book_id
stringlengths 2
6
| title
stringclasses 1
value | author
stringclasses 1
value | conversations
listlengths 1
5.07k
|
|---|---|---|---|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Here is a mistake, sir; the bond as entered does not become due until to-morrow. Ryland begged permission to look at the book, and after leisurely and coolly inspecting it, said,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "There must be an error in your entry of one day,"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "So you are the very man I am seeking. The artist said so calmly,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I think you are mistaken, I don't remember you, that the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "apologised and wished him"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "No! a man with such talent could not have been unable to provide amply for all his wants. Angelo said,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Had a Shakespeare or a Milton committed a similar act of fraud in those iron days of jurisprudence, their fate had doubtless been the same. Ryland petitioned for a respite, on the ground that he was then engraving the last of a series of plates from the paintings of Signora Angelica Kauffman, and was anxious to complete it to enable his wife after his execution to support herself and his children. His request was granted, and it is stated,"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The Black Bear, and having previously failed as landlord of"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The White Lion, at Bath. Bernard in his 'Retrospections,' speaks of"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Young Lawrence the painter, then about seventeen, as"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "and some little time after, with a view to his adopting the stage as a profession, Tom Lawrence recited before Bernard and John Palmer the actor, when the latter strove to enforce his father's opinion, and convince him that his prospects as a painter were superior to those he would have as an actor. It was some time before he could realize this, and when he did he said with a sigh,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "If I could go upon the stage, I thought I might be able to help my family much sooner than I can in my present employment. The earnestness and the regret he expressed in the tone of these words deeply affected all who were present. It was many years before Thomas Lawrence escaped from the fangs of impecuniosity, so absorbing were the drafts made upon his purse by the wants of his parents. His father used to hawk his son's crayon drawings about London at half a guinea each. One of his contemporary biographers, says,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Sir Thomas, though he sometimes confidentially accounted for his straitened circumstances through life by referring to his early burdens, never regretted them, nor murmured at their reminiscence."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Rainy-day Smith. It is a tale of Alderman Boydell, who at twenty-one years of age walked to London, because he had no money to come by the waggon, and apprenticed himself to Mr. Thorns, an engraver and artist, attending whenever possible, an academy opened in St. Martin's Lane for poor art students by a group of well-known artists, whose subscriptions paid for its support, and to which Hogarth contributed his father-in-law's casts and models, learning perspective at the same time in his own humble lodging after his return at night. Boydell being out of his time, and unable to obtain regular employment, used to engrave small plates--views of London and landscapes--print them himself, make them up into little books, and sell them to keepers of toyshops to re-sell at sixpence a set of six, or a penny each. These shops he visited regularly every Saturday to see if any had been sold, and leave others to replace those that had happily been disposed of. His best customer was found at the sign of"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The Cricket Bat"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Better than my bread and meat. He was soon afterwards in London, where Sir Joshua Reynolds befriended him, and he became known and popular as"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I am determined to no longer encourage your idleness; there is a guinea, take it and go about your business. George succeeded in supporting himself, and lived a life of the most degrading dissipation, his favourite companions being jockeys, ostlers, carters, money-lenders, gipsies, and women of abandoned character. He so cruelly ill-used his wife--a sister of James Ward, R.A.--that although strongly attached to him, she dared not live with him."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "He died, as Smith says,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Such a career could not but be fruitful of the troubles, cares, dangers, and difficulties arising from impecuniosity. At one time, when on an excursion to the coast of Kent with one of his favourite companions, a brother artist, probably to escape duns, they spent their money so freely on the road, that long before they reached their destination they were penniless and hungry. When nearing Canterbury they espied a homely roadside alehouse called"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The Black Bull, and hailing it with delight they entered, and soon made alarming havoc amongst the lowly edibles and potables set before them; smuggled full-proof spirits being ordered and disposed of in the most astonishing manner. When the bill was produced Morland frankly confessed they were a couple of poor itinerant artists in search of employment, and without a penny in the world."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "But, said he,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "--which amounted to twelve shillings and sixpence. The landlord had long wanted a new sign; he agreed to the proposition. Morland began the work, and as it could not be finished on that day, the host supplied him and his friend with lodging for the night. On the following day the new sign was so much to the satisfaction of the innkeeper that he furnished the friends with gin to the amount of two guineas, together with some food, and when it was finished added a few shillings to help them on their way. Many similar stories are extant of this celebrated painter."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The Goat and Boots in the Fulham Road received a new sign from him in the same way; and to pay another tavern score he did a like service for"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The Cricketers"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Sur, there are sacreets in the art, whuch whun a mon hae foound oot, he mun keep to himsel."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I shall be very happy to tell you anything I know. You need not fear to ask me; the art of a painter is unlike that of a juggler, it does not depend upon a trick. In art we have no secrets, and all painters are always glad to tell what they know to young fellow-students."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "We don't purchase modern pictures. Happily this is altered now to some extent, though the reception awarded a novice in the present day is not very encouraging if all aspirants are treated in a like manner to an extremely clever young friend of mine, who, I doubt not, will be heard of some day. When he presented his canvas, or sketch, he was told,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "We don't buy the paintings of unknown men. One of Wilkie's pictures thus rejected was a little one of a subject afterwards re-painted on a larger scale,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The Blind Fiddler."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Wilkie, he says,"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "When it was finished, he pawned his only decent coat to raise $7.50 for a frame in which it was sent to an art mart."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Then he spent the day walking around, and calculating what he would do with the thousand the great work would bring him in. Then he called at the auction room to collect. 'Had the picture been sold?' 'It had,' said the clerk. 'How much?' 'Five dollars and a half.' Sontagg dined on a"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "and went to bed in the dark. I may remark for the benefit of those uninitiated in Colonial and American drinking customs, the"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Never min, ye can mak a shift, wash the ane I hae on, and I'll gang to my bed till it's dry. My puir mither hae often to do that."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "When I die, be that event when it may, there will not be two penny pieces left to close my eyes."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Curiously enough, said Rogers,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Chantrey asked,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Did you see it made? and Rogers, supposing the query to be one of incredulity, replied positively,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Certainly! I was in the room while the man finished it with the chisel, and I gave him instructions in placing it. Chantrey laughed, and said,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "You did. I remember that, and all the circumstances perfectly well."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "You! exclaimed the poet."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Yes, said Chantrey quietly."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I was the carpenter."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The Queen's Head,"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The English Claude. It belonged to a tavern called"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The Three Loggerheads;"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Hey! what! Do _you_ call this painting, Dalton? Take it away! I call it daubing, hey! What! It's a mere daub."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "What does he ask for this daub? And when Dalton replied"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "One hundred guineas,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "One hundred guineas! Hey! What, Dalton! Then you may tell Mr. Wilson it's the dearest picture I ever saw. Too much--too much--tell him I say so."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Well, Dicky Dalton, what says his Majesty?