// Abraham Lincoln http://www.classic-literature.co.uk/american-authors/19th-century/abraham-lincoln/the-writings-of-abraham-lincoln-01/ebook-page-02.asp
var txt1 = "It is impossible to conceive of a man farther removed from baseness, farther removed from corruption, from mere self- seeking; but it is also impossible to conceive of a man of more sane and healthy mind--a man less under the influence of that fantastic and diseased morality (so fantastic and diseased as to be in reality profoundly immoral) which makes a man in this work- a-day world refuse to do what is possible because he cannot accomplish the impossible. \n"
txt1 += "\n"
txt1 += "In the fifth volume of Lecky's History of England, the historian draws an interesting distinction between the qualities needed for a successful political career in modern society and those which lead to eminence in the spheres of pure intellect or pure moral effort. He says: \n"
txt1 += "\n"
txt1 += "\"....the moral qualities that are required in the higher spheres of statesmanship [are not] those of a hero or a saint. Passionate earnestness and self-devotion, complete concentration of every faculty on an unselfish aim, uncalculating daring, a delicacy of conscience and a loftiness of aim far exceeding those of the average of men, are here likely to prove rather a hindrance than an assistance. The politician deals very largely with the superficial and the commonplace; his art is in a great measure that of skilful compromise, and in the conditions of modern life, the statesman is likely to succeed best who possesses secondary qualities to an unusual degree, who is in the closest intellectual and moral sympathy with the average of the intelligent men of his time, and who pursues common ideals with. mow than common ability.... Tact, business talent, knowledge of men, resolution, promptitude and sagacity in dealing with immediate emergencies, a character which lends itself easily to conciliation, diminishes friction and inspires confidence, are especially needed, and they are more likely to be found among shrewd and enlightened men of the world than among men of great original genius or of an heroic type of character.\" \n"
txt1 += "\n"
txt1 += "The American people should feel profoundly grateful that the greatest American statesman since Washington, the statesman who in this absolutely democratic republic succeeded best, was the very man who actually combined the two sets of qualities which the historian thus puts in antithesis. Abraham Lincoln, the rail-splitter, the Western country lawyer, was one of the shrewdest and most enlightened men of the world, and he had all the practical qualities which enable such a man to guide his countrymen; and yet he was also a genius of the heroic type, a leader who rose level to the greatest crisis through which this nation or any other nation had to pass in the nineteenth century. \n"
txt1 += "\n"
txt1 += "THEODORE ROOSEVELT \n"
txt1 += "\n"
txt1 += "SAGAMORE HILL, OYSTER BAY, N. Y., September 22, 1905. \n"
txt1 += "\n"
txt1 += "INTRODUCTORY NOTE \n"
txt1 += "\n"
txt1 += "\"I have endured,\" wrote Lincoln not long before his death, \"a great deal of ridicule without much malice, and have received a great deal of kindness not quite free from ridicule.\" On Easter Day, 1865, the world knew how little this ridicule, how much this kindness, had really signified. Thereafter, Lincoln the man became Lincoln the hero, year by year more heroic, until to-day, with the swift passing of those who knew him, his figure grows ever dimmer, less real. This should not be. For Lincoln the man, patient, wise, set in a high resolve, is worth far more than Lincoln the hero, vaguely glorious. Invaluable is the example of the man, intangible that of the hero. \n"
txt1 += "\n"
txt1 += "And, though it is not for us, as for those who in awed stillness listened at Gettysburg with inspired perception, to know Abraham Lincoln, yet there is for us another way whereby we may attain such knowledge--through his words--uttered in all sincerity to those who loved or hated him. Cold, unsatisfying they may seem, these printed words, while we can yet speak with those who knew him, and look into eyes that once looked into his. But in truth it is here that we find his simple greatness, his great simplicity, and though no man tried less so to show his power, no man has so shown it more clearly. \n"

// William Shakespeare http://william-shakespeare.classic-literature.co.uk/the-rape-of-lucrece/ebook-page-02.asp
