 1903). The narrator is taking a boat down the Seine river from Paris, France, to the surrounding countryside.​​​​​​​

I took up a position in the bows [front of the boat], standing up and looking at the quays, the trees, the houses and the bridges disappearing behind us. And suddenly I perceived the great viaduct of Point du Jour which blocked the river. It was the end of Paris, the beginning of country, and behind the double row of arches the Seine, suddenly spreading out as though it had regained space and liberty, became all at once the peaceful river which flows through the plains, alongside the wooded hills, amid the meadows, along the edge of the forests.

The Souls of Black Folk is a 1903 book by W.E.B. Du Bois. In the book, Du Bois suggests that upon hearing Black folk songs, he felt an intuitive and sometimes unexpected sense of cultural recognition:_____

The following text is from Shirley Jackson’s 1951 novel Hangsaman.

Natalie was leaving for her first year in college a week after her brother went back to high school; sometimes twenty-one days resolved itself into three weeks, and seemed endless; sometimes it seemed a matter of minutes slipping by so swiftly that there would never be time to approach college with appropriate consideration, to form a workable personality to take along.

©1951 by Shirley Jackson

The following text is from Rachel Heng’s 2023 novel The Great Reclamation. Ah Boon is fishing off the coast of Singapore.

When he pulled up the nets, they contained only one kind of fish—black pomfrets, the flat diamonds of their bodies slick in the morning light. This uniformity did not surprise him; over the years, he’d learned that the waters here were temperamental. They could be relied upon for a good catch, but from time to time threw up only prawns or squid, and other times colorful varieties of fish that weren’t even supposed to be found in this region. He’d grown to accept the unpredictability, embracing it as a game to be played, like the reading of tea leaves or the grooves of a palm.

©2023 by Rachel Heng

The following text is from John Dryden’s 1697 translation of Virgil’s poem the Aeneid, written in the first century BCE. Queen Dido has just heard the Trojan hero Aeneas recount a sad tale.​​​​​​​

But anxious cares already seiz’d the queen:
She fed within her veins a flame unseen;
The hero’s valor, acts, and birth inspire
Her soul with love, and fan the secret fire.
His words, his looks, imprinted in her heart,
Improve the passion, and increase the smart.

The following text is from a 1955 translation of Samuel Beckett’s 1951 novel Molloy (translated by the author and Patrick Bowles). In the text, Molloy has arrived at the town ramparts, an elevated walkway atop the city walls.

And having cleared the ramparts I had to confess the sky was clearing, prior to its winding in the other shroud, night. Yes, the great cloud was ravelling, discovering here and there a pale and dying sky, and the sun, already down, was manifest in the livid tongues of fire darting towards the zenith, falling and darting again, ever more pale and languid, and doomed no sooner lit to be extinguished.

©1955 by Grove Press, Inc.

The following text is from Charles Chesnutt's 1905 novel The Colonel's Dream. Mr. French and Mr. Kirby work together.

Mr. French, the senior partner, who sat opposite Kirby, was an older man—a safe guess would have placed him somewhere in the debatable ground between forty and fifty; of a good height, as could be seen even from the seated figure, the upper part of which was held erect with the unconscious ease which one associates with military training.

The following text is adapted from the 1940 novel The Hamlet by William Faulkner. In rural Mississippi, a man referred to as the stranger is walking among a group of untamed calico (spotted) horses that he has penned in a lot.

[The horses] whipped and whirled about the lot like dizzy fish in a bowl. It had seemed like a big lot until now, but now the very idea that all that fury and motion should be transpiring inside any one fence was something to be repudiated with contempt, like a mirror trick. From the ultimate dust the stranger, carrying the wire-cutters and his vest completely gone now, emerged. He was not running, he merely moved with a light-poised and watchful celerity, weaving among the calico rushes of the animals, feinting and dodging like a boxer until he reached the gate and crossed the yard.

©1967 by Estelle Faulkner and Jill Faulkner Summers

The following text is adapted from the 1895 poem “Ojistoh” by Emily Pauline Johnson, a Kanienkahagen (Mohawk) writer also known as Tekahionwake.​​​​​​​

I am Ojistoh, I am she, the wife
Of him whose name breathes bravery and life
And courage to the tribe who calls him chief.
I am Ojistoh, his white star, and he
Is land, and lake, and sky—and soul to me.

The following text is from Anne Spencer’s 1922 poem “Translation.” 

We trekked into a far country, 
My friend and I. 
Our deeper content was never spoken, 
But each knew all the other said. 
He told me how calm his soul was laid 
By the lack of anvil and strife. 
“The wooing kestrel,” I said, “mutes his mating-note 
To please the harmony of this sweet silence.” 

The following text is adapted from Zora Neale Hurston's 1921 short story “John Redding Goes to Sea." John is a child who lives in a town in the woods.
Perhaps ten-year-old John was puzzling to the folk there in the Florida woods for he was an imaginative child and fond of day-dreams. The St. John River flowed a scarce three hundred feet from his back door. On its banks at this point grow numerous palms, luxuriant magnolias and bay trees. On the bosom of the stream float millions of delicately colored hyacinths. [John Redding] loved to wander down to the water's edge, and, casting in dry twigs, watch them sail away down stream to Jacksonville, the sea, the wide world and [he] wanted to follow them.

The following text is adapted from William Shakespeare's 1609 poem "Sonnet 27."The poem is addressed to a close friend as if he were physically present.
Weary with toil, I [hurry] to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
But then begins a journey in my head
To work my mind, when body's work's expired:
For then my thoughts—from far where I abide—
[Begin] a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,

The Clouds is a 423 BCE play by Aristophanes, originally written in ancient Greek. At the time, professional intellectuals called sophists taught paying customers a variety of subjects and sometimes engaged in what would now be described as research. Aristophanes satirizes sophists’ practices and views as foolish, as seen when the character _____ 

The following text is from Mark Haber’s 2022 novel Saint Sebastian’s Abyss. The narrator and Schmidt are both art critics.​​​​​​​

When my first wife admitted to Schmidt over dinner that she didn’t find art, painting in particular, especially compelling, Schmidt winced, set down his fork, and sighed dramatically; he then excused himself, explaining an appointment he’d forgotten about had suddenly and inexplicably been remembered, while making it abundantly clear there was no appointment at all.

©2022 by Mark Haber

The following text is from Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel Jane Eyre. Jane works as a governess at Thornfield Hall.
I went on with my day’s business tranquilly; but ever and anon vague suggestions kept wandering across my brain of reasons why I should quit Thornfield; and I kept involuntarily framing advertisements and pondering conjectures about new situations: these thoughts I did not think to check; they might germinate and bear fruit if they could.

The Post Office is a 1912 play by Rabindranath Tagore, originally written in Bengali. The character Amal is a young boy who imagines that the people he sees passing the window of his home are carefree even when engaged in work or chores, as is evident when he says to the daughter of a flower seller, ______

​​​​​​​First published in 1920, Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence takes place in New York in the 1870s. In one scene, Newland Archer goes to the opera. The narrator portrays Archer’s social circle as valuing the familiar more than the new: ______​​​​​​​

“The Poet Walt Whitman” is an 1887 essay by José Martí, a Cuban author and political activist, originally written in Spanish. In the essay, Martí explores the value of literature, arguing that a society’s spiritual well-being depends on the character of its literary culture: ______

The following text is from Anne Spencer’s 1922 poem "Translation."