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Why--a--with--a--regard to the picture--a--As for my--a--own opinion--why--a--you know, Mr. Wilson, that--a--indeed----"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "His Majesty don't approve--but I know your friendly zeal--go on."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Why in truth, my dear friend, I venture to think the a--the finishing is--not altogether answerable to His Majesty's anticipations."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Humph! Not every leaf made out, hey?--not every blade of grass? What else? Out with it, man."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Why then--a--His--His Majesty thinks--a--that the price is--is--is a great deal of money."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Tell His Majesty I do not wish to distress him, I will take it by instalments--say a guinea a week."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Come, come, my old Trojan--come, old boy--I wish I could set you purring like old puss there."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I wish I knew how to send him ten pounds in some delicate way which could not give him offence. Do you think he has some very trifling sketch I could buy for that sum? I have no taste for pictures, but I would give him a commission if my income were not too slender. I am so distressed that so great a genius should be entirely without means. Taylor told this story delicately to Wilson, who was much touched by it, and said,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I have no scrap such as your friend desires to have, but if the thing were not bruited about I would be happy to send him one of my easel pictures, which you know I never sell for less than sixteen guineas."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "One of the most delightful parts of my life was one fine summer, when I used to walk out of an evening to catch the last light of the sun, gemming the green slopes of the russet lawns, and gilding tower or tree, while the blue sky, gradually turning to purple and gold, or skirted with dusky grey, flung its broad mantle over all, as we see it in the great master of Italian landscape. Hazlitt abandoned the brush for the pen when he found that he could not realize his own conceptions, nor satisfy his own critical judgment; but it is evident from the following extract that his early art-life was not free from the imputation of being impecunious. He says, after receiving the money for a portrait he had finished in great haste for the sake of getting the cash,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I went to market myself and dined on sausages and mashed potatoes; and, while they were getting ready, and I could hear them frying in the pan, read a volume of 'Gil Blas' containing the account of the fair Aurora. This was in the days of my youth. Do not smile, gentle reader. Neither M. de Verry nor Louis XVIII. over an oyster _pâte_, nor Apicius himself, ever understood the meaning of the word luxury better than I did at that moment."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Here began debt and obligation, out of which I have never been, and never shall be, extricated as long as I live. Haydon, as I said, was a strange mixture, and though possessed of a nature truly poetical, he was in some things wondrously practical; for the bailiffs put into his house he utilized as models. One sat, he tells us in his diary,"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "How could you do so? he exclaimed."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I am not fit for anything of the kind. How can I ever hope to pay you the money back?"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "What are these for?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "How can you put so preposterous a question? For my dinner to be sure, man."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "But two shillings is not fair compensation, Barry. Surely it was worth a crown."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Baw-baw, man! You know I never pay more."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "But you have not paid for your wine."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Shu-shu! If you can't afford it, why do you give it? Painters have no business with wine."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Barry, says Angelo,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Half the common dishes would supersede turtle and venison, if your old, pampered peers and mighty patricians were to peep and peer into their own cook's pot."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "What claim had one of these of whom I have been speaking but genius? What return of gratitude, fame, affection, did it not bring to all? What punishment befell those who were unfortunate among them but that which follows reckless habits and careless lives? For these faults a wit must suffer like the dullest prodigal that ever ran in debt. He must pay the tailor if he wears the coat; his children must go in rags if he spends his money at the tavern; he can't come to London and be made Lord Chancellor if he stops on the road and gambles away his last shilling at Dublin, and he must pay the social penalty of these follies, too, and expect that the world will shun the man of bad habits; that women will avoid the man of loose life; that prudent folks will close their doors as a precaution, and before a demand should be made on their pockets by the needy prodigal."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "After all my boasted independence, cursed necessity compels me to implore you for five pounds. A cruel scoundrel of a haberdasher, to whom I owe an account, taking it into his head that I am dying, has commenced a process and will infallibly put me in jail. Do for God's sake send me that sum, and by return of post. Forgive me this earnestness; but the horrors of a jail have made me half disheartened; I do not ask all this gratuitously; for upon returning health I promise, and engage to furnish you with five pounds' worth of the neatest song-genius you have seen."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "beds. There he fetched the dinners from the cookshop, did the inferior part of the work, and ran errands; taught himself to read by the aid of borrowed newspapers and a little dictionary, bought for him at a second-hand stall, for fourpence, by one of his fellow-workers, and by listening to an eloquent dissenting minister named Fawcett, acquired the proper pronunciation of words. He began verse-writing at sixteen, and at that age also began to instruct his brother and his partners in the Fisher's Court garret (for which they paid five shillings a week), and in another"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "in Blue Hart Court, Bell Alley, where a fellow-lodger made him inexpressibly happy by the loan of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' and Thomson's 'Seasons.' When he fell in love with a young woman named Church, daughter of a boat-builder in the Government Yard at Woolwich, he sold his most precious possession (to purchase which he had practised much self-denial), his fiddle, on which he had taught himself to play. Writing to his brother, he said,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I have sold my fiddle and got a wife."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Like most poor men, he got a wife first, and had to get household stuff afterwards."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "It would hardly be grateful to alter my old opinion that we (men of letters) do meet with good will and kindness, with generous and helping hands, in the time of our necessity; with cordial and friendly recognition. Having failed in his medical practice at Aldborough, in Suffolk, where, in 1789 he was born, Crabbe borrowed five pounds, and with that sum came to London. Taking lodgings near the Exchange, he began his literary career full of hope and vigour. But the booksellers, Dodsley and Becket, civilly declined his productions; and when he published some poems cheaply at his own expense his publisher failed; and the poor poet's little, carefully husbanded money being exhausted, he applied to Lord North for assistance,--in vain. Then he addressed verses to Lord Chancellor Thurlow, who said in reply,"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I am, sir, with the greatest respect, Your obedient and most humble servant,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "GEORGE CRABBE."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "as he said in _Fraser's Magazine_ (1846),"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "said he,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Impecuniosity of Artists,"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Few men had experienced more to sour them, or had gone through the author's hardening ordeal of narrow circumstances, of daily labour, and of that disappointment in the higher aims of ambition, which must almost inevitably befall those who retain ideal standards of excellence _to be reached but by time and leisure_, and who are yet compelled to draw hourly upon immatured resources for the practical wants of life."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": ""
