var quotes=new Array()
quotes[0]='Story: To Build a Fire
Author: Jack London (1876-1916)
There are only two characters in To Build a Fire, a man and a dog, although some count Nature as a third character. In the story, Nature is portrayed as the antagonist – the foe against which the man is pitted for survival. However, Nature doesn\'t act deliberately – it simply is, and it is the man\'s own folly and arrogance that causes his death.'
quotes[1]='Story: The Cask of Amontillado
Author: Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
The story is set in a nameless Italian city in an unspecified year (possibly sometime during the 18th century) and concerns the deadly revenge taken by the narrator on a friend who he claims has insulted him. Like several of Poe\'s stories, and in keeping with the 19th-century fascination with the subject, the narrative revolves around a person being buried alive.'
quotes[2]='Story: The Gift of the Magi
Author: O. Henry (1862-1910)
Jim Dillingham Young and his wife Della are a young couple who are very much in love with each other, but can barely afford their one-room apartment due to their very bad economic situation. For Christmas, Della decides to buy Jim a chain which costs twenty-one dollars for his prized pocket watch given to him by his father. To raise the funds, she has her long hair cut off and sold to make a wig. Meanwhile, Jim decides to sell his watch to buy Della a beautiful set of combs made out of tortoise shell for her lovely, knee-length brown hair. Although each is disappointed to find the gift they chose rendered useless, each is pleased with the gift they received, because it represents their love for one another.'
quotes[3]='Story: The Griffin and the Minor Canon
Author: Frank Stockton (1834-1902)
The poor Minor Canon would rather have had his hand cut off than go out to meet an angry griffin; but he felt that it was his duty to go, for it would be a woeful thing if injury should come to the people of the town because he was not brave enough to obey the summons of the Griffin. So, pale and frightened, he started off.'
quotes[4]='Story: The Lady, or the Tiger?
Author: Frank Stockton (1834-1902)
The semi-barbaric King of an ancient land utilized an unusual form of administering justice for offenders in his kingdom. The offender would be placed in an arena where his only way out would be to go through one of two doors. Behind one door was a beautiful woman hand-picked by the king and behind the other was a fierce tiger. The offender was then asked to pick one of the doors, without knowing what was behind it. If he picked the door with the woman behind it, then he was declared innocent but was also required to marry the woman, regardless of previous marital status. If he picked the door with the tiger behind it, though, then he was deemed guilty and the tiger would rip him to pieces.'
quotes[5]='Story: Leiningen versus the Ants
Author: Carl Stephenson (1893-1954)
Leiningen faces, "Ten miles long, two miles wide—ants, nothing but ants!". Moreover, each ant is approximately the size of a man\'s thumb, and out to consume anything and everything organic that falls in its path. It is also mentioned that they can completely pick the flesh from a stag in six minutes.'
quotes[6]='Story: The Minister\'s Black Veil
Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
Hawthorne may have been inspired by a true event. A clergyman named Joseph Moody of York, Maine, nicknamed "Handkerchief Moody", accidentally killed a friend when he was a young man and wore a black veil from the man\'s funeral until his own death.'
quotes[7]='Story: The Most Dangerous Game
Author: Richard Connell (1893-1949)
Features a big-game hunter from New York, who falls off a yacht and swims to an isolated island in the Caribbean, and is hunted by a Russian aristocrat. The story is an inversion of the big-game hunting safaris in Africa and South America that were fashionable among wealthy Americans in the 1920s.'
quotes[8]='Story: The Necklace
Author: Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)
"The Necklace" tells the story of Madame Mathilde Loisel and her husband. When Mathilde was little, she always imagined herself in a high social position with wonderful jewels. However, when she grows up, she has nothing and marries a lowly clerk who is obsessed with making her happy.
Through lots of begging at work, he is able to get two invitations to the Ministry of Education\'s party. Mathilde is upset, for she has nothing to wear. Using money that he was saving to buy a rifle, he lets Mathilde buy a fancy dress. Mathilde also wants jewels to wear with it. Since they have no money left, her husband suggests that she borrow something from her friend, Madame Jeanne Forestier. Mathilde picks out the fanciest jewel necklace that she can find. After attending the Ministry of Education\'s party, Mathilde finds out that she has lost the necklace.'
quotes[9]='Story: The Open Window
Author: H. H. Munro (Saki) (1870-1916)
Framton Nuttel enters the house of Mrs Sappleton. He is a young man from London suffering from nervous exhaustion, and he goes to the country side for some prescribed rest. He decideds to call upon Mrs Sappleton, an acquaintance of his sister\'s.'
quotes[10]='Story: A Passion in the Desert
Author: Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)
In the middle of the night his sleep was troubled by an extraordinary noise; he sat up, and the deep silence around him allowed him to distinguish the alternative accents of a respiration whose savage energy could not belong to a human creature.'
quotes[11]='Story: Shooting an Elephant
Author: George Orwell (1903-1950)
In Moulmein, a police officer during a period of intense anti-European sentiment. Although his intellectual sympathies lie with the Burmese, his official role makes him a symbol of the oppressive imperial power. As such, he is subjected to constant baiting by the local people.
After receiving a call regarding a normally tame elephant\'s rampage (due probably to the animal coming into \'musth\'), the officer armed with a .44 caliber Winchester rifle and riding on a pony, goes to the rice paddies where the elephant has been seen. Entering one of the poorest quarters, he receives conflicting reports and contemplates leaving, thinking the incident is a hoax. The officer then sees a village woman chasing away children who are looking at the corpse of an Indian whom the elephant has trampled and killed. He sends an orderly to bring an elephant rifle and, followed by a group of roughly a few thousand people, heads toward the paddy field where the elephant has rested in its tracks.'
quotes[12]='Story: The Soldier\'s Peaches
Author: Stuart Cloete (1897-1976)
Behind the colonel there was a donkey wagon loaded with yellow peaches. It had just come in and the soldiers were crowded round it, eating peaches and stuffing them into their haversacks to eat on the march.'
quotes[13]='Story: That Pig of a Morin
Author: Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)
Day broke and soon the first ray of sunlight appeared, a long, clear ray which shone on the face of the sleeping girl and woke her. She sat up, looked at the country, then at Morin and smiled. She smiled like a happy woman, with a bright engaging look, and Morin trembled. Certainly that smile was intended for him; it was discreet invitation, the signal which he was waiting for. That smile meant to say: \‘How stupid, what a dolt you are, to have sat there on your seat like a post all night, when you have been alone with a pretty woman, you great simpleton!”'
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