We trekked into a far country,
My friend and I.
Our deeper content was never spoken,
But each knew all the other said.
He told me how calm his soul was laid
By the lack of anvil and strife.
"The wooing kestrel," I said, "mutes his mating-note
To please the harmony of this sweet silence."

“No, Thank You, John" is an 1862 poem by Christina Rossetti. In the poem, Rossetti depicts a female speaker's rejection of the romantic advances of a man named John. The speaker encourages John to pursue another relationship rather than wait for her to change her mind, saying ________

The following text is adapted from Charles W.Chesnutt's 1901 novel The Marrow of Tradition.
Mrs.Ochiltree was a woman of strong individuality, whose comments upon her acquaintance[s], present or absent, were marked by a frankness at times no less than startling. This characteristic caused her to be more or less avoided. Mrs.Ochiltree was aware of this sentiment on the part of her acquaintance[s], and rather exulted in it.

The following text is Emily Dickinson's circa 1873 poem “There is no Frigate like a Book.” A frigate is a light, fast ship; coursers are swift horses.

There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry—
This Traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll—
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears the Human soul.

The following text is from George Eliot's 1860 novel The Mill on the Floss. The narrator is describing the fictional town of St. Ogg's, located in a part of Great Britain that was occupied by Romans and subsequently by Vikings in the ancient past.​​​​​​​

It is one of those old, old towns which impress one as a continuation and outgrowth of nature, as much as the nests of the bower‑birds or the winding galleries of the white ants; a town which carries the traces of its long growth and history like a millennial tree, and has sprung up and developed in the same spot between the river and the low hill from the time when the Roman legions turned their backs on it from the camp on the hillside, and the long‑haired sea‑kings came up the river and looked with fierce, eager eyes at the fatness of the land.

The following text is from Anthony Trollope's 1855 novel The Warden. The narrator is describing a rectory, the residence of a clergyperson.

There was an air of heaviness about the rooms which might have been avoided without any sacrifice of propriety; colours might have been better chosen and lights more perfectly diffused; but perhaps in doing so the thorough clerical aspect of the whole might have been somewhat marred; at any rate, it was not without ample consideration that those thick, dark, costly carpets were put down; those embossed, but sombre [wallpapers] hung up; those heavy curtains draped so as to half exclude the light of the sun.

The following text is adapted from Fanny Burney’s 1778 novel Evelina. The text is an excerpt from a letter by Lady Howard to Evelina’s guardian, Reverend Villars, in which Lady Howard discusses an upcoming trip to London planned by her daughter Mrs. Mirvan’s family.

It is very earnestly [the Mirvans’] wish to enlarge and enliven their party by the addition of your amiable ward, who would share, equally with her own daughter, the care and attention of Mrs. Mirvan. Do not start at this proposal; it is time that [Evelina] should see something of the world. When young people are too rigidly sequestered from it, their lively and romantic imaginations paint it to them as a paradise of which they have been beguiled; but when they are shown it properly, and in due time, they see it such as it really is, equally shared by pain and pleasure, hope and disappointment.

The following text is adapted from Guy de Maupassant's 1884 short story “A Recollection,” from the collection Guy de Maupassant Short Stories (translated by Albert M.C. McMaster et al. in 1903). The narrator is taking a boat down the Seine river from Paris, France, to the surrounding countryside.

I took up a position in the bows [front of the boat], standing up and looking at the quays, the trees, the houses and the bridges disappearing behind us. And suddenly I perceived the great viaduct of Point du Jour which blocked the river. It was the end of Paris, the beginning of the country, and behind the double row of arches the Seine, suddenly spreading out as though it had regained space and liberty, became all at once the peaceful river which flows through the plains, alongside the wooded hills, amid the meadows, along the edge of the forests.

The following text is adapted from Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel The Jungle. Marija is helping to manage her sister’s wedding.

It was [Marija’s] task to see that all things went in due form, and after the best home traditions; and, flying wildly hither and thither, bowling every one out of the way, and scolding and exhorting all day with her tremendous voice, Marija was too eager to see that others conformed to the proprieties to consider them herself.

Cane is a 1923 novel by Jean Toomer. In the novel, Toomer mentions a road in rural Georgia called Dixie Pike and describes it as having a deep connection to a faraway place, writing, ______

The following text is from Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1841 essay "The Method of Nature."

The scholars are the priests of that thought which establishes the foundations of the earth. No matter what is their special work or profession, they stand for the spiritual interest of the world, and it is a common calamity if they neglect their post in a country where the material interest is so predominant as it is in America.

The following text is adapted from William Wordsworth's 1798 poem “Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey.”​​​​​​​

                           Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
Which on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.

O Pioneers! is a 1913 novel by Willa Cather. In the novel, Cather depicts Alexandra Bergson as a person who takes comfort in understanding the world around her: _____

The following text is from George Marion McClellan's 1895 poem "Eternity."

My spirit swoons, and all my senses cry
For Ocean's breast and covering of the sky.
Rock me to sleep, ye waves, and outward bound,
Just let me drift far out from toil and care,
Where lapping of the waves shall be the sound,
Which mingled with the winds that gently bear
Me on between a peaceful sea and sky,
To make my soothing slumberous lullaby.

The following text is from Mick Herron’s 2023 novel The Secret Hours. The narrator is describing members of a government committee. 

Finally, and adding much-needed gravitas, was Sir Winston Day, whose features seemed moulded to adorn a bust, or possibly a stamp, and whose forehead was so evidently bulging with grey matter that it would have been impertinent to inquire too closely into the actual achievements his half century of public service had produced. His recently published memoirs possibly cast light on this enigma, but given that such details were not provided until after the thirty-page mark, they might as well have remained state secrets.

©2023 by Mick Herron

The following text is from Jerome K. Jerome's 1889 novel Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog). The narrator and two friends are taking a boat down the River Thames in England.​​​​​​​

In a boat, I have always noticed that it is the fixed idea of each member of the crew that he is doing everything. Harris's notion was, that it was he alone who had been working, and that both George and I had been imposing upon him. George, on the other hand, ridiculed the idea of Harris's having done anything more than eat and sleep, and had a cast-iron opinion that it was he—George himself—who had done all the labour worth speaking of.

The following text is from Charles Chesnutt's 1905 novel The Colonel's Dream. Mr. French and Mr. Kirby work together.

Mr. French, the senior partner, who sat opposite Kirby, was an older man—a safe guess would have placed him somewhere in the debatable ground between forty and fifty; of a good height, as could be seen even from the seated figure, the upper part of which was held erect with the unconscious ease which one associates with military training.

Memoirs of Elleanor Eldridge is an 1838 historical account by Elleanor Eldridge and Frances Harriet Whipple Green. In the book, the authors assert that people don't need to be famous to be worthy of memoirs, writing, ______

The following text is from Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein. Victor Frankenstein, who is narrating this portion of text, describes the state of scientific knowledge as he began his own study of the natural world.​​​​​​​

The untaught peasant beheld the elements around him and was acquainted with their practical uses. The most learned philosopher knew little more. He had partially unveiled the face of Nature, but her immortal lineaments were still a wonder and a mystery. He might dissect, anatomise, and give names; but, not to speak of a final cause, causes in their secondary and tertiary grades were utterly unknown to him. I had gazed upon the fortifications and impediments that seemed to keep human beings from entering the citadel of nature, and rashly and ignorantly I had repined.

The following text is from Anthony Trollope’s 1855 novel The Warden. Charles James is the son of a high-ranking clergy member.