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "He began life at the desk as a clerk in the office of Mr. Charles Pearson, a proctor in Doctors' Commons, and soon began to contribute some promising characteristic sketches to a publication called _The Drama_. As a clerk, he was not satisfactory nor satisfied; and his father was about to take him from it, and teach him his own trade, to avoid which Blanchard tried through the influence of the actor, Mr. Henry Johnston, to find an opening on the stage. The histrionic friend, however, painted the miseries and uncertainties of his profession in such gloomy and terrible colours, that the poor boy's heart sank within him, and he had turned with despair to obscurity and trade when the manager of the Margate Theatre offered him an engagement, which he accepted."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "A week, says Mr. Buckstone, who was then on intimate terms with him,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "At that time a circumstance occurred which my poor friend's fate has naturally brought to my recollection. He came to me late one evening in a state of great excitement, informed me that his father had turned him out of doors, that he was utterly hopeless and wretched, and was resolved to destroy himself. I used my best endeavours to console him, to lead his thoughts to the future, and hope in what chance and perseverance might effect for him. Our discourse took a livelier turn, and after making up a bed on a sofa in my own room I retired to rest. I soon slept soundly, but was awakened by hearing a footstep descending the stairs. I looked towards the sofa and discovered he had left it. I heard the street-door close. I instantly hurried on my clothes and followed him. I called to him, but received no answer. I ran till I saw him in the distance, also running. I again called his name, I implored him to stop, but he would not answer me. Still continuing his pace, I became alarmed, and doubled my speed. I came up to him near Westminster Bridge; he was hurrying to the steps leading to the river. I seized him, he threatened to strike me if I did not release him. I called for the watch, I entreated him to return; he became more pacified, but still seemed anxious to escape from me. By entreaties, by every means of persuasion I could think of, by threats to call for help, I succeeded in taking him back."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "came in the beginning of 1844, when Mrs. Blanchard, the most tenderly-loving of wives, and a devoted mother, was attacked by paralysis, which affected the brain, and terminated in madness, speedily followed by death. Partial paralysis seized her husband, and in a burst of delirium,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Thackeray, whom I have quoted, adds:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Such a noble, loving, and generous creature is never without such. The world, it is pleasant to think, is always a good and gentle world to the gentle and good, and reflects the benevolence with which they regard it."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Until within a short time back I have not had, since I left Ireland, a single moment's peace of mind; constantly running backwards and forwards, and trying a thousand expedients, only to meet disappointments everywhere I turned.... I never will think or talk upon the subject again. It was such a year that I did not think it possible I could have outlived, and the very recollection of it puts me into the horrors.... When I first came to London my own self-conceit, backed by the opinion of one of the most original geniuses of the age, induced me to set about revolutionising the dramatic taste of the time by writing for the stage. Indeed, the design was formed and the first step taken (a couple of pieces written) in Ireland. I cannot with my present experience conceive anything more comical than my own views and measures at that time. A young gentleman totally unknown even to a single family in London coming into town with a few pounds in one pocket, and a brace of tragedies in the other, supposing that the one will set him up before the others are exhausted, is not a very novel, but a very laughable delusion. I would weary you, or I would carry you through a number of curious scenes into which it led me. Only imagine the model young Munsterman spouting his tragedy to a roomful of literary ladies and gentlemen; some of high consideration. The applause, however, of that circle on that night was sweeter, far sweeter, to me then than would be the bravos of a whole theatre at present, being united at the time to the confident anticipation of it."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "He, continues poor Griffin,"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "which Thackeray considered"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "He merely built some grand literary castles in the air (for which he was ridiculed in the 'Noctes Ambrosianæ,' under the name of"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Kempferhausen ); but he says:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "There were some awkward conditions attached to the basis of my aerial structures; for example, I must have unbroken tranquillity like that of an anchoret. There must be no shadow on the mind of worldly cares and perturbation, otherwise the spells would be broken. Bread was his incentive to work, but it was the hack work of which Scott so bitterly complained, not the great work he yearned to accomplish, and could not for want of"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "to the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Our calling is only sneered at because it is not well paid. The world has no other criterion for respectability. In Heaven's name, what made the people talk of setting up a statue to Sir William Follet? What had he done? He had made thirty thousand pounds!... Directly the men of letters get rich they will come in for their share of honour too; and a future writer in this miscellany (Fraser's) may be getting his guineas where we get one, and dining at Buckingham Palace while you and your humble servant, dear Padre Francisco, are glad to smoke our pipes over the sanded floor of the little D----."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Poor T. S. called again yesterday. Through his incoherent miserable tale I could see that he had exhausted each access to credit, and yet fondly imagines that, bereft of all his accustomed indulgences, he can work with a literary zeal unknown to his happier days. I hope he may labour enough to gain the mere support of his family."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "that which"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "(as Shakespeare said), even the pains of impecuniosity. Goldoni, speaking of his dramatic writings and consequent poverty, says,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Though in any other situation I might have been in easier circumstances, I should never have been so happy; and who can doubt the happiness of the illustrious Linnæus when he was wandering a-foot with his stylus, magnifying-glass and baskets of plants, sharing the peasants' rustic meals and homely shelter, when he gave his own name to the little Lapland flower now called the Linnæus Borealis, because it reminded him of his own position, being"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "It was in a small garret in the new street of St. Etienne du Mont, where I resided four years in the midst of physical suffering and domestic trouble, that I enjoyed the most exquisite pleasure of my life, that of writing and publishing my 'Studies of Nature.'"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The one is like a thirsty hart that comes joyously to refresh itself at the water-brooks, and the other to the same beast panting and jaded with the dogs of hunger and necessity behind."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "A literary man's true wealth, said he,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Lord Wodehouse, when re-writing his 'Lectures on History,' said:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The task rewarded him with that peculiar delight which has often been observed in the latter years of literary men, the delight of returning again to the studies of their youth and of feeling under the snows of age the cheerful memories of their spring. Petrarch, writing of himself to a friend, said,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I read, I write, I think; such is my life and my pleasures as they were in my youth."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "as he himself said, had installed himself in his garret"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "because, as he wrote,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "To live alone and to compose verses at my leisure appeared to me the very summit of felicity. Speaking in the spirit of his"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "he said:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "What a beautiful prospect I enjoyed from its window! What delight I had to sit there in the evening hovering as it were over the immense city, from which a loud, hoarse murmur incessantly ascended, especially when there blended with it the noise and tumult of some great storm. But there were two sides to this life, and time revealed both. With peace and time, bread and cheese and dreams of glory, the poet was content and happy, even when thin and pale; he grew every day so weak that his father used to say frequently,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I shall soon bury you. But he was not dismayed, but starved and wrote on placidly enough until the fear of the conscription fell upon him. But even then, as he tells us, Providence befriended him and out of evil brought good. He says:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I was bald at twenty-three in consequence, as I suppose, of continuous headaches. When the gendarmes came in search for conscripts I removed my hat. They looked at my bald head and were satisfied. They went away without me."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Fortune at last suffered herself to be touched by my sorrows. Three years had I been vainly seeking some humble form of employment, when, urged by a terrible necessity in the beginning of 1804, I sent a letter and verses to M. Lucien Bonaparte. My gold watch had been long where I left it pledged at the Mont de Piété. My wardrobe had dwindled to three old patched and often mended shirts, a threadbare overcoat also carefully adorned with patches, with one pair of trousers with a newly discovered hole in the knee, and a pair of boots which filled me with despair whenever I cleaned them, they grew so rapidly worse. I had posted to M. Bonaparte four or five hundred verses, and had told no one that I had done so, so many applications had been fruitless."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "It was not, he wrote,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Bread is the main incentive. Do not let us try to blink this fact or imagine that the men of the press are working for their honour and glory or go onward impelled by the inevitable afflatus of genius."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Great authors sustain their own genius by a sense of their own glory, when Dr. Johnson expressed views on this subject according to some extent with Thackeray's, called them"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Quaint Anthony Wood, sneering at him and his entire fraternity, as he often did, said,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "He wrote to maintain his wife and that high, loose course of living which poets generally follow; one accusation being about as true as the other, for so far from maintaining his wife, he shamefully deserted both her and her child, leaving her foodless; and the Elizabethan poets are said on the whole to have been thrifty, god-fearing men, leading sober and steady lives. Charles Knight wrote of him as one who was made desperate and reckless by wrongs and neglect, but the pamphlet he wrote called 'The Repentance of Robert Greene, Master of Arts,' taken with his other confession, shows him to have been, as Mr. A. H. Wall said (in his 'Poets and Players of Shakespeare's Time'),"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "This was the man who fell foul of his fellow-players and the player-poets, calling them"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": ""
