ADVENTURE books online

Reading books adventure Nowadays a big variety of genres are exist. In our electronic library you can choose any book that suits your mood, request and purpose. This website is full of free ebooks. Reading online is very popular and become mainstream. This website can provoke you to be smarter than anyone. You can read between work breaks, in public transport, in cafes over a cup of coffee and cheesecake.
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Today let's analyze the genre adventure. Genre adventure is a reference book for adults and children. But it serve for adults and children in different purposes. If a boy or girl presents himself as a brave and courageous hero, doing noble deeds, then an adult with pleasure can be a little distracted from their daily worries.


A great interest to the reader is the adventure of a historical nature. For example, question: «Who discovered America?»
Today there are quite interesting descriptions of the adventures of Portuguese sailors, who visited this continent 20 years before Columbus.




It should be noted the different quality of literary works created in the genre of adventure. There is an understandable interest of generations of people in the classic adventure. At the same time, new works, which are created by contemporary authors, make classic works in the adventure genre quite worthy competition.
The close attention of readers to the genre of adventure is explained by the very essence of man, which involves constant movement, striving for something new, struggle and achievement of success. Adventure genre is very excited
Heroes of adventure books are always strong and brave. And we, off course, want to be like them. Unfortunately, book life is very different from real life.But that doesn't stop us from loving books even more.

Read books online » Adventure » Stella Fregelius by H. Rider Haggard (books to read now TXT) 📖

Book online «Stella Fregelius by H. Rider Haggard (books to read now TXT) 📖». Author H. Rider Haggard



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good?’ For the hour that they endure it is still to be with those whom I have loved on earth, although they cannot see me; to soothe their sorrows, to support their weakness, to lull their fears. It is that the empty longing and daily prayer may be filled, and filled, and filled again, like a cup from a stream which never ceases.”

“And what is that daily prayer?” asked Morris, looking at her.

“O! God, touch me with Thy light, and give me understanding—yes, understanding—the word encloses all I seek,” she replied, then, checking herself, added in a changed voice, “Come, let us go home; it is foolish to talk long of such things.”

Shortly after this curious conversation, which was never renewed between them, or, at least, but once, a new element entered into the drama, the necessary semi-comic element without which everything would be so dull. This fresh factor was the infatuation, which possibly the reader may have foreseen, of the susceptible, impulsive little man, Stephen Layard, for Stella Fregelius, the lady whose singing he had admired, and who had been a cause of war between him and his sister. Like many weak men, Stephen Layard was obstinate, also from boyhood up he had suffered much at the hands of Eliza, who was not, in fact, quite so young as she looked. Hence there arose in his breast a very natural desire for retaliation. Eliza had taken a violent dislike to Miss Fregelius, whom he thought charming. This circumstance in their strained relations was reason enough to induce Stephen to pay court to her, even if his natural inclination had not made the adventure very congenial.

Therefore, on the first opportunity he called at the Abbey to ask after the rector, to be, as he had hoped, received by Stella. Finding his visit exceedingly agreeable, after a day or two he repeated it, and this time was conducted to the old clergyman’s bedroom, upon whom his civility made a good impression.

Now, as it happened, although he did not live in Monksland, Mr. Layard was one of the largest property owners in the parish, a circumstance which he did not fail to impress upon the new rector. Being by nature and training a hard-working man who wished to do his best for his cure even while he lay helpless, Mr. Fregelius welcomed the advances of this wealthy young gentleman with enthusiasm, especially when he found that he was no niggard. A piece of land was wanted for the cemetery. Mr. Layard offered to present an acre. Money was lacking to pay off a debt upon the reading-room. Mr. Layard headed the subscription list with a handsome sum. And so forth.

Now the details of these various arrangements could not conveniently be settled without many interviews, and thus very soon it came about that scarcely a day went by upon which Mr. Layard’s dog-cart did not pass through the Abbey gates. Generally he came in the morning and stopped to lunch; or he came in the afternoon and stopped to tea. In fact, or thus it seemed to Morris, he always stopped to something, so much so that although not lacking in hospitality, at times Morris found his presence wearisome, for in truth the two men had nothing in common.

“He must have turned over a new leaf with a vengeance, for he never would give a sixpence to anything during old Tomley’s time,” remarked Morris to Stella. “I suppose that he has taken a great fancy to your father, which is a good thing for the parish, as those Layards are richer than Croesus.”

“Yes,” answered Stella with a curious little smile.

But to herself she did not smile; for, if Morris found his visitor a bore, to Stella he was nothing short of an infliction, increased rather than mitigated by numerous presents of hot-house fruit and flowers offered to herself, and entailing, each of them, an expression of thanks verbal or written. At first she treated the thing as a joke, till it grew evident that her admirer was as much in earnest as his nature would permit. Thereon, foreseeing eventualities, she became alarmed.

Unless some means could be found to stop him it was now clear to Stella that Mr. Layard meant to propose to her, and as she had not the slightest intention of accepting him this was an honour which she did not seek. But she could find no sufficient means; hints, and even snubs, only seemed to add fuel to the fire, and of a perpetual game of hide and seek she grew weary.

