Extracts from Literature
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Extracts from Literature’
Prince Agib hears the tale of a boy confined to an underground chamber for forty days, and dismisses it as superstition.
Prince Agib has toppled a vast brass statue of a horseman upon the Black Mountain, a labour for which he has been rewarded with the ship he needs to find his way home. Stopping off on a remote island, he sees a boy being led into an underground chamber, and when the coast is clear, Agib follows him in, eager to hear his story.
William Sleeman passes on an anecdote from one of the Persian classics, to show that truth should not be used for evil ends.
In a lengthy chapter entitled ‘Veracity’, William Sleeman discussed attitudes to truth and lies among the people of India. As an illustration, he retold this story from the ‘Gulistan’ or ‘Rose Garden’ of the Persian poet Saadi Shirazi (?1210-?1292).
Charles Dickens explains how King Alfred the Great overcame the Great Heathen Army in 878, with the help of a little music.
In 865, the Great Army of the Vikings from across the North Sea had been swarming over England, intent on all-out conquest of a country by then better known for its science and art than for its military readiness. But as Charles Dickens tells us, in 878 King Alfred of Wessex turned the tables on his enemy, and not just with battlefield courage.
Master-sweep Grimes meets a woman who knows more about him than he feels comfortable with.
Thomas Grimes, a North-country chimney-sweep, is on his way to an important job with his young apprentice, also called Tom, and (on the far side of the roadside wall) a barefoot Irish peasant woman, who has taken a shine to little Tom. The envious Grimes has gone so far as to wash his face in a nearby stream, which Tom is now desperate to try for himself.
John Nyren tells us about one of cricket’s truly great batsmen, John Small.
John Small the Elder (1737-1826) was a truly historic figure of cricket, a supreme batsman credited with the first recorded century in a serious match, 136* for Hampshire vs Surrey on July 13th, 1775. He was also a gifted violinist and cellist, and on one occasion it quite possibly saved his life.
The simple folk of Brittany know what it means when a nobleman calls himself godfather to an unknown infant.
Rafael Sabatini’s ‘Scaramouche’ is the tale of Andre-Louis Moreau, a young lawyer of no great convictions who becomes caught up in the French Revolution of 1789 through loyalty to a friend. The novel opens by placing Moreau against his family background — a difficult matter, though Breton gossip thinks it has got it all worked out.