The following edited passage is an excerpt from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, a historical fiction novel based on Russian high society in the late-19th- century.

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Everything was in confusion in the

5 Oblonskys’ house. The wife had discovered the husband’s deceit, and she had announced to her husband that she could not go on living in the same house with him. This position of affairs had

10 now lasted three days, and not only the husband and wife themselves, but all the members of their family and household, were painfully conscious of it. Every person in the house felt that there was

15   no sense in their living together, and that the stray people brought together by chance in any inn had more in common with one another than they, the members of the family and household of the

20 Oblonskys. The wife did not leave her own room, the husband had not been at home for three days. The children ran wild all over the house; the English governess quarreled with the

25 housekeeper, and wrote to a friend asking her to look out for a new situation for her; the man-cook had walked off the day before just at dinner time; the kitchen-maid, and the

30 coachman had given warning.

Three days after the quarrel, Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch Oblonsky—Stiva, as he was called in the fashionable world—woke up at his usual hour, that

35   is, at eight o’clock in the morning, not in his wife’s bedroom, but on the leather-covered sofa in his study. He turned over his stout, well-cared-for person on the springy sofa, as though he

40 would sink into a long sleep again; he vigorously embraced the pillow on the other side and buried his face in it; but

all at once he jumped up, sat up on the sofa, and opened his eyes.

45 “Yes, yes, how was it now?” he thought, going over his reverie. “Now, how was it? To be sure! Alabin was giving a dinner at Darmstadt; no, not Darmstadt, but something American. Yes, but then,

50 Darmstadt was in America. Yes, Alabin was giving a dinner on glass tables, and the tables sang, Il mio tesoro—not Il mio tesoro though, but something better, and there were some sort of little

55 decanters on the table, and they were women, too,” he remembered.

Stepan Arkadyevitch’s eyes twinkled gaily, and he pondered with a smile. “Yes, it was nice, very nice. There was a

60 great deal more that was delightful, only there’s no putting it into words, or even expressing it in one’s thoughts awake.” And noticing a gleam of light peeping in beside one of the serge curtains, he

65 cheerfully dropped his feet over the edge of the sofa, and felt about with them for his slippers, a present on his last birthday, worked for him by his wife on gold-colored morocco. And, as

70 he had done every day for the last nine years, he stretched out his hand, without getting up, towards the place where his dressing-gown always hung in his bedroom. And thereupon he suddenly

75 remembered that he was not sleeping in his wife’s room, but in his study, and why: the smile vanished from his face, he knitted his brows.

“Ah, ah, ah! Oo!…” he muttered,

80 recalling everything that had happened. And again every detail of his quarrel with his wife was present to his imagination, all the hopelessness of his position, and worst of all, his own fault.

85 “Yes, she won’t forgive me, and she can’t forgive me. And the most awful thing about it is that it’s all my fault— all my fault, though I’m not to blame.

That’s the point of the whole situation,”

90 he reflected. “Oh, oh, oh!” he kept repeating in despair, as he remembered the acutely painful sensations caused him by this quarrel.

Most unpleasant of all was the first

95 minute when, on coming, happy and good-humored, from the theater, with a huge pear in his hand for his wife, he had not found his wife in the drawing- room, to his surprise had not found her

100 in the study either, and saw her at last in her bedroom with the unlucky letter that revealed everything in her hand.

She, his Dolly, forever fussing and worrying over household details, and

105 limited in her ideas, as he considered, was sitting perfectly still with the letter in her hand, looking at him with an expression of horror, despair, and indignation.

The first edited passage is from The English Constitution by William Blackstone discussing the cabinet government. Passage 2, taken from Commentaries on the Laws of English by Walter Bagehot, discusses the rights of Parliament.

Passage 1

Cabinet government is rare because its prerequisites are many. It requires the co- existence of several national characteristics which are not often found

5   together in the world, and which should be perceived more distinctly than they often are. It is fancied that the possession of a certain intelligence, and a few simple virtues, are the sole requisites. The

10 mental and moral qualities are necessary, but much else is necessary also. A Cabinet government is the government of a committee selected by the legislature, and there are therefore a double set of

15 conditions to it: first, those which are essential to all elective governments as such; and second, those which are requisite to this particular elective government. There are prerequisites for

20 the genus, and additional ones for the species.

