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The story details a chance encounter between a young soldier and an old Spaniard at a pontoon bridge. The old man's hometown of San Carlos is being evacuated because of artillery fire, and he sits at the roadside before the bridge crossing, too tired to walk. The soldier, while anticipating contact with the enemy, expresses concern about the man's safety and encourages him to continue moving. The old man, on the other hand, is not concerned about himself but worries about the animals he left behind. The old man's view of himself as a guardian of animals contrasts ironically with the soldier's identity as a killer of people.  The old man tells the soldier that he was forced to leave behind two goats, one cat, and four pairs of doves. The old man admits that "there is no need to be unquiet" about the welfare of a clever cat, and also confirms that he left the dove cage unlocked—the birds will certainly fly to safety. It is the fate of "the others"—the two goats—that he laments. The old man is very much like the goats he left in harm's way, since they have nowhere to go and cannot take care of themselves. Unlike the goats, however, this man is completely alone. Ultimately, both the goats and the old man are left to their fates because the soldier admits that "there was nothing to do" but leave the old man behind.  Finally, and almost parenthetically, the young soldier mentions that this encounter took place on Easter Sunday. The image of the risen Christ is not unlike the image of the old man's doves being released from their cage—both are symbols of hope and peace. The soldier, however, is not hopeful about the old man's fate—he bitterly remarks that "all the good luck that old man would ever have" was the fact that artillery planes were not flying that day and "the fact that cats know how to look after themselves." In this tale of contrasts, Hemingway portrays the natural world as morally and spiritually superior to the manufactured world of human beings because it does not destroy itself in war. As a keeper of animals, the old man, though he has no family and no political affiliations, is also morally and spiritually superior to the young soldier who leaves him behind.

Confucius once heard two of his pupils quarreling. One was of a gentle nature and was called by all the students a peaceful man. The other had a good brain and a kind heart, but was given to great anger. If he wished to do a thing, he did it, and no man could prevent; if any one tried to hinder him, he would show sudden and terrible rage.  One day, after one of these fits of temper, the blood came from his mouth, and, in great fear, he went to Confucius. "What shall I do with my body?" he asked, "I fear I shall not live long. It may be better that I no longer study and work. I am your pupil and you love me as a father. Tell me what to do for my body."  Confucius answered, "Tsze-Lu, you have a wrong idea about your body. It is not the study, not the work in school, but your great anger that causes the trouble.  "I will help you to see this. You remember when you and Nou-Wui quarreled. He was at peace and happy again in a little time, but you were very long in overcoming your anger. You can not expect to live long if you do that way. Every time one of the pupils says a thing you do not like, you are greatly enraged. There are a thousand in this school. If each offends you only once, you will have a fit of temper a thousand times this year. And you will surely die, if you do not use more self-control. I want to ask you some questions:—  "How many teeth have you?"  "I have thirty-two, teacher."  "How many tongues?"  "Just one."  "How many teeth have you lost?"  "I lost one when I was nine years old, and four when I was about twenty-six years old."  "And your tongue—is it still perfect?"  "Oh, yes."  "You know Mun-Gun, who is quite old?"  "Yes, I know him well."  "How many teeth do you think he had at your age?"  "I do not know."  "How many has he now?"  "Two, I think. But his tongue is perfect, though he is very old."  "You see the teeth are lost because they are strong, and determined to have everything they desire. They are hard and hurt the tongue many times, but the tongue never hurts the teeth. Yet, it endures until the end, while the teeth are the first of man to decay. The tongue is peaceful and gentle with the teeth. It never grows angry and fights them, even when they are in the wrong. It always helps them do their work, in preparing man's food for him, although the teeth never help the tongue, and they always resist everything.  "And so it is with man. The strongest to resist, is the first to decay; and you, Tsze-Lu, will be even so if you learn not the great lesson of self-control."

In his second letter on March 28th of the following year, from Archangel, Russia, Walton describes himself as lonely. He worries that his refined upbringing has made him too sensitive for the "brutality" of life at sea.

Walton's experience of loneliness as a terrible experience establishes the idea of the horror of isolation that is so important throughout he rest of Frankenstein.

