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The Emperor—so they say—has sent a message, directly from his death bed, to you alone, his pathetic subject, a tiny shadow which has taken refuge at the furthest distance from the imperial sun. He ordered the herald to kneel down beside his bed and whispered the message in his ear. He thought it was so important that he had the herald speak it back to him. He confirmed the accuracy of verbal message by nodding his head. And in front of the entire crowd of those witnessing his death—all the obstructing walls have been broken down, and all the great ones of his empire are standing in a circle on the broad and high soaring flights of stairs—in front of all of them he dispatched his herald. The messenger started off at once, a powerful, tireless man. Sticking one arm out and then another, he makes his way through the crowd. If he runs into resistance, he points to his breast where there is a sign of the sun. So he moves forwards easily, unlike anyone else. But the crowd is so huge; its dwelling places are infinite. If there were an open field, how he would fly along, and soon you would hear the marvellous pounding of his fist on your door. But instead of that, how futile are all his efforts. He is still forcing his way through the private rooms of the innermost palace. Never will he win his way through. And if he did manage that, nothing would have been achieved. He would have to fight his way down the steps, and, if he managed to do that, nothing would have been achieved. He would have to stride through the courtyards, and after the courtyards through the second palace encircling the first, and, then again, through stairs and courtyards, and then, once again, a palace, and so on for thousands of years. And if he finally burst through the outermost door—but that can never, never happen—the royal capital city, the centre of the world, is still there in front of him, piled high and full of sediment. No one pushes his way through here, certainly not someone with a message from a dead man. But you sit at your window and dream of that message when evening comes.

As winter thaws into spring, the monster notices that the cottagers, particularly Felix, seem unhappy. A beautiful woman in a dark dress and veil arrives at the cottage on horseback and asks to see Felix. Felix becomes ecstatic the moment he sees her. The woman, who does not speak the language of the cottagers, is named Safie. She moves into the cottage, and the mood of the household immediately brightens. As Safie learns the language of the cottagers, so does the monster. He also learns to read, and, since Felix uses Constantin-François de Volney’s Ruins of Empires to instruct Safie, he learns a bit of world history in the process. Now able to speak and understand the language perfectly, the monster learns about human society by listening to the cottagers’ conversations. Reflecting on his own situation, he realizes that he is deformed and alone. “Was I then a monster,” he asks, “a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned?” He also learns about the pleasures and obligations of the family and of human relations in general, which deepens the agony of his own isolation.

The story starts with a busy upper-class man who has a unique passion for books.  His passion boarders on obsession described in great detail by Cortazar, “He tasted the almost perverse pleasure of disengaging himself line by line from the things around him.”  The man’s career clearly takes up a large amount of his time, but his velvet green armchair was a safe haven, a place to forget about the world and indulge his obsession.  The man’s current fix, was a tale of two lovers.  Once the man begins to read and dive into a different world Cortazar begins blurring the lines of reality and the book.  The reader’s imagination brings the book he is reading to life.  The two lovers meet in a cabin, it was not a meeting of passion, but one with devious intentions.  Cortazar uses very specific word choice like continually referencing to blood and describing the dialog as, “raced down the pages like a rivulet of snakes,” to underscore the malice intentions they had.  The lovers head off into the night, taking separate paths the male lover headed for an estate.  The lovers clearly had an in intimate knowledge of the estate, in fact the woman lived there, as they had every detailed accounted for there was no chance for him to be detected.  This was not a crime of passion it was one carefully planned, probably for months.  He did not need to search extensively through the house for his lover’s husband, he knew where the husband would be.  In the last line the husband is revealed to be the very same man reading the novel.

The Greatest Gift It's a Wonderful Life Short story by Philip Van Doren Stern The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry

As winter thaws into spring, the monster notices that the cottagers, particularly Felix, seem unhappy. A beautiful woman in a dark dress and veil arrives at the cottage on horseback and asks to see Felix. Felix becomes ecstatic the moment he sees her. The woman, who does not speak the language of the cottagers, is named Safie. She moves into the cottage, and the mood of the household immediately brightens. As Safie learns the language of the cottagers, so does the monster. He also learns to read, and, since Felix uses Constantin-François de Volney’s Ruins of Empires to instruct Safie, he learns a bit of world history in the process. Now able to speak and understand the language perfectly, the monster learns about human society by listening to the cottagers’ conversations. Reflecting on his own situation, he realizes that he is deformed and alone. “Was I then a monster,” he asks, “a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned?” He also learns about the pleasures and obligations of the family and of human relations in general, which deepens the agony of his own isolation.

It's set in the pseudo-historical Hyborian Age and details Conan pursuing a spectral nymph across the frozen tundra of Nordheim. Rejected as a Conan story by Weird Tales magazine editor Farnsworth Wright, Howard changed the main character's name to "Amra of Akbitana" and retitled the piece as "The Gods of the North", in which it was published in the March 1934 issue of The Fantasy Fan. 

Gods of the North by Robert E. Howard

the frost-giant's daughter by Robert E. Howard

“The End of Something” is a short story written by Ernest Hemingway, published in the 1925 New York edition of In Our Time, by Boni & Liveright.

Observing his neighbors for an extended period of time, the monster notices that they often seem unhappy, though he is unsure why. He eventually realizes, however, that their despair results from their poverty, to which he has been contributing by surreptitiously stealing their food. Torn by his guilty conscience, he stops stealing their food and does what he can to reduce their hardship, gathering wood at night to leave at the door for their use.

The monster becomes aware that his neighbors are able to communicate with each other using strange sounds. Vowing to learn their language, he tries to match the sounds they make with the actions they perform. He acquires a basic knowledge of the language, including the names of the young man and woman, Felix and Agatha. He admires their graceful forms and is shocked by his ugliness when he catches sight of his reflection in a pool of water. He spends the whole winter in the hovel, unobserved and well protected from the elements, and grows increasingly affectionate toward his unwitting hosts.

Robert Frost wrote the poem Home Burial after he and his wife suffered  the tragic loss of their 4-year-old son. Home Burial shows the emotions  people feel after such a loss, and how they face those emotions. Through  Frost's experience he shows that men and women grieve in different  ways. He wants to be the man of the house and be able to make everything the  way it was. He wants to be the one who helps Amy get past the pain of  the child they lost.

The Model Millionaire by Oscar Wilde The Sniper by Liam O'Flaherty  The Disciple by Oscar Wilde