​​​​​​​Charles James was an exact and careful boy; he never committed himself; he well knew how much was expected from the eldest son of the Archdeacon of Barchester, and was therefore mindful not to mix too freely with other boys. He had not the great talents of his younger brothers, but he exceeded them in judgment and propriety of demeanour; his fault, if he had one, was an over-attention to words instead of things; there was a thought too much finesse about him, and, as even his father sometimes told him, he was too fond of a compromise.

"When Dawn Comes to the City" is a 1922 poem by Claude McKay, who immigrated to the United States from the island nation of Jamaica as an adult. The poem conveys McKay's contrasting feelings about New York city—his adopted home in the US—and his home country:_____

The following text is from Anthony Trollope's 1855 novel The Warden. Charles James is the son of a high-ranking clergy member.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Charles James was an exact and careful boy; he never committed himself; he well knew how much was expected from the eldest son of the Archdeacon of Barchester; and was therefore mindful not to mix too freely with other boys. He had not the great talents of his younger brothers, but he exceeded them in judgment and propriety of demeanour; his fault, if he had one, was an over-attention to words instead of things; there was a thought too much finesse about him, and, as even his father sometimes told him, he was too fond of a compromise.

The following text is from George Eliot's 1857 short story “The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton.” In the text, the narrator addresses the reader directly and alludes to a discussion among Rev. Amos Barton's neighbors.​​​​​​​

It was happy for the Rev. Amos Barton that he did not, like us, overhear the conversation recorded in the last chapter. Indeed, what mortal is there of us, who would find his satisfaction enhanced by an opportunity of comparing the picture he presents to himself of his own doings, with the picture they make on the mental retina of his neighbours? We are poor plants buoyed up by the air-vessels of our own conceit: alas for us, if we get a few pinches that empty us of that windy self-subsistence! The very capacity for good would go out of us.

The following text is adapted from the 1898 poem “Odina” by Emily Pauline Johnson, a Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) writer also known as Tekahionwake.

 I am Odina, I am she, the wife
Of him whose name breathes valor and life
And courage to the people who call him chief.
I am Odina, his bright star, and he
ls earth, and river, and sky—and soul to me.

The following text is from Jerome K. Jerom’s 1889 novel Three Men in a Boat.
We are creatures of the sun, we men and women. We love light and life. That is why we crowd into the towns and cities, and the country grows more and more deserted every year. In the sunlight—in the daytime, when Nature is alive and busy all around us, we like the open hillsides and the deep woods well enough: but in the night, when our Mother Earth has gone to sleep, and left us waking, oh! the world seems so lonesome, and we get frightened, like children in a silent house. Then we sit and sob, and long for the gas-lit streets, and the sound of human voices, and the answering throb of human life.

The following text is adapted from Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1844 short story "Drowne's Wooden Image.” Drowne, a young man, is carving a wooden figure to decorate the front of a ship.
Day by day, the work assumed greater precision, and settled its irregular and misty outline into distincter grace and beauty. The general design was now obvious to the common eye.

The following text is adapted from Virginia Woolf’s 1919 novel Night and Day.

In times gone by, Mrs. Hilbery had known all the poets, all the novelists. These being now either dead or secluded in their infirm glory, she made her house a meeting-place for her own relations, to whom she would lament the passing of the great days of the nineteenth century, when every department of letters and art was represented in England by two or three illustrious names.

The Underdogs is a 1915 novel by Mariano Azuela, originally written in Spanish. In the novel, a group of soldiers travel through a canyon, where their collective mood becomes strongly affected by the strenuous conditions of their journey: _____

The following text is adapted from George Eliot’s 1857 short story “The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton.” The Countess Czerlaski is a newcomer to the town of Milby.

I am by no means sure that if the good people of Milby had known the truth about the Countess Czerlaski, they would not have been considerably disappointed to find that it was very far from being as bad as they imagined. Nice distinctions are troublesome. It is so much easier to make up your mind that your neighbour is good for nothing, than to enter into all the circumstances that would oblige you to modify that opinion.

The following text is from Virginia Woolf's 1919 novel Night and Day. The text describes a gathering of young artists and intellectuals.

One person after another rose, and, as with an ill-balanced axe, attempted to hew out his conception of art a little more clearly, and sat down with the feeling that, for some reason which he could not grasp, his strokes had gone awry. As they sat down they turned almost invariably to the person sitting next them, and rectified and continued what they had just said in public.

The following text is adapted from George Eliot's 1857 short story "The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton." The Countess Czerlaski is a newcomer to the town of Milby.
I am by no means sure that if the good people of Milby had known the truth about the Countess Czerlaski, they would not have been considerably disappointed to find that it was very far from being as bad as they imagined. Nice distinctions are troublesome. It is so much easier to make up your mind that your neighbour is good for nothing, than to enter into all the circumstances that would oblige you to modify that opinion.

Cane is a 1923 novel by Jean Toomer. In one portion of the novel, Toomer establishes a contrast between the narrator's attitude toward life and the attitude of the narrator's love interest, Avey, writing, ____

The following text is adapted from William Wordsworth’s 1798 poem “Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey.”

Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
Which on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.

The following text is adapted from Fanny Burney's 1778 novel Evelina. The text is an excerpt from a letter by Lady Howard to Evelina's guardian, Reverend Villars, in which Lady Howard discusses an upcoming trip to London planned by her daughter Mrs. Mirvan's family.

It is very earnestly [the Mirvans'] wish to enlarge and enliven their party by the addition of your amiable ward, who would share, equally with her own daughter, the care and attention of Mrs. Mirvan. Do not start at this proposal; it is time that [Evelina] should see something of the world. When young people are too rigidly sequestered from it, their lively and romantic imaginations paint it to them as a paradise of which they have been beguiled; but when they are shown it properly, and in due time, they see it such as it really is, equally shared by pain and pleasure, hope and disappointment.

The following text is adapted from Lady Gregory's 1904 play Spreading the News. Jack Smith and Bartley Fallon have encountered each other at the local fair.
JACK: It isn't to the fair I came myself, but up to the Five Acre Meadow I'm going, where I have a contract for the hay. We'll get a share of it into tramps (drying stacks) to-day.
BARTLEY: You will not get it into tramps to-day. The rain will be down on it by evening, and on myself too. It's seldom I ever started on a journey but the rain would come down on me before I'd find any place of shelter.

JACK: If it didn't itself, Bartley, it is my belief you would carry a leaky pail on your head in place of a hat, that way you'd not be without some cause of complaining.

The Clouds is a 423 BCE play by Aristophanes, originally written in ancient Greek. At the time, professional intellectuals called sophists taught customers rhetorical techniques to use in public speaking, along with providing instruction in other subjects. In the play, Aristophanes satirizes sophists as teaching students how to be persuasive without regard for what is morally good, as seen when the character ______ 

The following text is adapted from Susan Glaspell's 1912 short story “'Out There." An elderly shop owner is looking at a picture that he recently acquired and hopes to sell.
It did seem that the picture failed to fit in with the rest of the shop. A persuasive young fellow who claimed he was closing out his stock let the old man have it for what he called a song. It was only a little out-of-the-way store which subsisted chiefly on the framing of pictures. The old man looked around at his views of the city, his pictures of cats and dogs, his flaming bits of landscape.“Don't belong in here," he fumed.
And yet the old man was secretly proud of his acquisition. There was a hidden dignity in his scowling as he shuffled about pondering the least ridiculous place for the picture.

