Diana's Short Stories

If the idlers of the streets chalked caricature on the walls, we can not be surprised to discover that Pompeian artists delighted in the comic and burlesque. Comic scenes from the plays of Terence and Plautus, with the names of the characters written over them, have been found, as well as a large number of burlesque scenes, in which dwarfs, deformed people, Pigmies, beasts, and birds are engaged in the ordinary labors of men.

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It is disappointing that no single specimen of the rich Mediæval style of bookbinding exists of English workmanship. Such bindings were undoubtedly made here, and numerous drawings of them are to be seen in contemporary manuscript. It is certain that the intrinsic value of these covers attracted the attention of some of our sovereigns, especially the early Tudors, and whenever they were of any value at all, the crucible accounts for their disappearance. 

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Thus it is doubly difficult to write of this period calmly, so intense was the feeling, so mighty the human passions that swayed and blinded men. Amid it all, two figures ever stand to typify that day to coming ages,—the one, a gray haired gentleman, whose fathers had quit themselves like men, whose sons lay in nameless graves; who bowed to the evil of slavery because its abolition threatened untold ill to all.

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Nevertheless, having little confidence in his own lights, he consulted a celebrated chemist, Vauquelin, from whom he naively inquired how to mix a two sided cosmetic which should produce effects appropriate to the diversified nature of the human epidermis. Truly scientific men  men who are really great in the sense that they never attain in their lifetime the renown which their immense and unrecognized labors deserve  are nearly always kind, and willing to serve the poor in spirit. 

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What could be more intolerable and foolish than my position, Uncle, when I find myself the only nonentity among a crowd of her guests, all celebrated authors and artists? Personally I am nothing, nobody. I pulled through my third year at college by the skin of my teeth, as they say. I have neither money nor brains, and on my passport you may read that I am simply a citizen of Kiev. 

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Eloi was a workman in Limoges, as a youth, under the famous Abho, in the sixth century; there he learned the craft of a goldsmith. He was such a splendid artisan that he soon received commissions for extensive works on his own account. King Clothaire II. ordered from him a golden throne, and supplied the gold which was to be used. 

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The bunkum entertainer is a parasite, a cartoonist, and mimic, a smooth tongued, unscrupulous rascal, who deserves  the conscientious entertainer (who never tries bunkum because he is too stupid and wool headed) so has it  to be banished to a desert island and served to cannibals as minced donkey flesh “à la bunkum.” 

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"--Like to make a proposal to our mutual advanceage  "

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And we should keep our garden up to date. When delphiniums went out of season, we should rub them out and give you chrysanthemums; and if an untimely storm uprooted the chrysanthemums, in an hour or two we should have a wonderful show of dahlias to take their place. And we should still have the floor space free for a sundial, or if you insist on exercise for the last hoop and the stick of a full sized croquet lawn.

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And of course when Mrs. Fox heard that, she looked on the floor of the little porch; and, sure enough, there was the big iron key almost hidden from sight in a little, tiny crack.

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