The Project Gutenberg Project

No man has any right to take beautiful and simple things out of their places, wrap them up in a tissue of his own conceits, and hand them about the universe for gods and men to wonder upon. If he must convey simple things let him convey them simply. If I, for instance, must steal a loaf of bread, would it not be better to walk out of the shop with it under my coat than to call for it in a hansom and hoodwink the baker with a forged cheque on Coutts’s bank? Surely.

- Maurice Hewlett, preface to the second edition of Earthwork out of Tuscany (1898) [full text]

There is nothing frank and open about Siena; none of your robust, red-lunged, open-air Paganism. Théophile Gautier, Baudelaire, Poe—such supersensitive plants should have known it, instead of the ingenuous M. Bourget and the deliberate Mr. Henry James.

- Maurice Hewlett, Earthwork out of Tuscany (1895) [full text]

There is little romance in a railway: the novelists have worked it dry.

- Maurice Hewlett, Earthwork out of Tuscany (1895) [full text]

More frequently than was agreeable, a shot would come ploughing up the ground and raising clouds of dust, or a shell whizz above us. Upon these occasions those around would cry out, “Lie down, mother, lie down!” and with very undignified and unladylike haste I had to embrace the earth, and remain there until the same voices would laughingly assure me that the danger was over, or one, more thoughtful than the rest, would come to give me a helping hand, and hope that the old lady was neither hit nor frightened.

- Mary Seacole, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands (1857) [full text]

From this noble edifice, we bent our steps to another part of the city, and soon found ourselves in the vicinity of St. Patrick’s, where we had a heart-sickening view of the poorest of the poor. All the recollections of poverty which I had ever beheld, seemed to disappear in comparison with what was then before me. We passed a filthy and noisy market, where fruit and vegetable women were screaming and begging those passing by to purchase their commodities; while in and about the market-place were throngs of beggars fighting for rotten fruit, cabbage stocks, and even the very trimmings of vegetables. On the side walks, were great numbers hovering about the doors of the more wealthy, and following strangers, importuning them for “pence to buy bread.” Sickly and emaciated-looking creatures, half naked, were at our heels at every turn. 

- William Wells Brown, Three Years in Europe (1852) [full text]

It was no use giving them carving-knives and forks, for very often they laid their own down to insert a dirty hairy hand into a full dish; while the floor soon bore evidences of the great national American habit of expectoration.

- Mary Seacole, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands (1857) [full text]

It was cold grey dawn, and the rain had ceased, when I followed the man who had taken the dead child away to bury it, and bribed him to carry it by an unfrequented path down to the river-side, and accompany me to the thick retired bush on the opposite bank. Having persuaded him thus much, it was not difficult, with the help of silver arguments to convince him that it would be for the general benefit and his own, if I could learn from this poor little thing the secret inner workings of our common foe; and ultimately he stayed by me, and aided me in my first and last post mortem examination.

- Mary Seacole, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands (1857) [full text]

Then my guide-book would go on to tell how one should climb ordinary mountains, and why one should avoid feats; and how to lose a guide which is a very valuable art, for when you have lost your guide you need not pay him. My book will also have a note (for it is hardly worth a chapter) on the proper method of frightening sheep dogs when they attempt to kill you with their teeth upon the everlasting hills.

- Hilaire Belloc, On Something (1910) [full text]

I hardly know any annoyance so deeply repugnant to English feelings, as the incessant, remorseless spitting of Americans.

- Fanny Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832) [full text]