The following text is adapted from Anthony Trollope’s 1855 novel The Warden. The narrator is describing a rectory, the residence of a clergyperson.

Let us observe the well-furnished breakfast-parlour at Plumstead Episcopi, and the comfortable air of all the belongings of the rectory. Comfortable they certainly were, but neither gorgeous nor even grand; indeed, considering the money that had been spent there, the eye and taste might have been better served; there was an air of heaviness about the rooms which might have been avoided without any sacrifice of propriety; colours might have been better chosen and lights more perfectly diffused; but perhaps in doing so the thorough clerical aspect of the whole might have been somewhat marred. 

"The Yellow Wallpaper" is an 1892 short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. In the story, the narrator expresses mixed feelings about her surroundings: ________

The Underdogs is a 1915 novel by Mariano Azuela, originally written in Spanish. In the novel, the town of Juchipila is depicted as a striking sight for a group of soldiers as they view it from afar: _____

The following text is adapted from John Matheus’s 1925 short story “Fog.”

The fog extended its tentacles over city and river, gradually obliterating traces of familiar landscapes. At five-thirty the old Panhandle bridge, supported by massive sandstone pillars, stalwart, as when erected fifty years before to serve a generation now passed behind the portals of life, had become a spectral outline against the sky.

Life Among the Paiutes is an 1882 autobiographical narrative by Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, a Northern Paiute author, educator, and activist. In the work, Winnemucca directly addresses the reader to explain certain customs, writing ______

The following text is from Edith Wharton’s 1905 novel The House of Mirth. Lily Bart and a companion are walking through a park.
Lily had no real intimacy with nature, but she had a passion for the appropriate and could be keenly sensitive to a scene which was the fitting background of her own sensations. The landscape outspread below her seemed an enlargement of her present mood, and she found something of herself in its calmness, its breadth, its long free reaches. On the nearer slopes the sugar-maples wavered like pyres of light; lower down was a massing of grey orchards, and here and there the lingering green of an oak-grove.

The following text is adapted from Richard Connell’s 1923 short story “The Man Who Could Imitate a Bee.”  

An ornithologist is a scientist who studies birds. At twelve [years old Hervey Deyo] had resolved to be a scientist and furthermore a great scientist. He determined to pursue the career of ornithologist; there was something so dignified and withal scientific about a science that called the sparrow Passer domesticus and the robin Erithacus rubecula. He made rapid progress. On his thirteenth birthday he took a bird walk at dawn and was able to record in his note-book the scientific names of forty-nine birds, including the ruby-and-topaz humming-bird (Chrysolampis mosquitus) which is rare in that part of the country.

The following text is adapted from the 1895 poem “Ojistoh” by Emily Pauline Johnson, a Kanienkahagen (Mohawk) writer also known as Tekahionwake.

I am Ojistoh, I am she, the wife
Of him whose name breathes bravery and life
And courage to the tribe who calls him chief.
I am Ojistoh, his white star, and he
Is land, and lake, and sky—and soul to me.

The following text is adapted from John Matheus's 1925 short story "Fog."

The fog extended its tentacles over city and river, gradually obliterating traces of familiar landscapes. At five-thirty the old Panhandle bridge, supported by massive sandstone pillars, stalwart, as when erected fifty years before to serve a generation now passed behind the portals of life, had become a spectral outline against the sky.

The Age of Innocence is a 1920 novel by Edith Wharton set in New York City in the 1870s. In the novel, Newland Archer arrives late to an opera performance, which the narrator attributes to Newland’s enjoyment of anticipation: ______.

The following text is adapted from Mark Twain's 1876 novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Aunt Polly is having dinner with Tom, her mischievous young nephew.

Aunt Polly asked [Tom] questions that were full of guile, and very deep—for she wanted to trap him into damaging revealments. Like many other simple‑hearted souls, it was her pet vanity to believe she was endowed with a talent for dark and mysterious diplomacy, and she loved to contemplate her most transparent devices as marvels of low cunning.

The following text is adapted from Henry James’s 1881 novel The Portrait of a Lady.

Everything Osmond did was pose—pose so subtly considered that if one were not on the lookout one mistook it for impulse. Ralph had never met a man who lived so much in the land of consideration. His tastes, his studies, his accomplishments, his collections, were all for a purpose.

The following text is adapted from Matthew Arnold's 1869 nonfiction book Culture and Anarchy.

The Times [a British newspaper], replying to some foreign strictures on the dress, looks, and behaviour of the English abroad, urges that the English ideal is that every one should be free to do and to look just as he likes. But culture indefatigably tries, not to make what each raw person may like the rule by which he fashions himself; but to draw ever nearer to a sense of what is indeed beautiful, graceful, and becoming, and to get the raw person to like that.

The following text is from Walt Whitman's 1860 poem "Calamus 24.”
I HEAR it is charged against me that I seek to destroy institutions;
But really I am neither for nor against institutions
(What indeed have I in common with them?—Or what with the destruction of them?),
Only I will establish in the Mannahatta [Manhattan] and in every city of These States, inland and seaboard,
And in the fields and woods,and above every keel [ship] little or large, that dents the water,
Without edifices, or rules, or trustees, or any argument,
The institution of the dear love of comrades.

The following text is from Thomas Hardy’s 1874 novel Far from the Madding Crowd. In the text, the narrator describes an open tract of land.

The changes of the seasons are less obtrusive on spots of this kind than amid woodland scenery. Still, to a close observer, they are just as perceptible; the difference is that their media of manifestation are less trite and familiar than such well-known ones as the bursting of the buds or the fall of the leaf.

The following text is from John Matheus’s 1925 novel Fog. The story happens in a city where heavy fog has set in.
The little conductor stood on tiptoe in an effort to keep one hand on the signal rope, craning his neck in a vain and dissatisfied endeavor to pierce the miasma of the fog. The motorman chafed in his box, thinking of the drudging lot of the laboring man. He registered discontent.

The following text is adapted from Neera’s 1886 novel Teresa, translated by Martha King in 1998.​​​​​​​

Beyond the [porch] extended a piece of land, with some exaggeration called a garden. In truth, it had some flower beds that at first sight confirmed the illusion, particularly at that time of year; since the pansies were in bloom with their infinite shades, with the intense velvet of their dark leaves and the luminous silk of their pale leaves. 

©1976 by Giulio Einaudi editore s.p.a. Translation ©1998 by Northwestern University Press. 

The following text is from Sarojini Naidu's 1896 poem “Alabaster.”

Like this alabaster box whose art
Is frail as a cassia-flower, is my heart,
Carven with delicate dreams and wrought
With many a subtle and exquisite thought.

The following text is from Julia Alvarez's 2000 novel In the Name of Salomé. Salomé, a poet, is hosting guests in the front parlor of her family home, and Ramona is her sister. A salon is a social gathering for the exploration of intellectual ideas.

It was evening when the two men got up to leave. TÍa Ana had already come into the room several times to see if these guests had departed yet. The front parlor had always been her special province, as she used it for her little school. Now, every evening, it turned into Salomé's salon, as Ramona called it, and it was never in order for its transformation back to a classroom the following morning.

​​​​​​​©2000 by Julia Alvarez

The following text is from Maggie Pogue Johnson's 1910 poem"Poet of Our Race."In this poem, the speaker is addressing Paul Laurence Dunbar, a Black author.
Thou, with stroke of mighty pen,
Hast told of joy and mirth,
And read the hearts and souls of men
As cradled from their birth.
The language of the flowers,
Thou hast read them all,
And e'en the little brook
Responded to thy call.