var txt2 = "Beauty itself doth of itself persuade The eyes of men without an orator; What needeth then apologies be made, To set forth that which is so singular? Or why is Collatine the publisher Of that rich jewel he should keep unknown From thievish ears, because it is his own? \n"
txt2 += "\n"
txt2 += "Perchance his boast of Lucrece' sovereignty Suggested this proud issue of a king; For by our ears our hearts oft tainted be: Perchance that envy of so rich a thing, Braving compare, disdainfully did sting His high-pitch'd thoughts, that meaner men should vaunt That golden hap which their superiors want. \n"
txt2 += "\n"
txt2 += "But some untimely thought did instigate His all-too-timeless speed, if none of those; His honour, his affairs, his friends, his state, Neglected all, with swift intent he goes To quench the coal which in his liver glows. O rash false heat, wrapp'd in repentant cold, Thy hasty spring still blasts, and ne'er grows old! \n"
txt2 += "\n"
txt2 += "When at Collatium this false lord arrived, Well was he welcomed by the Roman dame, Within whose face beauty and virtue strived Which of them both should underprop her fame: When virtue bragg'd, beauty would blush for shame When beauty boasted blushes, in despite Virtue would stain that o'er with silver white. \n"
txt2 += "\n"
txt2 += "But beauty, in that white intituled, From Venus' doves doth challenge that fair field: Then virtue claims from beauty beauty's red, Which virtue gave the golden age to gild Their silver cheeks, and call'd it then their shield; Teaching them thus to use it in the fight, When shame assail'd, the red should fence the white. \n"
txt2 += "\n"
txt2 += "This heraldry in Lucrece' face was seen, Argued by beauty's red and virtue's white: Of either's colour was the other queen, Proving from world's minority their right: Yet their ambition makes them still to fight; The sovereignty of either being so great, That oft they interchange each other's seat. \n"
txt2 += "\n"
txt2 += "Their silent war of lilies and of roses, Which Tarquin view'd in her fair face's field, In their pure ranks his traitor eye encloses; Where, lest between them both it should be kill'd, The coward captive vanquished doth yield To those two armies that would let him go, Rather than triumph in so false a foe. \n"
txt2 += "\n"
txt2 += "Now thinks he that her husband's shallow tongue,-- The niggard prodigal that praised her so,-- In that high task hath done her beauty wrong, Which far exceeds his barren skill to show: Therefore that praise which Collatine doth owe Enchanted Tarquin answers with surmise, In silent wonder of still-gazing eyes. \n"
txt2 += "\n"
txt2 += "This earthly saint, adored by this devil, Little suspecteth the false worshipper; For unstain'd thoughts do seldom dream on evil; Birds never limed no secret bushes fear: So guiltless she securely gives good cheer And reverend welcome to her princely guest, Whose inward ill no outward harm express'd: \n"
txt2 += "\n"
txt2 += "For that he colour'd with his high estate, Hiding base sin in plaits of majesty; That nothing in him seem'd inordinate, Save sometime too much wonder of his eye, Which, having all, all could not satisfy; But, poorly rich, so wanteth in his store, That, cloy'd with much, he pineth still for more. \n"
txt2 += "\n"
txt2 += "But she, that never coped with stranger eyes, Could pick no meaning from their parling looks, Nor read the subtle-shining secrecies Writ in the glassy margents of such books: She touch'd no unknown baits, nor fear'd no hooks; Nor could she moralize his wanton sight, More than his eyes were open'd to the light. \n"
txt2 += "\n"
txt2 += "He stories to her ears her husband's fame, Won in the fields of fruitful Italy; And decks with praises Collatine's high name, Made glorious by his manly chivalry With bruised arms and wreaths of victory: Her joy with heaved-up hand she doth express, And, wordless, so greets heaven for his success. \n"
txt2 += "\n"
txt2 += "Far from the purpose of his coming hither, He makes excuses for his being there: No cloudy show of stormy blustering weather Doth yet in his fair welkin once appear; Till sable Night, mother of Dread and Fear, Upon the world dim darkness doth display, And in her vaulty prison stows the Day. \n"
txt2 += "\n"
txt2 += "For then is Tarquin brought unto his bed, Intending weariness with heavy spright; For, after supper, long he questioned With modest Lucrece, and wore out the night: Now leaden slumber with life's strength doth fight; And every one to rest themselves betake, Save thieves, and cares, and troubled minds, that wake.\n"

// Edgar Allan Poe http://www.classic-literature.co.uk/american-authors/19th-century/edgar-allan-poe/the-island-of-the-fay/book-page-02.asp