The first prerequisite of elective government is the mutual confidence of the electors. We are so accustomed to

25 submit to be ruled by elected Ministers, that we are apt to fancy all mankind would readily be so too. Knowledge and civilisation have at least made this progress, that we instinctively, without

30 argument, almost without consciousness, allow a certain number of specified persons to choose our rulers for us. It seems to us the simplest thing in the world. But it is one of the gravest things.

35 The peculiar marks of semi-barbarous people are diffused distrust and indiscriminate suspicion. People, in all but the most favoured times and places, are rooted to the places where they were

40 born, think the thoughts of those places, can endure no other thoughts. The next parish even is suspected. Its inhabitants have different usages, almost imperceptibly different, but yet different;

45 they speak a varying accent; they use a few peculiar words; tradition says that their faith is dubious. And if the next parish is a little suspected, the next county is much more suspected. Here is a

50 definite beginning of new maxims, new thoughts, new ways: the immemorial boundary mark begins in feeling a strange world. And if the next county is dubious, a remote county is untrustworthy.

55 “Vagrants come from thence,” men know, and they know nothing else. The inhabitants of the north speak a dialect different from the dialect of the south: they have other laws, another aristocracy,

60 another life. In ages when distant territories are blanks in the mind, when neighbourhood is a sentiment, when locality is a passion, concerted co- operation between remote regions is

65   impossible even on trivial matters. Neither would rely enough upon the good faith, good sense, and good judgment of the other. Neither could enough calculate on the other.

Passage 2

70 We are next to treat of the rights and duties of persons, as they are members of society, and stand in various relations to each other. These relations are either public or private: and we will first

75 consider those that are public.

The most universal public relation, by which men are connected together, is that of government; namely, as governors and governed, or, in other words, as

80 magistrates and people. Of magistrates also some are supreme, in whom the sovereign power of the state resides; others are subordinate, deriving all their authority from the supreme magistrate,

85 accountable to him for their conduct, and acting in an inferior secondary sphere.

In all tyrannical governments the supreme magistracy, or the right both of making and of enforcing the laws, is vested in one

90 and the same man, or one and the same body of men; and wherever these two powers are united together, there can be no public liberty. The magistrate may enact tyrannical laws, and execute them

95 in a tyrannical manner, since he is possessed, in quality of dispenser of justice, with all the power which he as legislator thinks proper to give himself. But, where the legislative and executive

100 authority are in distinct hands, the former will take care not to entrust the latter with so large a power, as may tend to the subversion of its own independence, and therewith of the liberty of the subject.

105 With us therefore in England this supreme power is divided into two branches; the one legislative, to wit, the parliament, consisting of king, lords, and commons; the other executive, consisting

110 of the king alone.

The following edited passage is taken from Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt by Gaston Maspero on early private dwellings.

The lower classes lived in mere huts which, though built of bricks, were no better than those of the present fellahin. At Karnak, in the Pharaonic town; at

5 Kom Ombo, in the Roman town; and at Medinet Habû, in the Coptic town, the houses in the poorer quarters have seldom more than twelve or sixteen feet of frontage. They consist of a ground floor,

10 with sometimes one or two living-rooms above. The middle-class folk, as shopkeepers, sub-officials, and foremen, were better housed. Their houses were brick-built and rather small, yet contained

15 some half-dozen rooms communicating by means of doorways, which were usually arched over, and having vaulted roofs in some cases, and in others flat ones.

20 Some few of the houses were two or three storeys high, and many were separated from the street by a narrow court, beyond which the rooms were ranged on either side of a long passage; and yet oftener the

25 house fronted close upon the street. In the latter case the façade consisted of a high wall, whitewashed or painted, and surmounted by a cornice.

Even in better houses the only

30 ornamentation of their outer walls consisted in angular grooving, the grooves being surmounted by representations of two lotus flowers, each pair with the upper parts of the stalks in

35 contact. The door was the only opening, save perhaps a few small windows pierced at irregular intervals. Even in unpretentious houses, the door was often made of stone. The doorposts projected

40 slightly beyond the surface of the wall, and the lintel supported a painted or sculptured cornice. Having crossed the threshold, one passed successively

through two dimly-lighted entrance

45 chambers, the second of which opened into the central court. The best rooms in the houses of wealthier citizens were sometimes lighted through a square opening in the centre of a ceiling

50 supported on wooden columns.

