response 50 of 224:

Oct 27 14:51 UTC 2003

Okay, here's the next entry.  I have google-proofed it by substituting 
a word or two from each line, without (I hope) altering the meaning or 
feel of the story.

---

I had soon told my tale and began to look about me.
The log hut was built of unsquared trunks of pine--
roof, walls, and floor.  The floor stood in several
places as much as 12 inches or a foot and a half above the
surface of the sand.  There was a patio at the door,
and under this patio the little spring welled up into
an artificial bowl of a rather odd kind--no other than
a great ship's pot of iron, with the bottom knocked
out, and sunk "to her bearings," as the captain remarked,
in the sand.

response 52 of 224:

Oct 27 15:22 UTC 2003

Yep.  You're next!

It's a great book, but for some reason I had never read it until I 
bought a copy at a library book sale in Tecumseh.  I wasn't even 
familiar with the storyline until I saw the movie "Treasure Planet" 
last year.

I have spent too much of my life reading science fiction, to the 
exclusion of all other types of literature.

response 54 of 224:

Oct 27 16:22 UTC 2003

Ok, I'll do another easy one :) I have deleted names and replaced them 
with initials just to kind of make it a little harder. 

"Do not make yourself uneasy, my dear cousin, about your apparel. Lady 
C. is far from requiring that elegance of dress in us, which becomes 
herself and daughter. I would advise you merely to put on whatever of 
your clothes is superior to the rest, there is no occasion for any 
thing more. Lady C. will not think the worse of you for being simply 
dressed. She likes to have the distinction of rank preserved."

response 56 of 224:

Oct 27 18:00 UTC 2003

Great Expectations...?

response 58 of 224:

Oct 27 18:47 UTC 2003

Very good Kip! You are up next. That is one of more famous lines from 
that book. I love it! Jane Austin really knew how to write a romantic 
comedy. 

response 60 of 224:

Nov 3 15:16 UTC 2003

Since no new posting has appeared, here's one:

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


In my native town of [name], at the head of what, half a century ago, in
the days of old King Derby, was a bustling wharf, -- but which is now
burdened with decayed wooden warehouses, and exhibits few or no symptoms
of commercial life; except, perhaps, a bark or brig, half-way down its
melancholy length, discharging hides; or, nearer at hand, a Nova Scotia
schooner, pitching out her cargo of firewood, -- at the head, I say, of
this dilapidated wharf, which the tide often overflows, and along which,
at the base and in the rear of the row of buildings, the track of many
languid years is seen in a border of unthrifty grass, -- here, with a view
from its front windows adown this not very enlivening prospect, and thence
across the harbour, stands a spacious edifice of brick. From the loftiest
point of its roof, during precisely three and a half hours of each
forenoon, floats or droops, in breeze or calm, the banner of the republic; 
but with the thirteen stripes turned vertically, instead of horizontally,
and thus indicating that a civil, and not a military post of Uncle Sam's
government, is here established. Its front is ornamented with a portico of
half a dozen wooden pillars, supporting a balcony, beneath which a flight
of wide granite steps descends towards the street. Over the entrance
hovers an enormous specimen of the American eagle, with outspread wings, a
shield before her breast, and, if I recollect aright, a bunch of
intermingled thunderbolts and barbed arrows in each claw. With the
customary infirmity of temper that characterizes this unhappy fowl, she
appears, by the fierceness of her beak and eye and the general truculency
of her attitude, to threaten mischief to the inoffensive community; and
especially to warn all citizens, careful of their safety, against
intruding on the premises which she overshadows with her wings. 
Nevertheless, vixenly as she looks, many people are seeking, at this very
moment, to shelter themselves under the wing of the federal eagle;
imagining, I presume, that her bosom has all the softness and snugness of
an eider-down pillow. But she has no great tenderness, even in her best of
moods, and, sooner or later, -- oftener soon than late, -- is apt to fling
off her nestlings with a scratch of her claw, a dab of her beak, or a
rankling wound from her barbed arrows. 

response 62 of 224:

Nov 3 19:36 UTC 2003

I disagree.  It is an absoluty beautiful piece of writing.

response 64 of 224:

Nov 3 20:02 UTC 2003

Please go ahead and identify the person responsible.

response 66 of 224:

Nov 3 22:00 UTC 2003

Like our Congress......

response 68 of 224:

Nov 3 23:20 UTC 2003

  re #66:  except for the "beautiful and majestic in appearance" part..

response 70 of 224:

Nov 3 23:37 UTC 2003

Hawthorne, "The Custom House."  Prose doesn't get much better-written 
than that.