The following text is adapted from George Eliot's 1857 short story “The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton.” Mr. Ely is a clergyman in the town of Milby.

By the laity of Milby and its neighbourhood [Mr. Ely] was regarded as a man of quite remarkable powers and learning, who must make a considerable sensation in London pulpits and drawing-rooms on his occasional visit to the metropolis; and by his brother clergy he was regarded as a discreet and agreeable fellow. Mr. Ely never got into a warm discussion; he suggested what might be thought, but rarely said what he thought himself; he never let either men or women see that he was laughing at them, and he never gave any one an opportunity of laughing at him.

The following text is from a 1955 translation of Samuel Beckett’s 1951 novel Molloy (translated by the author and Patrick Bowles). In the text, Molloy has arrived at the town ramparts, an elevated walkway atop the city walls.

And having cleared the ramparts I had to confess the sky was clearing, prior to its winding in the other shroud, night. Yes, the great cloud was ravelling, discovering here and there a pale and dying sky, and the sun, already down, was manifest in the livid tongues of fire darting towards the zenith, falling and darting again, ever more pale and languid, and doomed no sooner lit to be extinguished.

©1955 by Grove Press, Inc.

The following text is from Charltte Bronte's 1847 novel Jane Eyre. Jane, the narrator, works as a governess at Thornfield Hall.
I went on with my day's business tranquilly; but ever and anon vague suggestions kept wandering across my brain of reasons why I should quit Thornfield; and I kept involuntarily framing advertisements and pondering conjectures about new situations: these thoughts I did not think to check; they might germinate and bear fruit if they could.

Oedipus Rex is a circa 429–425 BCE play by Sophocles, translated in 1891 by F. Storr. Oedipus is wracked with despair over the death of his father and the events that led up to it, yet he valiantly searches for the truth even in the face of devastating consequences.

The following text is from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1830 short story “Sir William Phips.”

The knowledge, communicated by the historian and biographer, is analogous to that which we acquire of a country by the map,—minute, perhaps, and accurate, and available for all necessary purposes, but cold and naked, and wholly destitute of the mimic charm produced by landscape painting. These defects are partly remediable, and even without an absolute violation of literal truth, although by methods rightfully interdicted to professors of biographical exactness.

The following text is adapted from Gwendolyn Bennett’s 1926 poem “Street Lamps in Early Spring.”

Night wears a garment
All velvet soft, all violet blue... 
And over her face she draws a veil
As shimmering fine as floating dew... 
And here and there
In the black of her hair
The subtle hands of Night
Move slowly with their gem-starred light.

Cane is a 1923 novel by Jean Toomer. In the novel, Toomer mentions a road in rural Georgia called Dixie Pike and describes it as having a deep connection to a faraway place, writing, ______

The following text is from Julia Alvarez's 2000 novel In the Name of Salomé. The narrator and her sister, daughters of a famous poet, are being tutored by Alejandro Román.

Our tutor, Alejandro Román, brought his younger brother, Miguel, to class one day. By now I was eighteen and had learned everything Alejandro had to teach me, so I was glad for a new face. Miguel was an aspiring poet, and he had heard from his brother that the Urena girls were none other than the daughters of Nicolás Urena, and they were smart as clockwork. Miguel was hoping not only to meet us but to make the acquaintance of the poet himself at Mamá's house.

©2000 by Julia Alvarez

Memoirs of Elleanor Eldridge is an 1838 historical account by Elleanor Eldridge and Frances Harriet Whipple Green. In the book, the authors caution against inquiring into the private life of the book’s subject beyond what is presented in the text, writing, ______

The following text is from George Eliot's 1857 short story The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton." In the text, the narrator addresses the reader directly and alludes to a discussion among Rev. Amos Barton's neighbors.

It was happy for the Rev. Amos Barton that he did not, like us, overhear the conversation recorded in the last chapter. Indeed, what mortal is there of us, who would find his satisfaction enhanced by an opportunity of comparing the picture he presents to himself of this own doings, with the picture they make on the mental retina of his neighbours? We are poor plants buoyed up by the air-vessels of our own conceit: alas for us, if we get a few pinches that empty us of that windy self-subsistence! The very capacity for good would go out of us.

The following text is adapted from Matthew Arnold’s 1869 nonfiction book Culture and Anarchy.

The Times [a British newspaper], replying to some foreign strictures on the dress, looks, and behavior of the English abroad, urges that the English ideal is that everyone should be free to do and to look just as he likes. But culture indefatigably tries, not to make what each raw person may like the rule by which he fashions himself; but to draw ever nearer to a sense of what is indeed beautiful, graceful, and becoming, and to get the raw person to like that.

The following text is from the 1996 novel Desert Birds by Elena Ruiz. A young girl is sitting in a room with her grandmother, Teresa, whose old rocking chair had previously been kept on the porch. The girl took comfort in the mere presence of the chair in the room. Comfort in its movement. It was faded by years in the sun and bent by occasional rain, and only in the last few months had Teresa decided to bring it inside with the family. 

©1996 by Elena Ruiz.

The following text is adapted from Jane Austen’s 1814 novel Mansfield Park. The speaker, Tom, is considering staging a play at home with a group of his friends and family.

We mean nothing but a little amusement among ourselves, just to vary the scene, and exercise our powers in something new. We want no audience, no publicity. We may be trusted, I think, in choosing some play most perfectly unexceptionable; and I can conceive no greater harm or danger to any of us in conversing in the elegant written language of some respectable author than in chattering in words of our own.

Cane is a 1923 novel by Jean Toomer. In the novel, Toomer mentions a road in rural Georgia called Dixie Pike and describes it as having a deep connection to a faraway place, writing, ______

The following text is adapted from Alice Dunbar Nelson’s 1899 short story “The Fisherman of Pass Christian.” Pass Christian is a city in the US state of Mississippi.

The swift breezes on the beach at Pass Christian meet and conflict as though each strove for the mastery of the air. The land-breeze blows down through the pines, resinous, fragrant, cold, bringing breath-like memories of dim, dark woods shaded by myriad pine-needles. The breeze from the Gulf is warm and soft and languorous, blowing up from the south with its suggestion of tropical warmth.

The following text is adapted from Matthew Arnold's 1869 nonfiction book Culture and Anarchy.

The Times [a British newspaper], replying to some foreign strictures on the dress, looks, and behaviour of the English abroad, urges that the English ideal is that every one should be free to do and to look just as he likes. But culture indefatigably tries, not to make what each raw person may like, the rule by which he fashions himself; but to draw ever nearer to a sense of what is indeed beautiful, graceful, and becoming, and to get the raw person to like that.

The following text is adapted from Jerome K. Jerome's 1889 novel Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog).

We [people] are creatures of the sun. We love light and life. That is why we crowd into the towns and cities, and the country grows more and more deserted every year. In the sunlight—in the daytime, when Nature is alive and busy all around us, we like the open hill-sides and the deep woods well enough: but in the night, when our Mother Earth has gone to sleep, and left us waking, oh! the world seems so lonesome, and we get frightened, like children in a silent house. Then we sit and sob, and long for the gas-lit streets, and the sound of human voices, and the answering throb of human life.

The following text is from Anne Spencer's 1922 poem“Translation.”
We trekked into a far country,
My friend and I.
Our deeper content was never spoken,
But each knew all the other said.
He told me how calm his soul was laid
By the lack of anvil and strife.
“The wooing kestrel," I said, "mutes his mating-note
To please the harmony of this sweet silence.”"