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": ""
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "and"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "who attacked young Shakespeare when he was dressing up, improving, and re-writing old plays,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "and aroused our great bard's many friends to anger and indignation by saying he had"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "accusations which even Henry Cheetle, who was concerned in their publication, afterwards denounced as slanderous and spiteful, saying,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I am as sorry as if the original fault had been my fault, because myself hath seen his (Shakespeare's) demeanour no less civil than he is excellent in the quality he professes, besides divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing that approves his art."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Who in London hath not heard of his (Greene's) dissolute and licentious living, his fond disguisinge of a Master of Arts with ruffianly hair, unseemly apparel, and more unseemly company, of his vaine glorious and Thrasonicall brassinge; his piperly extemporising and Tarletonizing; his apeish counterfeiting of every ridiculous and absurd toy ... hys villainous cogging and foisting, his monstrous swearinge and horrible forswearing, his impious profaning of sacred textes; his other scandalous and blasphemous ravinge: his riotous and outrageous surfeitinge: his continual shifting of lodgings; his plausable musteringe and banquettynge of roysterly acquaintance at his first comminge; his beggarly departing in every hostesses debt; his infamous resorting to the Banckside, Shoreditch, Southwarke, and other filthy haunts; his obscure lurkinge in basest corners; his pawning of his sword, cloake, and what not, when money came short?"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "In prime of youth a rose, in age a weed, That for a minute's joy payes endless meed."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "ROBERT GREENE."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The remembrance of many wrongs offered thee and thy unreproved virtues add greater sorrow to my miserable state than I can utter or thou conceive, neither is it lessened by consideration of thy absence (though shame would hardly let me behold thy face) but exceedingly aggravated."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "A King to me mine habit gave At Oxford the University, Advanced I was to that degree: By whole consent of their Senate, I was made Poet Laureate."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Bishop Wykke suspended him from his benefice. In 1501 he was in prison for marrying and keeping a mistress,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "says Cibber,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "He was a fierce and bitter assailant of the clergy, the Dominicans, and Cardinal Wolsey. Many of his productions were never printed, but were chanted at markets and fairs, in village ale-houses, and in the streets by itinerant ballad-singers, who learned them by heart and sent them abroad like floating seeds borne hither and thither by the vagrant winds. The author of the 'Lives of the Laureates' said of this poet:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The brief glance we have of him, the scholar and the buffoon, a priest with his married concubine and bastardized children, mocking, half in anger half in jest, or it might be in the wantonness of sorrow, at the falsehoods by which he was surrounded, may justly awaken our sympathy nor fail to suggest a moral."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "His Majesty has sent me ten guineas because I am poor and live in an alley. Go and tell him his soul lives in an alley."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "when, in the phraseology of the profession,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "that is to say when there was no money in hand to pay the actors' salaries, some one asked how he continued to be jolly under such miserably depressing circumstances. He replied,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I drink spring water and dance."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "On another occasion Michael Kelly, the musical celebrity, was complaining to him of a wine merchant at Hochheim who instead of six dozen of wine had sent him sixteen. Sheridan said he would take some off his hands if he were not quite able to pay for it, but, said he,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "a sly rub which the composer received with a laugh, wittily retorting that there was one wine so poisonous and intoxicating that he would neither compose nor import, and that was"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Old Sherry"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Money, I have none,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "But let the consequences be what they may, money I must have,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "In that case, my dear Tom, said the father,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I understand, said Tom,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "he said;"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "To be sure I am, said Kelly,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "There is one passage in Shakespeare, said Sherry,"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "She would if he could canter well,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Beautifully,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Perhaps I should not mind stretching a point for such a one. Will you have the kindness to let me see his paces?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "To be sure,"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Thank you, my generous fellow, said Sheridan."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "No, let all go--affection and sentiment in my situation are quite out of the question. But, said he, recollecting himself,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "What is it?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Don't be alarmed, said Sheridan,"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I sent him a guinea, says Johnson,"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Happy night, to him worth all the dreary days! Hidden by some dusky wall, or creeping within darkling shadows of the ill-lighted streets, this poor neglected sizar watched, waited, lingered, listened there, for the only effort of his life which had not wholly failed. Few and dull perhaps the beggar's audience at first, but more thronging, eager, and delighted as he shouted forth his newly-gotten ware; cracked enough, I doubt not, were those ballad singing tunes; nay, harsh, extremely discordant, and passing from loud to low without meaning or melody; but not the less did the sweetest music which this earth affords fall with them on the ear of Goldsmith. Gentle faces, pleased old men, stopping by the way; young lads, venturing a purchase with their last remaining farthing; why here was a world in little with its fame at the sizar's feet! 'The greater world will be listening one day,' perhaps he muttered as he turned with a lighter heart to his dull home."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I dined very well for eightpence, with very good company, at the Pine Apple in New Street fast by. Several of them had travelled, they expected to meet every day; but they did not know one another's names. It used to cost the rest a shilling, for they drank wine; but I had a cut of meat for sixpence, and bread for a penny, so that I was quite well served, nay, better than the rest, for they gave the waiter nothing."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "A man might live in a garret at eighteen pence a week. Few people would inquire where he lodged; and if they did it was easy to say, 'Sir, I am to be found at such a place.' By spending threepence in a coffee-house, he might be for some hours in very good company; he might dine for sixpence, breakfast on bread and milk for a penny, and do without supper. On clean shirt day he could go abroad and pay visits."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "was delivered. Consequently, when his purse was full, he worked away _con amore_, and produced the best result; but on the purse growing empty, as those mercenary creditors will do, the Doctor worked hurriedly, aiming at making as much"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "On the 1st of June, 1839, we got on the stage-coach with our boxes of books at Stamford, and away I went to make my first venture in London. We lodged in Elliott's Row, Southwark; I earned five pounds by contributing reviews and prose sketches to some papers having but an ephemeral existence. I had other ventures and adventures in a small way; but it would weary any mortal man to recite; and the recital would only be one which has been often told already, by poor literary adventurers. The very little I could bring to London was soon gone, and then I had to sell my books. I happily turned into Chancery Lane and asked Mr. Lumley to buy my beautifully-bound 'Tasso' and 'Don Belleanis of Greece,' a small quarto black-letter romance, which I had bought of an auctioneer in Gainsboro', who knew nothing of its value. Mr. Lumley gave me liberal prices, wished I could bring him more such books, and conversed with me very kindly. We were often at 'low-water mark' now in our fortunes; but my dear wife and I never suffered ourselves to sink into low spirits. Our experience, we cheerily said, was a part of London adventure, and who did not know that adventurers in London often underwent great trials before success was reached? We strolled out together in the evenings all over London, making ourselves acquainted with its highways and byways, and always finding something to interest us in its streets and shop-windows. Every book I brought from Lincolnshire, and I had had about 500 volumes great and small, had been sold by degrees, and at last I was obliged to enter a pawnshop. Spare articles of clothing, and my father's old silver watch, 'went up the spout,' as the experience goes of those who most sorrowfully know what it means. Travelling-cloak, large box, hat-box, and every box or movable that could be spared in any possible way, had 'gone to our uncle's,' and we saw ourselves on the very verge of being reduced to threadbare suits when deliverance came. I had been in London from the evening of 11th June, 1839, until near the end of March, 1840, when I answered an advertisement respecting the editorship of a country paper printed in London. I went to the printing office in Great Windmill Street, Haymarket, and was engaged at a salary of £3 per week; the paper was the _Kentish Mercury_."