Walton writes that his resolution to carry out his journey is "fixed as fate." He confesses his "romantic ... love for the marvellous" and his passion for the dangers of the sea, which he attributes to his fondness for Coleridge's poem, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner."

An elegantly attired woman named Miss Fairchild is seated on the train when two men arrive and take the seat facing her. It quickly becomes apparent that the woman knows one of the men.  She speaks to this man, Mr. Easton, and then she is rather surprised to discover that he is handcuffed to the man seated beside him. As Easton greets the young woman, 'He slightly raised his right hand, bound at the wrist by the shining 'bracelet' to the left one of his companion.'  Evidently, the man with Easton senses Easton's embarrassment and volunteers an explanation: Easton is the marshal, and the two are headed for Leavenworth prison. 'It's seven years for counterfeiting' Easton says. As the conversation continues, the woman is surprised to learn that Easton has discarded his life in Washington to become a marshal out West, but she finds the West agreeable as well.  The young woman continues to chat with her acquaintance, but she continues to stare at the handcuffs. To ease her concerns, the scruffy looking older man tells her, ''Don't you worry about them, miss,' said the other man. 'All marshals handcuff themselves to their prisoners to keep them from getting away. Mr. Easton knows his business.'' As the two men stand to go to the smoker car, the young woman bids Mr. Easton goodbye.  All the while, two passengers seated nearby have listened to the conversation. One remarks on Mr. Easton's appearance, saying that he seems too young to be a marshal. The other eavesdropping passenger corrects the mistake, one that the young woman and readers have likely made as well. Mr. Easton is not the marshal; he is the counterfeiter. ''Oh! didn't you catch on?' the passenger says. 'Say--did you ever know an officer to handcuff a prisoner to his right hand?''

THIS is a legend current among the South American Indians.

God, say they, at first made men so that they had no need to work: they needed neither houses, nor clothes, nor food, and they all lived till they were a hundred, and did not know what illness was.

When, after some time, God looked to see how people were living, he saw that instead of being happy in their life, they had quarrelled with one another, and, each caring for himself, had brought matters to such a pass that far from enjoying life, they cursed it.

Then God said to himself: 'This comes of their living separately, each for himself.' And to change this state of things, God so arranged matters that it became impossible for people to live without working. To avoid suffering from cold and hunger, they were now obliged to build dwellings, and to dig the ground, and to grow and gather fruits and grain.

'Work will bring them together,' thought God.

'They cannot make their tools, prepare and transport their timber, build their houses, sow and gather their harvests, spin and weave, and make their clothes, each one alone by himself.'

'It will make them understand that the more heartily they work together, the more they will have and the better they will live; and this will unite them.'

Time passed on, and again God came to see how men were living, and whether they were now happy.

But he found them living worse than before. They worked together (that they could not help doing), but not all together, being broken up into little groups. And each group tried to snatch work from other groups, and they hindered one another, wasting time and strength in their struggles, so that things went ill with them all.

Having seen that this, too, was not well, God decided so as to arrange things that man should not know the time of his death, but might die at any moment; and he announced this to them.

'Knowing that each of them may die at any moment,' thought God, 'they will not, by grasping at gains that may last so short a time, spoil the hours of life allotted to them.'

But it turned out otherwise. When God returned to see how people were living, he saw that their life was as bad as ever.

Those who were strongest, availing themselves of the fact that men might die at any time, subdued those who were weaker, killing some and threatening others with death. And it came about that the strongest and their descendants did no work, and suffered from the weariness of idleness, while those who were weaker had to work beyond their strength, and suffered from lack of rest. Each set of men feared and hated the other. And the life of man became yet more unhappy.

Having seen all this, God, to mend matters, decided to make use of one last means; he sent all kinds of sickness among men. God thought that when all men were exposed to sickness they would understand that those who are well should have pity on those who are sick, and should help them, that when they themselves fall ill those who are well might in turn help them.

A

To Mrs. Saville, England.

St. Petersburgh, Dec. 11th, 17—.

You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. I arrived here yesterday, and my first task is to assure my dear sister of my welfare and increasing confidence in the success of my undertaking.