var txt3= "It was during one of my lonely journeyings, amid a far distant region of mountain locked within mountain, and sad rivers and melancholy tarn writhing or sleeping within all -- that I chanced upon a certain rivulet and island. I came upon them suddenly in the leafy June, and threw myself upon the turf, beneath the branches of an unknown odorous shrub, that I might doze as I contemplated the scene. I felt that thus only should I look upon it -- such was the character of phantasm which it wore. \n"
txt3 +="\n"
txt3 +="On all sides -- save to the west, where the sun was about sinking -- arose the verdant walls of the forest. The little river which turned sharply in its course, and was thus immediately lost to sight, seemed to have no exit from its prison, but to be absorbed by the deep green foliage of the trees to the east -- while in the opposite quarter (so it appeared to me as I lay at length and glanced upward) there poured down noiselessly and continuously into the valley, a rich golden and crimson waterfall from the sunset fountains of the sky. \n"
txt3 +="\n"
txt3 +="About midway in the short vista which my dreamy vision took in, one small circular island, profusely verdured, reposed upon the bosom of the stream. \n"
txt3 +="\n"
txt3 +="So blended bank and shadow there \n"
txt3 +="\n"
txt3 +="That each seemed pendulous in air -- so mirror-like was the glassy water, that it was scarcely possible to say at what point upon the slope of the emerald turf its crystal dominion began. \n"
txt3 +="\n"
txt3 +="My position enabled me to include in a single view both the eastern and western extremities of the islet; and I observed a singularly-marked difference in their aspects. The latter was all one radiant harem of garden beauties. It glowed and blushed beneath the eyes of the slant sunlight, and fairly laughed with flowers. The grass was short, springy, sweet-scented, and Asphodel-interspersed. The trees were lithe, mirthful, erect -- bright, slender, and graceful, -- of eastern figure and foliage, with bark smooth, glossy, and parti-colored. There seemed a deep sense of life and joy about all; and although no airs blew from out the heavens, yet every thing had motion through the gentle sweepings to and fro of innumerable butterflies, that might have been mistaken for tulips with wings. \n"
txt3 +="\n"
txt3 +="The other or eastern end of the isle was whelmed in the blackest shade. A sombre, yet beautiful and peaceful gloom here pervaded all things. The trees were dark in color, and mournful in form and attitude, wreathing themselves into sad, solemn, and spectral shapes that conveyed ideas of mortal sorrow and untimely death. The grass wore the deep tint of the cypress, and the heads of its blades hung droopingly, and hither and thither among it were many small unsightly hillocks, low and narrow, and not very long, that had the aspect of graves, but were not; although over and all about them the rue and the rosemary clambered. The shade of the trees fell heavily upon the water, and seemed to bury itself therein, impregnating the depths of the element with darkness. I fancied that each shadow, as the sun descended lower and lower, separated itself sullenly from the trunk that gave it birth, and thus became absorbed by the stream; while other shadows issued momently from the trees, taking the place of their predecessors thus entombed. \n"
txt3 +="\n"
txt3 +="This idea, having once seized upon my fancy, greatly excited it, and I lost myself forthwith in revery. \"If ever island were enchanted,\" said I to myself, \"this is it. This is the haunt of the few gentle Fays who remain from the wreck of the race. Are these green tombs theirs? -- or do they yield up their sweet lives as mankind yield up their own? In dying, do they not rather waste away mournfully, rendering unto God, little by little, their existence, as these trees render up shadow after shadow, exhausting their substance unto dissolution? What the wasting tree is to the water that imbibes its shade, growing thus blacker by what it preys upon, may not the life of the Fay be to the death which engulfs it?\" \n"
txt3 +="\n"