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "England knew not a happier circle than that which for years assembled by the humble hearthstone at Greta Hall. It is refreshing to turn aside from the world and contemplate that peaceful home, nestling amid the Cumberland Mountains."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "On Friday, October 18th, 1794, his aunt, Miss Tyler, turned him out of doors on a stormy night, and without a penny in his pocket. He made his way on foot, through wind and driving rain, along the dark country roads to Bath. Without any visible resource he was thrown upon the world, and as he paced the streets, weary, footsore, and sick at heart, he dreamed of the lofty things in literature he would strive to accomplish, now that he was his own master, with a will unfettered by a care for wishes other than his own, and of the pride that would glow within the swelling bosom of the fair Edith of his love, for whose dear sake he had submitted to be thus cast adrift. An uncle from Portugal wished to take him back with him to that country. 'My Edith persuades me to go,' said he, 'and yet weeps at my going.' And we are told how sadly after their secret marriage in Redcliffe Church, his maiden wife watched his departure with the wedding-ring she was afraid to wear suspended round her neck."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Robert Southey, of Balliol College, Oxford, proposes to read a course of Historical Lectures in the following order:--1st. Introductory on the Origin and Progress of Society; 2nd. Legislation of Solon and Lycurgus; 3rd. State of Greece from the Persian War to the Dissolution of the Achaian League; 4th. Rise, Progress, and Decay of the Roman Empire; 5th. Progress of Christianity; 6th. Manners and Irruptions of the Northern Nations; Growth of the European States; Feudal System, and other equally abstruse subjects."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Now I began to think that the course of all desire and the sum of all existence was to read and get knowledge. Read, read, read. I used to read at all possible times and all possible places; up in bed till two or three in the morning, nothing daunted by once setting the bed on fire. Greatly indebted was I to the bookstalls, where I have read a great deal, often folding a leaf in a book, and returning the next day to continue the subject; but sometimes the book was gone, and then great was my grief. When out of a situation I have often gone without a meal to purchase a book."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Well, I may see him again."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Keep the sixpence, my boy,"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "In my young days they lent me cash that way, Which I found very troublesome to pay."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The Order of Poverty--how many sub-orders might it embrace! As the spirit of Gothic chivalry has its fraternities, so might the Order of Poverty have its distinct devices."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Around him, too, were the stores of plenty. Food, raiment, and money mocked the man half-mad--mad with destitution. Yet, with a valorous heart, a proud conquest of the shuddering spirit, he walked with honesty and starved. His long journey of life has been through stormy places, and now he sits upon a pile of stones on the wayside, breaking them for workhouse bread. Could loftiest chivalry show greater heroism, nobler self-control, than this old man--this weary breaker of flints? Shall he not be of the Order of Poverty? Is not penury to him even as a robe of honour? His grey workhouse coat braver than purple and miniver? He shall be Knight of the Granite if you will. A workhouse gem, indeed--a wretched highway jewel--yet, to the eye of truth, finer than many a ducal diamond.... And so, indeed, in the mind of wisdom, is poverty ennobled. And for the Knights of the Golden Calf, how are they outnumbered! Let us then revive the Order of Poverty. Ponder, reader, on its antiquity! For was not Christ Himself Chancellor of the Order, and the Apostles Knight Companions?"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "He was proud of me in his way, and had a great admiration of the comic singing. But in the ease of his temper and the straitness of his means he appeared to have utterly lost at this time the idea of educating me at all, and to have put from him the notion that I had any claim upon him in that regard whatever. So I degenerated into cleaning his boots of a morning and my own, and making myself useful in the work of the little house, and looking after my younger brothers and sisters (we were now six in all), and going on such poor errands as arose out of our poor way of living."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The blacking warehouse was the last house on the left hand side of the way, at old Hungerford Stairs. It was a crazy tumble-down old house abutting, of course, on the river, and literally overrun with rats. The wainscotted rooms and its rotten floors and staircase and the old grey rats swarming down in the cellars, and the sound of their squeaking and scuffling coming up the stairs at all times, and the dirt and decay of the place, rise up visibly before me as if I were there again. My work was to cover the pots of paste blacking first with a piece of oil paper and then with a piece of blue paper, to tie them round with a string, and then to clip the paper close and neat all round, until it looked as smart as a pot of ointment from an apothecary's shop. When a certain number of grosses of pots had attained this pitch of perfection, I was to paste on each a printed label, and then go on again with more pots."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Usually I either carried my dinner with me or went and bought it at some neighbouring shop. In the latter case it was commonly a saveloy and a penny loaf, and sometimes a fourpenny plate of beef from a cookshop, sometimes a plate of bread and cheese and a glass of beer from a miserable old public-house over the way--the 'Swan,' if I remember right, or the Swan and something else that I have forgotten. Once I remember tucking my own bread (which I had brought from home in the morning) under my arm, wrapped up in a piece of paper like a book, and going into the best dining-room in Johnson's Alamode Beef House in Charles' Court, Drury Lane, and magnificently ordering a small plate of Alamode beef to eat with it. What the waiter thought of such a strange little apparition coming in all alone, I don't know, but I can see him now staring at me as I ate my dinner, and bringing up the other waiter to look. I gave him a halfpenny, and I wish now that he had not taken it."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I was so young and childish and so little qualified--how could I be otherwise?--to undertake the whole charge of my own existence, that in going to Hungerford Stairs of a morning I could not resist the stale pastry put out at half price on trays at the confectioner's doors in Tottenham Court Road. I often spent in that the money I should have kept for my dinner. Then I went without my dinner, or bought a roll or a slice of pudding. There were two pudding shops between which I was divided according to my finances. One was in a court close to St. Martin's Church (at the back of the church), which is now removed altogether. The pudding at that shop was made with currants, and was rather a special pudding, but was dear: two penn'orth not being larger than a penn'orth of more ordinary pudding. A good shop for the latter was in the Strand, somewhere near where the Lowther Arcade is now. It was a stout, hale pudding, heavy and flabby, with great raisins in it stuck in whole, at great distances apart. It came up hot, at about noon every day, and many and many a day did I dine off it. I know I do not exaggerate, unconsciously and unintentionally, the scantiness of my resources and the difficulties of my life. I know that if a shilling or so were given me by any one I spent it in a dinner or a tea. I know that I worked from morning to night with common men and boys, a shabby child. I know that I tried, but ineffectually, not to anticipate my money, and to make it last the week through, by putting it away in a drawer I had in the counting-house, wrapped into six little parcels, each parcel containing the same amount, and labelled with a different day. I know that I have lounged about the streets insufficiently and unsatisfactorily fed. I know that, but for the mercy of God, I might easily have been, for any care that was taken of me, a little robber or a little vagabond."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The Adventures of Mr. Ledbury or recounting to an audience at the Egyptian Hall his"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Ascent of Mont Blanc,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Jerrold replied with more or less warmth,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "True, they do row in the same boat, but with very different skulls. Unlike Dickens, Albert Smith was not practically acquainted with absolute poverty, though at times as a student there is no doubt he was familiar with that condition known as"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Brussels Sprouts. Desirous of executing the commission, and longing for a dip in the sea, he started off to Ostend, and on arriving there, was not long in going through the preliminaries of taking"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "He took it, but to his horror on coming to the surface he met with what is slangily termed a"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "for he found himself face to face with the identical creditor from whom he was fleeing."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Oh, this is the way my money goes, is it! I'll lock you up, you---- began the money-lender, but before the sentence was finished Brough dived again, swam to shore, secured his luggage, started for Paris, and left the"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Brussels Sprouts"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "My heart is weary, my peace is gone, How shall I e'er my woes reveal? I have no money, I lie in pawn, A stranger in the town of Lille."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Truth is always strange, Stranger than fiction: if it could be told, How much would novels gain by the exchange."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": ""
