Frank R. Stockton. ‘The Lady or the Tiger?’
Long ago, in the very olden time, there lived a powerful king. Some of his ideas were progressive. But others caused people to suffer. One of the king's ideas was a public arena as an agent of poetic justice. Crime was punished, or innocence was decided, by the result of chance. When a person was accused of a crime, his future would be judged in the public arena.
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"The Tell-Tale Hear" by Edgar Allan Poet
True! Nervous -- very, very nervous I had been and am! But why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses -- not destroyed them.Above all was the sense of hearing. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in the underworld. How, then, am I mad? Observe how healthily -- how calmly I can tell you the whole story.
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'Rappaccini's Daughter' by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Part 1
Many years ago, a young man named Giovanni Guasconti left his home in Naples to study in northern Italy. He rented a small room on the top floor of a dark and ancient palace. Long ago, the building had belonged to a noble family. Now, an old woman, Signora Lisabetta, rented its rooms to students at the University of Padua.
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'Rappaccini's Daughter' by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Part 2
Many years ago, a young man named Giovanni Guasconti left his home in Naples to study in northern Italy. He took a room in an old house next to a magnificent garden filled with strange flowers and other plants.
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‘The Ransom of Red Chief’ by O. Henry
It looked like a good thing. But wait till I tell you. We were down south, in Alabama – Bill Driscoll and myself – when this kidnapping idea struck us. There was a town down there, as flat as a pancake, and called Summit. Bill and I had about six hundred dollars. We needed just two thousand dollars more for an illegal land deal in Illinois
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'The Californian's Tale' by Mark Twain
When I was young, I went looking for gold in California. I never found enough to make me rich. But I did discover a beautiful part of the country. It was called “the Stanislau.” The Stanislau was like Heaven on Earth. It had bright green hills and deep forests where soft winds touched the trees.
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'The Diamond Lens' by Fitz-James O'Brien, Part 1
When I was ten years old, one of my older cousins gave me a microscope. The first time I looked through its magic lens, the clouds that surrounded my daily life rolled away. I saw a universe of tiny living creatures in a drop of water. Day after day, night after nigh, I studied life under my microscope.
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'The Diamond Lens' by Fitz-James O'Brien, Part 2
A young man's love for what he sees through the microscope drives him to madness. Second of two parts.
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'The Last Leaf' by O. Henry
Many artists lived in the Greenwich Village area of New York. Two young women named Sue and Johnsy shared a studio apartment at the top of a three-story building. Johnsy's real name was Joanna.
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'The Devil and Tom Walker' by Washington Irving
Before we begin our story, let us go back three hundred years to the late sixteen hundreds. In those years, one of the most famous men in the world was Captain William Kidd. Captain Kidd was a pirate. He sailed the seas, capturing any ships he found. He and his men took money from these ships. Captain Kidd hid this money in different places.
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