The following text is from Amy Tan's 1989 novel The Joy Luck Club. The narrator describes practicing the piano when she was a child.

For the talent show, I was to play a piece called “Pleading Child” from Schumann's Scenes from Childhood. It was a simple, moody piece that sounded more difficult than it was. I was supposed to memorize the whole thing, playing the repeat parts twice to make the piece sound longer. But I dawdled over it, playing a few bars and then cheating, looking up to see what notes followed. I never really listened to what I was playing. I daydreamed about being somewhere else, about being someone else.

©1989 by Amy Tan

The following text is adapted from Jack London's 1903 novel The Call of the Wild. Buck is a sled dog living with John Thornton in Yukon, Canada.
Thornton alone held [Buck]. The rest of mankind was as nothing. Chance travellers might praise or pet him; but he was cold under it all, and from a too demonstrative man he would get up and walk away. When Thornton's partners, Hans and Pete, arrived on the long-expected raft, Buck refused to notice them till he learned they were close to Thornton; after that he tolerated them in a passive sort of way, accepting favors from them as though he favored them by accepting.

The following text is from Yung Wing’s 1909 memoir My Life in China and America. Yung Wing was the first person from China to graduate from a US university.

Little did I realize when in 1845 I wrote, while in the Morrison School, a composition on “An Imaginary Voyage to New York and up the Hudson,” that I was to see New York in reality. This incident leads me to the reflection that sometimes our imagination foreshadows what lies uppermost in our minds and brings possibilities within the sphere of realities. 

The following text is adapted from Jerome K. Jerome's 1889 novel Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog). The narrator is traveling by boat with Harris and another friend.​​​​​​​

(Harris) told us anecdotes of how he had gone across the (English) Channel when it was so rough that the passengers had to be tied into their (beds), and he and the captain were the only two living souls on board who were not ill. Sometimes it was he and the second mate who were not ill; but it was generally he and one other man. If not he and another man, then it was he by himself.

“The Yellow Wallpaper" is an 1892 short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. In the story, the narrator expresses mixed feelings about her surroundings: ______

The following text is adapted from Matthew Arnold’s 1869 nonfiction book Culture and Anarchy.

The Times [a British newspaper], replying to some foreign strictures on the dress, looks, and behaviour of the English abroad, urges that the English ideal is that every one should be free to do and to look just as he likes. But culture indefatigably tries, not to make what each raw person may like the rule by which he fashions himself; but to draw ever nearer to a sense of what is indeed beautiful, graceful, and becoming, and to get the raw person to like that.

The following text is from Jerome K. Jerome's 1889 novel Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog). The narrator and two friends are taking a boat down the River Thames in England.​​​​​​​

In a boat, I have always noticed that it is the fixed idea of each member of the crew that he is doing everything. Harris’s notion was, that it was he alone who had been working, and that both George and I had been imposing upon him. George, on the other hand, ridiculed the idea of Harris’s having done anything more than eat and sleep, and had a cast-iron opinion that it was he—George himself—who had done all the labour worth speaking of.

The following text is adapted from Indian Boyhood, a 1902 memoir by Ohiyesa (Charles A. Eastman), a Santee Dakota writer. In the text, Ohiyesa recalls how the women in his tribe harvested maple syrup during his childhood.
Now the women began to test the trees—moving leisurely among them, axe in hand, and striking a single quick blow, to see if the sap would appear. The trees, like people, have their individual characters; some were ready to yield up their life-blood, while others were more reluctant. Now one of the birchen basins was set under each tree, and a hardwood chip driven deep into the cut which the axe had made. From the corners of this chip-at first drop by drop, then more freely-the sap trickled into the little dishes.

The following text is from Charles Chesnutt's 1905 novel The Colonel's Dream. Mr. French and Mr. Kirby work together.​​​​​​​

Mr. French, the senior partner, who sat opposite Kirby, was an older man—a safe guess would have placed him somewhere in the debatable ground between forty and fifty; of a good height, as could be seen even from the seated figure, the upper part of which was held erect with the unconscious ease which one associates with military training.

The following text is from the 1923 poem “Black Finger” by Angelina Weld Grimké, a Black American writer. A cypress is a type of evergreen tree.
I have just seen a most beautiful thing,
Slim and still,
Against a gold, gold sky,
A straight black cypress,
Sensitive,
Exquisite,
A black finger
Pointing upwards.
Why, beautiful still finger, are you black?
And why are you pointing upwards?

The following text is from Julia Alvarez's 2000 novel In the Name of Salomé. Salomé, a poet, is hosting guests in the front parlor of her family home, and Ramona is her sister. A salon is a social gathering for the exploration of intellectual ideas.

It was evening when the two men got up to leave. Tía Ana had already come into the room several times to see if these guests had departed yet. The front parlor had always been her special province, as she used it for her little school. Now, every evening, it turned into Salomé's salon, as Ramona called it, and it was never in order for its transformation back to a classroom the following morning.

©2000 by Julia Alvarez

“A Pair of Silk Stockings” is an 1897 short story written by Kate Chopin. In the story, Mrs. Sommers becomes engrossed in the decision of how she should spend a recently obtained sum of money:

The following text is adapted from George Eliot's 1857 short story "The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton." Mr. Ely is a clergyman in the town of Milby.

By the laity of Milby and its neighbourhood [Mr. Ely] was regarded as a man of quite remarkable powers and learning, who must make a considerable sensation in London pulpits and drawing-rooms on his occasional visit to the metropolis; and by his brother clergy he was regarded as a discreet and agreeable fellow. Mr. Ely never got into a warm discussion: he suggested what might be thought, but rarely said what he thought himself; he never let either men or women see that he was laughing at them, and he never gave any one an opportunity of laughing at him.

The following text is from Jerome K. Jerome's 1889 novel Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog). The narrator and two friends are taking a boat down the River Thames in England.

In a boat, I have always noticed that it is the fixed idea of each member of the crew that he is doing everything. Harris's notion was, that it was he alone who had been working, and that both George and I had been imposing upon him. George, on the other hand, ridiculed the idea of Harris's having done anything more than eat and sleep, and had a cast-iron opinion that it was he—George himself—who had done all the labour worth speaking of.

The following text is adapted from Mary Seacole's 1857 autobiography Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Marry Lands.​​​​​​​

That journey across the Isthmus [of Panama], insignificant in distance as it was, was by no means an easy one. It seemed as if nature had determined to throw every conceivable obstacle in the way of those who should seek to join the two great oceans of the world.

The following text is adapted from Lady Gregory’s 1904 play Spreading the News. Tom Reed and Martin Doyle have encountered each other at the village market.

TOM: It isn’t to the market I came myself, but up to the Long Field I’m going, where I have a contract for the hay. We’ll get a share of it into tramps [drying stacks] to‑day.

MARTIN: You will not get it into tramps to‑day. The rain will be down on it by evening, and on myself too. It’s seldom I ever started on a journey but the rain would come down on me before I’d find any place of shelter.

TOM: If it didn’t itself, Martin, it is my belief you would carry a leaky pail on your head in place of a hat, that way you’d not be without some cause of complaining.

The following text is from Charlotte Forten Grimke's 1888 poem"At Newport.”
Oh, deep delight to watch the gladsome waves
Exultant leap upon the rugged rocks;
Ever repulsed, yet ever rushing on一
Filled with a life that will not know defeat;
To see the glorious hues of sky and sea.
The distant snowy sails, glide spirit like,
Into an unknown world, to feel the sweet
Enchantment of the sea thrill all the soul,
Clearing the clouded brain, making the heart
Leap joyous as it own bright, singing waves!