txt3 += "As I thus mused, with half-shut eyes, while the sun sank rapidly to rest, and eddying currents careered round and round the island, bearing upon their bosom large, dazzling, white flakes of the bark of the sycamore-flakes which, in their multiform positions upon the water, a quick imagination might have converted into any thing it pleased, while I thus mused, it appeared to me that the form of one of those very Fays about whom I had been pondering made its way slowly into the darkness from out the light at the western end of the island. She stood erect in a singularly fragile canoe, and urged it with the mere phantom of an oar. While within the influence of the lingering sunbeams, her attitude seemed indicative of joy -- but sorrow deformed it as she passed within the shade. Slowly she glided along, and at length rounded the islet and re-entered the region of light. \"The revolution which has just been made by the Fay,\" continued I, musingly, \"is the cycle of the brief year of her life. She has floated through her winter and through her summer. \n"

// Francis Bacon http://www.classic-literature.co.uk/british-authors/16th-century/francis-bacon/the-advancement-of-learning/
var txt4 = "THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING \n"
txt4 += "\n"
txt4 += "INTRODUCTION. \n"
txt4 += "\n"
txt4 += "\"The TVVOO Bookes of Francis Bacon. Of the proficience and aduancement of Learning, divine and humane. To the King. At London. Printed for Henrie Tomes, and are to be sould at his shop at Graies Inne Gate in Holborne. 1605.\" That was the original title-page of the book now in the reader's hand--a living book that led the way to a new world of thought. It was the book in which Bacon, early in the reign of James the First, prepared the way for a full setting forth of his New Organon, or instrument of knowledge. \n"
txt4 += "\n"
txt4 += "The Organon of Aristotle was a set of treatises in which Aristotle had written the doctrine of propositions. Study of these treatises was a chief occupation of young men when they passed from school to college, and proceeded from Grammar to Logic, the second of the Seven Sciences. Francis Bacon as a youth of sixteen, at Trinity College, Cambridge, felt the unfruitfulness of this method of search after truth. He was the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Queen Elizabeth's Lord Keeper, and was born at York House, in the Strand, on the 22nd of January, 1561. His mother was the Lord Keeper's second wife, one of two sisters, of whom the other married Sir William Cecil, afterwards Lord Burleigh. Sir Nicholas Bacon had six children by his former marriage, and by his second wife two sons, Antony and Francis, of whom Antony was about two years the elder. The family home was at York Place, and at Gorhambury, near St. Albans, from which town, in its ancient and its modern style, Bacon afterwards took his titles of Verulam and St. Albans. \n"
txt4 += "\n"
txt4 += "Antony and Francis Bacon went together to Trinity College, Cambridge, when Antony was fourteen years old and Francis twelve. Francis remained at Cambridge only until his sixteenth year; and Dr. Rawley, his chaplain in after-years, reports of him that \"whilst he was commorant in the University, about sixteen years of age (as his lordship hath been pleased to impart unto myself), he first fell into dislike of the philosophy of Aristotle; not for the worthlessness of the author, to whom he would ascribe all high attributes, but for the unfruitfulness of the way, being a philosophy (as his lordship used to say) only strong for disputatious and contentions, but barren of the production of works for the benefit of the life of man; in which mind he continued to his dying day.\" Bacon was sent as a youth of sixteen to Paris with the ambassador Sir Amyas Paulet, to begin his training for the public service; but his father's death, in February, 1579, before he had completed the provision he was making for his youngest children, obliged him to return to London, and, at the age of eighteen, to settle down at Gray's Inn to the study of law as a profession. He was admitted to the outer bar in June, 1582, and about that time, at the age of twenty-one, wrote a sketch of his conception of a New Organon that should lead man to more fruitful knowledge, in a little Latin tract, which he called \"Temporis Partus Maximus\" (\"The Greatest Birth of Time\"). \n"
txt4 += "\n"
txt4 += "In November, 1584, Bacon took his seat in the House of Commons as member for Melcombe Regis, in Dorsetshire. In October, 1586, he sat for Taunton. He was member afterwards for Liverpool; and he was one of those who petitioned for the speedy execution of Mary Queen of Scots. In October, 1589, he obtained the reversion of the office of Clerk of the Council in the Star Chamber, which was worth 1,600 pounds or 2,000 pounds a year; but for the succession to this office he had to wait until 1608. It had not yet fallen to him when he wrote his \"Two Books of the Advancement of Learning.\" In the Parliament that met in February, 1593, Bacon sat as member for Middlesex. He raised difficulties of procedure in the way of the grant of a treble subsidy, by just objection to the joining of the Lords with the Commons in a money grant, and a desire to extend the time allowed for payment from three years to six; it was, in fact, extended to four years. The Queen was offended. \n"