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Truth is stranger than fiction,"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Duke Combe. In a comparatively short period, by his prodigality and reckless expenditure he was reduced to penury, and finding no means of subsistence, enlisted as a private in the army. While in the ranks he was reading one day, when an officer passing him managed to see the book, which was a copy of Horace."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "My friend, said the officer,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": ""
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "If I cannot, said Combe,"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Duke Combe. At last he became an inmate of the King's Bench Prison, and he remained there several years. When a friend offered to make an arrangement with his creditors, he replied:"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "If I compounded with those to whom I owe money I should be obliged to give up the little I possess, and on which I can manage to live in prison. These rooms in the Bench are mine at a very few shillings a week in right of my seniority as a prisoner. My habits have become so sedentary, that if I lived in the airiest square of West-End London, I should not walk round it once a month. I am quite content with my cheap quarters."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "But now, ladies and gentlemen, I shall tell you who and what I am. There was an eager and expectant expression on the countenances before him. Combe paused--all present leaning forward to hear him--gathered himself up, as if for a great effort, and then said,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I am, ladies and gentlemen--your most obedient, humble servant."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Are we all here? a voice answered,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Yes, all but John Lally, the piper."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "As the prospect of my marriage has much increased lately, I am determined to take the best means to discover the lady most liberal in her esteem by giving her fourteen days more to make her quickest steps towards matrimony: from the date of this paper until eleven o'clock the next morning: and as the contest evidently will be superb, honourable, sacred, and lawfully affectionate, pray do not let false delicacy interrupt you. An eminent attorney here is lately returned from a view of my superb gates, built in the form of the Queen's house. I have ordered him, as the next attorney here, who can satisfy you of my possession in my estate, and every desirable particular concerning it, to make you the most liberal settlement you can desire, to the vast extent of three thousand pounds."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "A beautiful page shall hold, Your ladyship's train surrounded with gold."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Pray, my young charmers, give me a fair hearing; do not let your avaricious guardians unjustly fright you into a false account of a forfeiture."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Wise judges are we of each other, said Claude Melnotte contemptuously to Colonel Damar when that officer remarked that he"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "the pretended Prince of Como, and it would be well for many of us were we to remember the rebuke in forming our judgment of our fellows in connection with their pecuniary position. A very pitiful story illustrating the argument is narrated by Charles Lamb in his essay,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "He was observed, after dinner, carefully to gather up the remnants left at the table (not many nor very choice fragments, you may credit me), and in an especial manner these disreputable morsels he would convey, and secretly stow, in the settle that stood at his bedside. None saw when he ate them. It was rumoured that he privately devoured them in the night. He was watched, but no traces of them, of such midnight practices were discoverable. Some reported that on leave-days he had been seen to carry out of the bounds a large blue check handkerchief, full of something. This, then, must be the accursed thing. Conjecture next was at work to imagine how he could dispose of it. Some said he sold it to the beggars. This belief generally prevailed. He went about moping--none spake to him. No one would play with him. He was excommunicated--put out of the pale of the school. He was too powerful a boy to be beaten, but he underwent every mode of that negative punishment which is more grievous than many stripes. Still he persevered. At length he was observed by two of his schoolfellows, who were determined to get at the secret, and had traced him one leave day for the purpose, to enter a large worn-out building, such as there exists specimens of in Chancery Lane, which are let out to various scales of pauperism, with open door and a common staircase. After him they silently slunk in, and followed by stealth up four flights of stairs, and saw him tap at a poor wicket, which was opened by a poor woman meanly clad. Suspicion was now ripened into certainty. The informers had secured their victim. Accusation was formally preferred, and retribution most signal was looked for. Mr. Hatherway investigated the matter. The supposed mendicants, the receivers of the mysterious scraps, turned out to be the parents of the boy. This young stork, at the expense of his own good name, had all this while been feeding the old birds."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Having seen it before, the old general said,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The strictest search about the room was then made, but only with fruitless results. The owner of the box assumed much gravity of manner, and having referred to the seriousness of the loss, said,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I suspect no one, and that I may have no cause to do so, I must ask you to let me search you all without distinction. Two or three rose to depart, but they were anticipated by their entertainer, who put his back against the door and refused egress to any one. The old general stepped forward and said,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Sir, do you mean to insult us because we have drunk your wine? If any one dares to oppose my exit from this room, I shall call him to account."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "But may I ask you why you so resolutely refused to be searched?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Alas! said the soldier,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I refused to be searched because, though I had not stolen your snuff-box, I had stolen your food. I blush to own, sir, that the greater part of every morsel put upon my plate was transferred to a pocket-handkerchief (spread upon my knee beneath the table), and taken home to a starving wife and family."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Pitiful, wondrous pitiful, is my next illustration, which is related by Sir Walter Scott, who when attending Dugald Stewart's lectures on Moral Philosophy used to sit by the side of an amiable youth, in whose society he afterwards took great interest. They became companions, and frequently used to stroll out beyond the city, enjoying the charms of road and stream. One day during the perambulation they met a singularly venerable"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Blue Gown, a beggar of the Edie Ochiltree stamp, clean and ruddy. The beggar had three or four times previously encountered Scott, who with his usual good-heartedness had relieved him in answer to solicitation. When Mr. Scott and his fellow-student passed the old man, the companion of Scott exhibited peculiar restlessness and confusion. The beggar again had something dropped into his hand by Scott, who said soon afterwards to his companion,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Do you know anything to the dishonour of the old beggar?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "God forbid! said the youth, and bursting into tears added,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I am ashamed to speak to him; he is my father! He has laid by for himself, but he stands bleaching his head in the wind, that he may get means to pay for my education."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Blue Gown."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "God bless you! said the old man;"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "At 2 o'clock on the following Saturday, Willie's old fellow-student found the old man and his son waiting to receive him at their little cottage outside the city. It was a modest little tenement, and Willie sat on a bench before the door to enjoy the sunshine. The son of the voluntary mendicant looked wan and emaciated. He had been very ill. There was a dinner of mutton, potatoes and whisky. They all enjoyed themselves, and during their conversation the old man said,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Please God I may live to see my bairn wag his head in a pulpit yet."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "God bless you, sir! exclaimed the soldier, astonished at the amount."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "How can I repay you? I have nothing in the world but this, pulling out a dirty piece of paper from his pocket;"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Flying Pieman. Every day at the beginning of the present century (excepting when it rained) the familiar figure of that now historic personage might have been seen in the steep thoroughfare between Staple's Inn and Field Lane. Peter obtained the _sobriquet_ of"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Flying Pieman"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Flying Pieman, as he perambulated or as he stopped, never being known to utter any other word than"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Buy, buy, buy."