The following text is from Georgia Douglas Johnson's 1918 poem “Peace.”

I rest me deep within the wood,
Drawn by its silent call,
Far from the throbbing crowd of men,
On nature's breast I fall.

The following text is from Julia Alvarez's 2000 novel In the Name of Salomé. The narrator and her sister, daughters of a famous poet, are being tutored by Alejandro Román.

Our tutor, Alejandro Román, brought his younger brother, Miguel, to class one day. By now I was eighteen and had learned everything Alejandro had to teach me, so I was glad for a new face. Miguel was an aspiring poet, and he had heard from his brother that the Ureña girls were none other than the daughters of Nicolás Ureña, and they were smart as clockwork. Miguel was hoping not only to meet us but to make the acquaintance of the poet himself at Mamá’s house.

©2000 by Julia Alvarez

The following text is from George Eliot’s 1857 short story “The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton.” In the text, the narrator addresses the reader directly and alludes to a discussion among Rev. Amos Barton’s neighbors.

It was happy for the Rev. Amos Barton that he did not, like us, overhear the conversation recorded in the last chapter. Indeed, what mortal is there of us, who would find his satisfaction enhanced by an opportunity of comparing the picture he presents to himself of his own doings, with the picture they make on the mental retina of his neighbours? We are poor plants buoyed up by the air-vessels of our own conceit: alas for us, if we get a few pinches that empty us of that windy self-subsistence! The very capacity for good would go out of us.

The following text is from Yung Wing’s 1909 memoir My Life in China and America. Yung Wing was the first person from China to graduate from a US university.

Little did I realize when in 1845 I wrote, while in the Morrison School, a composition on “An Imaginary Voyage to New York and up the Hudson,” that I was to see New York in reality. This incident leads me to the reflection that sometimes our imagination foreshadows what lies uppermost in our minds and brings possibilities within the sphere of realities.

The following text is adapted from Matthew Arnold’s 1869 nonfiction book Culture and Anarchy.  

The Times [a British newspaper], replying to some foreign strictures on the dress, looks, and behaviour of the English abroad, urges that the English ideal is that every one should be free to do and to look just as he likes. But culture indefatigably tries, not to make what each raw person may like, the rule by which he fashions himself; but to draw ever nearer to a sense of what is indeed beautiful, graceful, and becoming, and to get the raw person to like that.  

The following text is Emily Dickinson circa 1873 poem “There is no Frigate like a Book”.
There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry—
This Traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll ——
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears the Human soul.

“John of God, the Water-Carrier” is a 1913 short story by Maria Cristina Mena. In the story, the narrator presents John as being a hard worker who is fully dedicated to his job as water carrier, or aguador: _____

The following text is from Edith Wharton's 1905 novel The House of Mirth. Lily Bart and a companion are walking through a park.
Lily had no real intimacy with nature, but she had a passion for the appropriate and could be keenly sensitive to a scene which was the fitting background of her own sensations. The landscape outspread below her seemed an enlargement of her present mood, and she found something of herself in its calmness, its breadth, its long free reaches. On the nearer slopes the sugar-maples wavered like pyres of light; lower down was a massing of grey orchards, and here and there the lingering green of an oak-grove.

The following text is adapted from John Matheus's 1925 short story "Fog." A train has stopped at a station, where heavy fog has set in.

The little conductor stood on tiptoe in an effort to keep one hand on the signal rope, craning his neck in a vain and dissatisfied endeavor to pierce the miasma of the fog. The motorman chafed in his box, thinking of the drudging lot of the laboring man. He registered discontent.

"Often Rebuked, Yet Always Back Returning" is an 1846 poem by Emily Bronte. The poem conveys the speaker's determination to experience the countryside around her:____

The following text is adapted from Daniel Defoe's 1704 nonfiction book The Storm.

If I judge right, ’tis the duty of an historian to set everything in its own light, and to convey matter of fact upon its legitimate authority, and no other: I mean thus, (for I would be as explicit as I can) that where a story is vouched to him with sufficient authority, he ought to give the world the special testimonial of its proper voucher, or else he is not just to the story: and where it comes without such sufficient authority, he ought to say so; otherwise he is not just to himself.

The following text is from the 1924 poem "Cycle” by D'Arcy McNickle, who was a citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes.
There shall be new roads wending,
A new beating of the drum—
Men's eyes shall have fresh seeing,
Grey lives reprise their span—
But under the new sun's being,
Completing what night began,
There'll be the same backs bending,
The same sad feet shall drum—
When this night finds its ending
And day shall have come.....

The following text is from Julia Alvarez's 2000 novel In the Name of Salomé. The narrator and her sister, daughters of a famous poet, are being tutored by Alejandro Román.

Our tutor, Alejandro Román, brought his younger brother, Miguel, to class one day. By now I was eighteen and had learned everything Alejandro had to teach me, so I was glad for a new face. Miguel was an aspiring poet, and he had heard from his brother that the Ureña girls were none other than the daughters of Nicolás Ureña, and they were smart as clockwork. Miguel was hoping not only to meet us but to make the acquaintance of the poet himself at Mama’s house.

©2000 by Julia Alvarez

The following text is adapted from Jerome K. Jerome's 1889 novel Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog).​​​​​​​

We [people] are creatures of the sun. We love light and life. That is why we crowd into the towns and cities, and the country grows more and more deserted every year. In the sunlight-in the daytime, when Nature is alive and busy all around us, we like the open hill-sides and the deep woods well enough: but in the night, when our Mother Earth has gone to sleep, and left us waking, oh! the world seems so lonesome, and we get frightened, like children in a silent house. Then we sit and sob, and long for the gas-lit streets, and the sound of human voices, and the answering throb of human life.

The following text is adapted from Oscar Wilde's 1895 play The Importance of Being Earnest.
CECILY: Have we got to part?
ALGERNON: I am afraid so. It's a very painful parting.
CECILY: It is always painful to part from people whom one has known for a very brief space of time. The absence of old friends one can endure with equanimity. But even a momentary separation from anyone to whom one has just been introduced is almost unbearable.

The following text is adapted from John Matheus’s 1926 short story, “Mr. Bradford Teaches Sunday School.” Mr. Bradford is driving through the countryside in Florida.

​​​​​​​The moss in the towering water oaks had become enlivened with a verdant sheen of silver and hung like festoons of carnival or like funeral decorations for the mourning of the dead. The pine green was resplendent. The bald cypresses spread themselves along the water courses while the willows wept as they always did. Mr. Bradford was conscious of this gorgeous display of nature.

The following text is adapted from Guy de Maupassant's 1884 short story “A Recollection,” from the collection Guy de Maupassant Short Stories (translated by Albert M.C. McMaster et al. in 1903). The narrator is taking a boat down the Seine river from Paris, France, to the surrounding countryside.

I took up a position in the bows [front of the boat], standing up and looking at the quays, the trees, the houses and the bridges disappearing behind us. And suddenly I perceived the great viaduct of Point du Jour which blocked the river. It was the end of Paris, the beginning of the country, and behind the double row of arches the Seine, suddenly spreading out as though it had regained space and liberty, became all at once the peaceful river which flows through the plains, alongside the wooded hills, amid the meadows, along the edge of the forests.

