Just Reading and Writing!

1.                 It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

2.                 It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, etc

3.                 Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.

4.                 I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty equally bound to it, had minded what they said when they begot me.

5.                 The past is a different country, they do things differently there.

6.                 In that pleasant district of merry England which is watered by the River Don, there extended in ancient times a large forest, covering the greater part of the beautiful hills and valleys which lie between Sheffield and the pleasant town of Doncaster.

7.                 There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.

8.                 Buck did not read newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide water dog, strong of muscle and with warm long hair from Puget Sound to San Diego.

9.                 Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to wit a workhouse; and in this workhouse was born; on a day and date which I need not trouble myself to repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible consequence to the reader, in this stage of the business at all events; the item of mortality whose name is prefixed to the head of this chapter.

10.             On the 24^th February, 1815, the watch tower of Notre-Dame de la Garde signalled the arrival of the three-master Pharaon, from Smyrna, Trieste and Naples.

11.             Mr Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the popholes.

12.             Mr .... .... who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table.

13.             1801 - I have just returned from a visit to my landlord - the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with.

14.             3 May Bistriz - Left Munich at 8:25 p.m. on 1^st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46 but train was an hour late.

15.             No-one would have believed in the last years of the 19^th century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than mans' and yet as mortal as his own; that as man busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.