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Flying Pieman was attentive to everybody, but he never turned back for anybody. Making his way deftly through crowds of pedestrians, hackney coaches or waggons, the"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Flying Pieman went straight on, calling out"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Buy,"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "that an artist of Peter Stokes's ability should have to turn itinerant vendor of pennyworths of pudding, the old adage"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Be sure your sin will find you out"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Test Act, and whose upright discharge of the important duties of Lord Chief Justice gained him the highest honour and esteem, was as a youth wilful and dissipated. In some respects his deeds at that period bore likeness to those of the madcap Prince Hal, when that personage was the associate of Falstaff. He was a roysterer, gambler and, according to some, highwayman. To use Lord Campbell's words,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "They even relate, many years after that, when he was going the circuit as Chief Justice, he recognised a man convicted capitally before him as one of his own accomplices in a robbery, and that having visited him in gaol, and inquired after the rest of the gang, he received this answer: 'Ah! my lord, they are all hanged but myself and your lordship.'"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Indeed, said Holt,"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Has anybody seen it? inquires the judge."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Yes, please you, my lord, and it is now here ready to be produced."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Gentlemen, I must now relate an incident of my life which ill-suits my position. To conceal that incident would be to increase the awful folly which I must atone. Did I conceal that folly of which I was guilty, I should endanger innocence and countenance superstition. This so-called charm which these poor ignorant people suppose to have the power of life and death is a senseless piece of parchment, on which with my own hand I wrote and gave the poor woman. This poor woman for no other reason stands before me accused of witchcraft."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Is that all you want? The grocer entering added,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Mademoiselle ought to have a husband in the bargain."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Excellent, said Piron,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Monsieur, said she with trepidation,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "--with a glance at the extreme poverty of his surroundings--"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Said Piron:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I leave the care of that to la Camarde; but if you please, what do you mean?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I wish to say, have you ever thought of marriage?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Not much. Mademoiselle, pray sit down while I light the fire."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "You don't know, Monsieur Piron! it will make you laugh."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "So much the worse."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I shall speak plainly. If your heart, has the same sentiment as mine --the poet was wonder-stricken, and looked at the lady in silence--"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I leave to you, said he,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": ""
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "You will make me, Monsieur Piron, the happiest person in the world I did not hope for so happy a conclusion, for--I do not wish to conceal anything from you--I am _fifty-five_!"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Well, said Piron, with a slight shrug,"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Mr. Thomson, said Quin,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Thomson was alarmed, and stammered out that he was unaware of any obligations."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "They are mine, replied Quin."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I have received so much delight from the writings of James Thomson, that I consider myself his debtor at least for a hundred pounds."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Confessions of an Opium Eater"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "This leaving the lodgings turned out a very unfortunate occurrence for me, because living henceforward at inns, I was drained of my money very rapidly. In a fortnight I was reduced to short allowance, that is I could allow myself only one meal a day. From the keen appetite produced by constant exercise and mountain air acting on a youthful stomach I soon began to suffer greatly on this slender regimen, for the single meal which I could venture to order was coffee or tea. This, however, was at length withdrawn, and afterwards so long as I remained in Wales I subsisted either on blackberries, hips, haws, etc., or on the usual hospitalities which I now and then received for such little services as I had an opportunity of rendering. Sometimes I wrote letters of business for cottagers who happened to have relations in Liverpool or London. More often I wrote love-letters to their sweethearts for young women who had lived as servants in Shrewsbury or any other towns on the English border. On all such occasions I gave great satisfaction to my humble friends, and was generally treated with hospitality; and once in particular near the village of Llan-y-styndw (or some such name), in a sequestered part of Merionethshire, I was entertained for upwards of three days by a family of young people with an affectionate and fraternal kindness that left an impression upon my heart not yet impaired. The family consisted at that time of four sisters and three brothers, all grown up, and all remarkable for elegance and delicacy of manners. So much beauty and so much native good breeding and refinement I do not remember to have seen before or since, in any cottage, except once or twice in Westmoreland and Devonshire. They spoke English, an accomplishment not often met with in so many members of one family, especially in villages remote from the high road. There I wrote, in my first introduction, a letter about prize-money for one of the brothers, who had served on board an English man-of-war, and more privately, two love-letters for two of the sisters. They were both interesting-looking girls, and one of uncommon loveliness. In the midst of their confusion and blushes whilst dictating, or rather giving me general instructions, it did not require any great penetration to discover that what they wished was that their letters should be as kind as was consistent with proper maidenly pride."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The only friend I had in this strange poverty of mine on first coming to London was a young woman. She was one of that unhappy class who belong to the outcasts and pariahs of our female population. For many weeks I had walked at night with this poor friendless girl up and down Oxford Street, or had rested with her on steps, or under the shelter of porticoes. One night when we were pacing slowly along Oxford Street, and after a day when I had felt unusually ill and faint, I requested her to turn off with me into Soho Square. Thither we went, and we sat down on the steps of a house which to this hour I never pass without a pang of grief and an inner act of homage to the spirit of the unhappy girl in memory of the noble act she performed. Suddenly as we sat I grew much worse: I had been leaning my head against her bosom. I sank from her arms and fell backwards on the steps. Uttering a cry of terror, but without a moment's delay, she ran off into Oxford Street, and in less time than could be imagined returned to me with a glass of port wine and spices that acted upon my empty stomach, which at that time would have rejected all solid food, with an instantaneous power of restoration, and for this glass the generous girl without a murmur paid out of her own humble purse, at a time, be it remembered, when she had scarcely wherewithal to purchase the bare necessaries of life, and when she could have no reason to expect that I should ever be able to reimburse her."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Jack ashore."
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Summoning up their best graces and most insinuating powers of expression in the way of eloquence, they sought an interview with their hostess, and acquainted her with their foolish but unfortunate position; to which account she listened with attention and deep interest. She was informed not only of their perfect inability to meet the bill, but that in a short period they were bound to be on board ship. Their caterer turned a deaf ear to the revelation of their poverty, and in the most virago-like manner fiercely informed them"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "that one of them must marry her--which one she didn't care a curse--but by all that was holy if she didn't marry one of them, all three should be packed off to gaol, and the ship must go without them. Remonstrance, promises to pay in a few months, the unreasonableness of the request, in fact everything said by the discomfited sailors was in vain. It was impossible to pacify her, and the victims of impecuniosity saw that the woman's proposal was the only means of escaping from disgrace and humiliation. After taking counsel among themselves, the three sailors drew lots for the hymeneal martyrdom, and the ill-luck fell on Watty Scott. Next morning the midshipman and the landlady were spliced, and returned to the tavern, where a rich and liberal dinner awaited the newly married couple and the two fortunate companions of the bridegroom; and in the afternoon the three sailors were tumbled into a wherry, and were soon aboard ship. The marriage was kept a secret, and the first to reveal it was Watty Scott, who one day at a town in Jamaica, reading a newspaper, saw an account of a trial for murder and robbery in connection with a Portsmouth tavern, and having read all particulars, exclaimed,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Thank God, my wife's hanged!"
}
]
|
38439 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "That's your answer."
}
]
|
468442 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Wellington."