I am already far north of London, and as I walk in the streets of Petersburgh, I feel a cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks, which braces my nerves and fills me with delight. Do you understand this feeling? This breeze, which has travelled from the regions towards which I am advancing, gives me a foretaste of those icy climes. Inspirited by this wind of promise, my daydreams become more fervent and vivid. I try in vain to be persuaded that the pole is the seat of frost and desolation; it ever presents itself to my imagination as the region of beauty and delight. There, Margaret, the sun is for ever visible, its broad disk just skirting the horizon and diffusing a perpetual splendour. There—for with your leave, my sister, I will put some trust in preceding navigators—there snow and frost are banished; and, sailing over a calm sea, we may be wafted to a land surpassing in wonders and in beauty every region hitherto discovered on the habitable globe. Its productions and features may be without example, as the phenomena of the heavenly bodies undoubtedly are in those undiscovered solitudes. What may not be expected in a country of eternal light? I may there discover the wondrous power which attracts the needle and may regulate a thousand celestial observations that require only this voyage to render their seeming eccentricities consistent for ever. I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man. These are my enticements, and they are sufficient to conquer all fear of danger or death and to induce me to commence this laborious voyage with the joy a child feels when he embarks in a little boat, with his holiday mates, on an expedition of discovery up his native river. But supposing all these conjectures to be false, you cannot contest the inestimable benefit which I shall confer on all mankind, to the last generation, by discovering a passage near the pole to those countries, to reach which at present so many months are requisite; or by ascertaining the secret of the magnet, which, if at all possible, can only be effected by an undertaking such as mine.

The Statement of Randolph Carter By H. P. Lovecraft

Randolph Carter has been found wandering through swampland in an amnesiac shock. In his statement, Carter attempts to explain the disappearance of his companion, the occultist Harley Warren.

The History of the Necronomicon by H. P. Lovecraft

"History of the Necronomicon" is a short text written by H. P. Lovecraft in 1927, and published in 1938. It describes the fictional book the occult grimoire Necronomicon

Dagon By H. P. Lovecraft

The story is the testament of a tortured, morphine-addicted man who plans to commit suicide over an incident that occurred early on in WWI when he was a merchant marine officer. In the unnamed narrator's account, his cargo ship is captured by a German sea-raider in "one of the most open and least frequented parts of the broad Pacific." He escapes on a lifeboat and drifts aimlessly across the sea "somewhat south of the equator" until he eventually finds himself inexplicably stranded on "a slimy expanse of hellish black mire which extended about me in monotonous undulations as far as I could see.... The region was putrid with the carcasses of decaying fish, and of other less describable things which I saw protruding from the mud of the unending plain." He speculates that this land mass could be "a portion of the ocean floor... thrown to the surface" by a volcanic upheaval, "exposing regions which for innumerable millions of years had lain hidden under unfathomable watery depths."

In The Forest of Villefere by Robert E. Howard on a dark road at night that is known for strange happenings, and strange creatures. de Montour meets a mysterious traveler along the way, who tells him a legend about werewolves.  The Hand by Guy de Maupassant The narrator, a Corsican police magistrate quite familiar with cases of vendetta, revenge, murder, massacre, and hatred, tells of an Englishman living in Corsica who has a dried human hand mounted and chained on his wall. When the Englishman is found murdered, the hand is gone—but a finger is found between his teeth. Later, when the hand itself is found on the Englishman’s grave, as is usual with such supernatural stories, one of the fingers is missing.  A Haunted House by Virginia Woolf the story of a married couple whose home is haunted by two ghosts. The ghosts, however, mean the couple no harm and simply open and close doors and windows in a desperate search for treasure, which the living couple believes does not exist in the house. The woman who lives in the house then discovers the two ghosts were a husband and wife when they were alive

A gunslinger seeks vengeance from beyond the grave.

The narrator finds Innsmouth to be a mostly deserted fishing town, full of dilapidated buildings and people who walk with a distinctive shambling gait and have "queer narrow heads with flat noses and bulgy, stary eyes". The only person in town who appears normal is a grocery store clerk from neighboring Arkham. The narrator gathers much information from the clerk, including a map of the town and the name of Zadok Allen, an elderly local who might give him information when plied with drink. The narrator hears repeatedly that outsiders are never welcomed in Innsmouth, and that strangers, particularly government investigators, have disappeared when they pry too deeply into the