// Charles Dickens http://www.charles-dickens.org/the-life-and-adventures-of-nicholas-nickleby/ebook-page-04.asp
var txt5 ="Mr Nickleby's income, at the period of his marriage, fluctuated between sixty and eighty pounds PER ANNUM. \n"
txt5 += "\n"
txt5 += "There are people enough in the world, Heaven knows! and even in London (where Mr Nickleby dwelt in those days) but few complaints prevail, of the population being scanty. It is extraordinary how long a man may look among the crowd without discovering the face of a friend, but it is no less true. Mr Nickleby looked, and looked, till his eyes became sore as his heart, but no friend appeared; and when, growing tired of the search, he turned his eyes homeward, he saw very little there to relieve his weary vision. A painter who has gazed too long upon some glaring colour, refreshes his dazzled sight by looking upon a darker and more sombre tint; but everything that met Mr Nickleby's gaze wore so black and gloomy a hue, that he would have been beyond description refreshed by the very reverse of the contrast. \n"
txt5 += "\n"
txt5 += "At length, after five years, when Mrs Nickleby had presented her husband with a couple of sons, and that embarassed gentleman, impressed with the necessity of making some provision for his family, was seriously revolving in his mind a little commercial speculation of insuring his life next quarter-day, and then falling from the top of the Monument by accident, there came, one morning, by the general post, a black-bordered letter to inform him how his uncle, Mr Ralph Nickleby, was dead, and had left him the bulk of his little property, amounting in all to five thousand pounds sterling. \n"
txt5 += "\n"
txt5 += "As the deceased had taken no further notice of his nephew in his lifetime, than sending to his eldest boy (who had been christened after him, on desperate speculation) a silver spoon in a morocco case, which, as he had not too much to eat with it, seemed a kind of satire upon his having been born without that useful article of plate in his mouth, Mr Godfrey Nickleby could, at first, scarcely believe the tidings thus conveyed to him. On examination, however, they turned out to be strictly correct. The amiable old gentleman, it seemed, had intended to leave the whole to the Royal Humane Society, and had indeed executed a will to that effect; but the Institution, having been unfortunate enough, a few months before, to save the life of a poor relation to whom he paid a weekly allowance of three shillings and sixpence, he had, in a fit of very natural exasperation, revoked the bequest in a codicil, and left it all to Mr Godfrey Nickleby; with a special mention of his indignation, not only against the society for saving the poor relation's life, but against the poor relation also, for allowing himself to be saved. \n"
txt5 += "\n"
txt5 += "With a portion of this property Mr Godfrey Nickleby purchased a small farm, near Dawlish in Devonshire, whither he retired with his wife and two children, to live upon the best interest he could get for the rest of his money, and the little produce he could raise from his land. The two prospered so well together that, when he died, some fifteen years after this period, and some five after his wife, he was enabled to leave, to his eldest son, Ralph, three thousand pounds in cash, and to his youngest son, Nicholas, one thousand and the farm, which was as small a landed estate as one would desire to see. \n"
txt5 += "\n"
txt5 += "These two brothers had been brought up together in a school at Exeter; and, being accustomed to go home once a week, had often heard, from their mother's lips, long accounts of their father's sufferings in his days of poverty, and of their deceased uncle's importance in his days of affluence: which recitals produced a very different impression on the two: for, while the younger, who was of a timid and retiring disposition, gleaned from thence nothing but forewarnings to shun the great world and attach himself to the quiet routine of a country life, Ralph, the elder, deduced from the often- repeated tale the two great morals that riches are the only true source of happiness and power, and that it is lawful and just to compass their acquisition by all means short of felony.\n"