}
]
|
29983 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Fellow-citizens: There is To be, as you know, A wonderful show, A Universal Fair, at Paris; Where every country its product carries, Whatever most beautiful, useful, or rare is, To please and surprise, And perhaps win a prize. Now here is the question Which craves your counsel and suggestion-- With you it lies: So, after wise And careful consideration of it, Say, what shall _we_ send for our honor and profit?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I propose, if you please, That we send 'em a _cheese_."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I approve of the plan; But I wish to amend What's proposed by my friend: A BIG CHEESE, I think, is the thing we should send."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "A ROYAL BIG CHEESE"
}
]
|
29983 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "PEASANT GIRLS BRINGING THE MILK."
}
]
|
29983 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "SO THEY MADE A GRAND PARADE."
}
]
|
29983 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Will it go up in the sky to-night? Asks little ma'm'selle, in the arms of her mother,--"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Rise over the houses and give us light? Is this where it sets when it goes out of sight?"
}
]
|
29983 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "ENCIRCLED ALL DAY BY A WONDERING THRONG."
}
]
|
29983 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Beware! 'T is a prize indeed, but I say, forbear! For cats may catch us and men may scare, And a well-set trap is a rat's despair; But if we are wise, and would have our share With perfect safety to hide and hair, Now listen, and we will our plans prepare."
}
]
|
29983 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Messieurs! Of all fine cheeses at market or fair,-- Holland or Rochefort, Stilton or Cheshire, Neufchâtel, Milanese,-- There never was cheese, I am free to declare, That at all could compare With this great Gruyère!"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "FIRST, ONE RAT."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Heave, ho!"
}
]
|
29983 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "DOWN TUMBLES, DOWN CRUMBLES, THE KING OF THE CHEESES."
}
]
|
29983 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "You're so afraid that somebody'll think that you are vain of your hair. Puss's ears were over large for perfect beauty, and her eyes a trifle too deeply set; but I've half a mind to say that she was a beauty, in spite of these, for, after all, the ears had a generous look, in harmony with the frank, open face, and the shadowed eye was the softest, sweetest blue eye I ever saw. She had been called Puss when a baby, because of her nestling, kitten-like way, and the odd name clung to her. Luke Lord was homely; but he didn't care a bit. He was so jolly and good-natured that everybody liked him, and he liked everybody, and so was happy. He had light hair, very light for fifteen years, and a peculiar teetering gait, which was not unmanly, however. It made people laugh at him, but he didn't care a bit. Jacob Isaac was a"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "as he would have said, protesting against the word"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": ""
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Nigger, he used to say,"
}
]
|
29983 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I keep thinking about the 'snack,'"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "What do you think about it?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I keep thinking how good it'll taste. Aunt Calline makes mighty good pound-cake. I do love pound-cake!"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I _don't_ mean like, said John."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "If there is anything I love better than father and mother, brother and sister, it's pound-cake."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "But there isn't anything,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "My kingdom for a slice! said John, with a tragic air."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I don't believe I can stand it to wait till lunch-time."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Why, it hasn't been a half-hour since you ate breakfast. Are you hungry?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "No, I'm not hungry; I'm _ha'nted_. John pronounced the word with a flatness unwritable."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The pound-cake ha'nts me; the fried chicken ha'nts me; the citron ha'nts me. I see 'em! John glared at the vacant air as though he saw an apparition."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I taste 'em! I smell 'em! I feel moved to call on him (here Jacob Isaac was indicated by a backward glance and movement)"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "he added, suddenly reining-up his horse and speaking in dead earnest,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "he cried to the advance couple,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Going to eat? cried Elsie."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "You're not in earnest?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Yes, I am. I can't rest. The cake and things ha'nt me."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Well, do for pity's sake eat something, and get done with it,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "But you must wait for me, John persisted."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I'll have to spread the things out on the grass. I keep thinking how good they'll taste eaten off the grass. There's where the ha'ntin' comes in."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Did you ever hear anything so ridiculous? said Elsie to the others."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "But I suppose we had better humor him; he wont give us any rest till we do; he's so persistent. When he gets headed one way, he's like a pig. Elsie began to pull at the bridle to bring her horse alongside a stump."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Puss and I can get some flowers during the repast."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I call this a most peculiar proceeding, said her protector, leaping from his horse, and hastening to help her to"
}
]
|
29983 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I believe I'm getting 'ha'nted,' too,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Good for you! John said, cordially."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Come along! Help yourself to a chicken-wing."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Why, Luke, you aint going to eating!"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Yes, I am; John's made me hungry."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Me, too,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Of course, you're hungry, said John."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Come along! Hold your two hands."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Let's go look for sweet-Williams and blue-flags,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "No; if we go away, the boys will eat everything up. Just look at them! Did ever you see such eatists? You boys, stop eating all the lunch."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Aint you girls getting 'ha'nted?' Luke asked."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "If you don't come soon, there wont be left for you."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I believe that's so, said Puss confidentially to Elsie."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I reckon we'll have to take our share now, or not at all. We've got to eat in self-defense."
}
]
|
29983 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Aint no use totin' this yere basekit 'long no mawr, Jacob Isaac suggested."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I'll leave it hang in this yere sass'fras saplin'. When it was intimated that it would be needed for the remainder of the lunch, he said there wasn't any"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": ""
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "What's lef' needn't pester you-all; I'll jis eat it."
}
]
|
29983 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The poor creatures!"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "So helpless! added Elsie, peeping through her fingers at the boys."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Aren't the hooks ready yet?"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Yours is,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "And here's yours, Puss, John said."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Drop it in."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "A bite!"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Jupiter! said John, growing impatient at the idle drifting of his cork."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I can't stand this, Elsie. You girls stop talking. You chatter like magpies; you scare the fish. Girls oughtn't ever to go fishing."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "He talks hisse'f maw 'n the res' of the ladies."
}
]
|
29983 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Keep quiet! she called."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I've got a bite."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "You would have, if I could get at your arm,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I have, truly, she said, excitedly."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Look!"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I feel him pull,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Well, get him out,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Shall I pull him or jerk him?"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "If I knew about his size, I could tell you, said Luke."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "If he's big, give him a dignified pull; if he's a little chap, jerk him; no business to be little."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Oh! I'm afraid it will hurt him,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Out with him!"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I'm afraid the line will break,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "No, it wont,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The rod might snap,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Here, let me take the rod,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "No, no; I'm going to catch the fish myself,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Then jerk, sharp and strong,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "She's thrown it a half-mile, or less, in the bushes,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "And there's her hook in the top of that tree, said John."
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "What gumps girls are when you take them out-of-doors!"
}
]
|
29983 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I mos' found it twice't; but it was a frog an' a lizar', 'stead uv the fish,"
}
]
|
29983 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Don't pull at the line that way, Puss said to the thrasher in the tree-top;"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Lim' hangs over the watto,"
}
]
|
29983 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "HE KNELT ON THE BANK TO FIX HIS BAIT."
}
]
|
29983 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "I'll hold on to you; and you must hold on to the stirrup and to the horse's mane,"
}
]
|
29983 | Unknown Title | Unknown Author | [
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Thankee, Miss Puss,"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Puss, you're a hero, is what Elsie said, adding immediately:"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Those hateful boys! Great protectors they are!"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "It just empties the fish in here by the basketfuls. All we've got to do is to empty 'em out,"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "You'll never catch any fish there, said he."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The current's too swift."
}
]
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.