So it came about that at last she shrugged her shoulders and left things to take their chance, finding some consolation for her discomfort in the knowledge that Miss Layard, convinced that the rector’s daughter was luring her inexperienced brother into an evil matrimonial net, could in no wise restrain her rage and indignation. So openly did this lady express her views, indeed, that at length a report of them reached even Morris’s inattentive ears, whereon he was at first very angry and then burst out laughing. That a man like Stephen Layard should hope to marry a woman like Stella Fregelius seemed to him so absurd as to be almost unnatural. Yet when he came to think it over quietly he was constrained to admit to himself that the match would have many advantages for the young lady, whereof the first and foremost were that Stephen was very rich, and although slangy and without education in its better sense, at heart by no means a bad little fellow. So Morris shrugged his shoulders, shut his eyes, continued to dispense luncheons and afternoon teas, and though with an uneasy mind, like Stella herself, allowed things to take their chance.

All this while, however, his own friendship with Stella grew apace, enhanced as it was in no small degree by the fact that now her help in his scientific operations had become most valuable. Indeed, it appeared that he was destined to owe the final success of his instrument to the assistance of women who, at the beginning, at any rate, knew little of its principles. Mary, it may be remembered, by some fortunate chance, made the suggestion as to the substance of the receiver, which turned the aerophone from a great idea into a practical reality. Now to complete the work it was Stella, not by accident, but after careful study of its problem who gave the thought that led to the removal of the one remaining obstacle to its general and successful establishment.

To test this new development of the famous sound deflector and perfect its details, scores of experiments were needed, most of which he and she carried out together. This was their plan. One of them established him or herself in the ruined building known as the Dead Church, while the other took up a position in the Abbey workshop. From these respective points, a distance of about two miles, they tested the machines with results that day by day grew better and clearer, till at length, under these conditions they were almost perfect.

Strange was the experience and great the triumph when at last Morris, seated in the Abbey with his apparatus before him, unconnected with its twin by any visible medium, was able without interruption for a whole morning to converse with Stella established in the Dead Church.

“It is done,” he cried in unusual exultation. “Now, if I die to-morrow it does not matter.”

Instantly came the answer in Stella’s voice.

“I am very happy. If I do nothing else I have helped a man to fame.”

Then a hitch arose, the inevitable hitch; it was found that, in certain states of the atmosphere, and sometimes at fixed hours of the day, the sounds coming from the receiver were almost inaudible. At other times again the motive force seemed to be so extraordinarily active that, the sound deflector notwithstanding, the instrument captured and transmitted a thousand noises which are not to be heard by the unobservant listener, or in some cases by any human ear.

Weird enough these noises were at times. Like great sighs they came, like the moan of the breeze brought from an infinite distance, like mutterings and groanings arisen from the very bowels of the earth. Then there were the splash or boom of the waves, the piping of the sea-wind, the cry of curlew, or black-backed gulls, all mingled in one great and tangled skein of sound that choked the voice of the speaker, and in their aggregate, bewildered him who hearkened.

These, and others which need not be detailed, were problems that had to be met, necessitating many more experiments. Thus it came about that through most of the short hours of winter daylight Morris and Stella found themselves at their respective positions, corresponding, or trying to correspond, through the aerophones. If the weather was very bad, or very cold, Morris went to the dead Church, otherwise that post was allotted to Stella, both because it was more convenient that Morris should stay in his laboratory, and by her own choice.

Two principal reasons caused her to prefer to pass as much of her time as was possible in this desolate and unvisited spot. First, because Mr. Layard was less likely to find her when he called, and secondly, that for her it had a strange fascination. Indeed, she loved the place, clothed as it was with a thousand memories of those who had been human like herself, but now—were not. She would read the inscriptions upon the chancel stones and study the coats-of-arms and names of those departed, trying to give to each lost man and woman a shape and character, till at length she knew all the monuments by appearance as well as by the names inscribed upon them.

One of these dead, oddly enough, had been named Stella Ethel Smythe, daughter of Sir Thomas Smythe, whose family lived at the old hall now in the possession of the Layards. This Stella had died at the age of twenty-five in the year 1741, and her tombstone recorded that in mind she was clean and sweet, and in body beautiful. Also at the foot of it was a doggerel couplet, written probably by her bereaved father, which ran:

     “Though here my Star seems set,
     I know ‘twill light me yet.”

Stella, the live Stella, thought these simple words very touching, and pointed them out to Morris. He agreed with her, and tried in the records of the parish and elsewhere to discover some details about the dead girl’s life, but quite without avail.

“That’s all that’s left,” he said one day, nodding his head at the tombstone. “The star is quite set.”

“‘I know ‘twill light me yet,’” murmured his companion, as she turned away to the work in hand. “Sometimes,” she went on, “as I sit here at dusk listening to all the strange sounds which come from that receiver, I fancy that I can hear Stella and her poor father talking while they watch me; only I cannot understand their language.”

“Ah!” said Morris, “if that were right we should have found a means of communication from the dead and with the unseen world at large.”

“Why not?” asked Stella.

“I don’t know, I have thought of it,” he answered, and the subject dropped.

One afternoon Stella, wrapped in thick cloaks, was seated in the chancel of the Dead Church attending to the instrument which stood upon the stone altar. Morris had not wished her to go that morning, for the weather was very coarse, and snow threatened; but, anticipating a visit from Mr. Layard, she insisted, saying that she should enjoy the walk. Now the experiments were in progress, and going beautifully. In order to test the aerophones fully in this rough weather, Morris and Stella had agreed to read to each other alternate verses from the Book of Job, beginning at the thirty-eighth chapter.

“‘Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?’”

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