The Underdogs is a 1915 novel by Mariano Azuela, originally written in Spanish. In the novel, Azuela depicts a traveling group of soldiers as having a renewed sense of agency and authority as they set off on a new stage of their journey: ______ 

The following text is from Charles Dickens's 1861 novel Great Expectations. The narrator is taking a walk near his home on a damp morning.

On every rail and gate, wet lay clammy, and the marsh mist was so thick, that the wooden finger on the post directing people to our village--a direction which they never accepted, for they never came there--was invisible to me until I was quite close under it.

The following text is adapted from Virginia Woolf's 1919 novel Night and Day. Katharine is the granddaughter of a celebrated poet.

[Katharine's] descent from [a celebrated poet] was no surprise to her, but matter for satisfaction, until, as the years wore on, certain drawbacks made themselves very manifest. Perhaps it is a little depressing to inherit not lands but an example of intellectual virtue; perhaps the conclusiveness of a great ancestor is a little discouraging to those who run the risk of comparison with him.

The following text is adapted from Mary Seacole's 1857 autobiography Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

​​​​​​​That journey across the Isthmus [of Panama], insignificant in distance as it was, was by no means an easy one. It seemed as if nature had determined to throw every conceivable obstacle in the way of those who should seek to join the two great oceans of the world.

The following text is from Yung Wing’s 1909 memoir My Life in China and America. Yung Wing was the first person from China to graduate from a US university.

Little did I realize when in 1845 I wrote, while in the Morrison School, a composition on “An Imaginary Voyage to New York and up the Hudson,” that I was to see New York in reality. This incident leads me to the reflection that sometimes our imagination foreshadows what lies uppermost in our minds and brings possibilities within the sphere of realities.

The following text is adapted from D.A. Lozano’s 1844 poem “A Remembrance of Puerto Cabello—The Mangle” (translated by Agnes Blake Poor in 1918). The poem is a dedication to Puerto Cabello, a town on the northern coast of Venezuela.

And while outside the tempest is raving o’er the ocean,
And the ship is madly driving on some lone and desert shore;
Thy warm and land-locked waters swell with an easy motion,
And gently glides the light pirogue [canoe] at dipping of the oar.

Poems is an 1895 collection of poetry by Frances E. W. Harper. In one of Harper’s poems, the speaker declares her intention to create art that has a universal appeal across generations, saying, ______.

The following text is adapted from Mary Seacole's 1857 autobiography Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands.

That journey across the Isthmus [of Panama], insignificant in distance as it was, was by no means an easy one. It seemed as if nature had determined to throw every conceivable obstacle in the way of those who should seek to join the two great oceans of the world.

The following text is from Paul Laurence Dunbar's 1913 poem “The Poet and His Song.”

A song is but a little thing,

And yet what joy it is to sing!

In hours of toil it gives me zest,

And when at eve I long for rest;

When cows come home along the bars,

And in the fold I hear the bell,

As Night, the shepherd, herds his stars,

I sing my song, and all is well.

O Pioneers! is a 1913 novel by Willa Cather. In the novel, Cather portrays Alexandra Bergson as having a deep emotional connection to her natural surroundings: _______

The following text is from Charles Dickens’s 1861 novel Great Expectations. The narrator is taking a walk near his home on a damp morning.

On every rail and gate, wet lay clammy, and the marsh mist was so thick, that the wooden finger on the post directing people to our village—a direction which they never accepted, for they never came there—was invisible to me until I was quite close under it.

The following text is from H.D.’s 1916 poem “Mid-Day.” In the poem, the speaker is on a path in an outdoor setting.

A slight wind shakes the seed-pods—
my thoughts are spent
as the black seeds.
My thoughts tear me,
I dread their fever.
I am scattered in its whirl.
I am scattered like
the hot shrivelled seeds.

Poems is an 1895 collection of poetry by Frances E.W. Harper. In one of Harper's poems, the speaker criticizes activists who champion humanitarian causes in other countries while overlooking local concerns, saying

The following text is adapted from Daniel Defoe's 1704 nonfiction book The Storm.​​​​​​​

The sermon is a sound of words spoken to the ear, and prepared only for present meditation, and extends no farther than the strength of memory can convey it; a book printed is a record; remaining in every man's possession, always ready to renew its acquaintance with his memory, and always ready to be produced as an authority or voucher to any reports he makes out of it, and conveys its contents for ages to come, to the eternity of mortal time, when the author is forgotten in his grave.

The following text is adapted from Aphra Behn’s 1689 novel The Lucky Mistake. Atlante and Rinaldo are neighbors who have been secretly exchanging letters through Charlot, Atlante’s sister.

[Atlante] gave this letter to Charlot; who immediately ran into the balcony with it, where she still found Rinaldo in a melancholy posture, leaning his head on his hand: She showed him the letter, but was afraid to toss it to him, for fear it might fall to the ground; so he ran and fetched a long cane, which he cleft at one end, and held it while she put the letter into the cleft, and stayed not to hear what he said to it. But never was man so transported with joy, as he was at the reading of this letter; it gives him new wounds; for to the generous, nothing obliges love so much as love.

The Underdogs is a 1915 novel by Mariano Azuela, originally written in Spanish. In the novel, Azuela depicts a traveling group of soldiers as having a renewed sense of agency and authority as they set off on a new stage of their journey: ______

The following text is adapted from Elizabeth von Arnim's 1922 novel The Enchanted April. Mrs. Wilkins and her friend Rose are traveling in Italy.
"I'm going to have one of these gorgeous oranges," said Mrs. Wilkins, staying where she was and reaching across to a black bowl piled with them. "Rose, how can you resist them. Look-have this one. Do have this beauty-" And she held out a big one.

The following text is from George Eliot's 1857 short story "The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton." In the text, the narrator addresses the reader directly and alludes to a discussion among Rev. Amos Barton's neighbors.

It was happy for the Rev. Amos Barton that he did not, like us, overhear the conversation recorded in the last chapter. Indeed, what mortal is there of us,who would find his satisfaction enhanced by an opportunity of comparing the picture he presents to himself of his own doings, with the picture they make on the mental retina of his neighbours? We are poor plants buoyed up by the air-vessels of our own conceit: alas for us, if we get a few pinches that empty us of that windy self-subsistence! The very capacity for good would go out of us.

Memoirs of Eleanor Eldridge is an 1838 historical account by Eleanor Eldridge and Frances Harriet Whipple Green. In the book, the authors suggest that many memoirs of renowned people aren’t particularly straightforward or candid, writing, ______

The following text is from Charlotte Forten Grimké’s 1888 poem “At Newport.”​​​​​​​

Oh, deep delight to watch the gladsome waves
Exultant leap upon the rugged rocks;
Ever repulsed, yet ever rushing on—
Filled with a life that will not know defeat;
To see the glorious hues of sky and sea.
The distant snowy sails, glide spirit like,
Into an unknown world, to feel the sweet
Enchantment of the sea thrill all the soul,
Clearing the clouded brain, making the heart
Leap joyous as it own bright, singing waves!

“To You” is an 1856 poem by Walt Whitman. In the poem, Whitman suggests that readers, whom he addresses directly, have not fully understood themselves, writing,_______

The following text is from Charles Chesnutt's 1905 novel The Colonel's Dream. Mr. French and Mr. Kirby work together.​​​​​​​

Mr. French, the senior partner, who sat opposite Kirby, was an older man—a safe guess would have placed him somewhere in the debatable ground between forty and fifty; of a good height, as could be seen even from the seated figure, the upper part of which was held erect with the unconscious ease which one associates with military training.