Notwithstanding the prevalence of enteric disease and ophthalmia, the family crowded together into one or two rooms during the winter, and slept out on the

55 roof under the shelter of mosquito nets in summer. On the roof also the women gossiped and cooked. The ground floor included both store-rooms, barns, and stables. Private granaries were generally

60 in pairs, brick-built in the same long conical shape as the state granaries, and carefully plastered with mud inside and out. Neither did the people of a house forget to find or to make hiding places in

65 the walls or floors of their home, where they could secrete their household treasures–such as nuggets of gold and silver, precious stones, and jewellery for men and women–from thieves and tax-

70 collectors alike. Wherever the upper floors still remain standing, they reproduce the ground-floor plan with scarcely any differences.

The rooms were not left undecorated; the

75 mud-plaster of the walls, generally in its native grey, although whitewashed in some cases, was painted with red or yellow, and ornamented with drawings of interior and exterior views of a house,

80 and of household vessels and eatables.

The roof was flat, and made probably, as at the present day, of closely laid rows of palm-branches covered with a coating of mud thick enough to withstand the effects

85 of rain. Sometimes it was surmounted by only one or two of the usual Egyptian ventilators; but generally there was a small washhouse on the roof, and a little chamber for the slaves or guards to sleep

90 in.

The mansions of the rich and great covered a large space of ground. They most frequently stood in the midst of a garden, or of an enclosed court planted

95 with trees; and, like the commoner houses, they turned a blank front to the street, consisting of bare walls, battlemented like those of a fortress.

Thus, home-life was strictly secluded,

100 and the pleasure of seeing was sacrificed for the advantages of not being seen. The door was approached by a flight of two or three steps, or by a porch supported on columns and adorned with statues, which

105 gave it a monumental appearance, and indicated the social importance of the family.

If I would convey some idea of the residence of an Egyptian noble,–a

110 residence half palace, half villa,–I cannot do better than reproduce two out of the many pictorial plans. The first represent a Theban house. The enclosure is square, and surrounded by an embattled wall. The

115 main gate opens upon a road bordered with trees, which runs beside a canal, or perhaps an arm of the Nile. Low stone walls divide the garden into symmetrical compartments, like those which are seen

120 to this day in the great gardens of Ekhmîm or Girgeh. In the centre is a large trellis supported on four rows of slender pillars. Four small ponds, two to the right and two to the left, are stocked

125 with ducks and geese. Two nurseries, two summer-houses, and various avenues of sycamores, date-palms, and dôm-palms fill up the intermediate space; while at the end, facing the entrance, stands a small

130 three-storied house surmounted by a painted cornice.

Plan of a house from Eighteenth Dynasty tomb-painting.

Source: Gaston Maspero

The following edited passage is taken from On Laboratory Arts by Richard Threlfall on the creation of a focus tube.

Although the glass-blowing involved in the making of a so-called focus tube is rather more difficult than in the case just described, there is no reason why such a

5 difficulty should not be overcome; I will therefore explain how a focus tube may be made.

A bulb about 3 inches in diameter is blown from a bit of tube of a little more

10 than 1 inch diameter. Unless the walls of the tube are about one-eighth of an inch in thickness, this will involve a preliminary thickening up of the glass. This is not difficult if care be taken to

15 avoid making the glass too hot. The larger gas jet described in connection with the soda-glass-blowing table must be employed. In blowing a bulb of this size it must not be forgotten that

20 draughts exercise a very injurious influence by causing the glass to cool unequally; this leads to bulbs of irregular shape.

In the method of construction, the anode

25 is put in first. This anode simply consists of a square bit of platinum or platinum-iridium foil, measuring about

0.75 inch by 1 inch, and riveted on to a bent aluminium wire stem.

30 As soon as the anode is fused in, and while the glass is still hot, the side tube is put on. The whole of the anode end is then carefully annealed. When the annealing is finished the side tube is

35 bent to serve as a handle when the time comes to mount the cathode. Before placing the cathode in position, and while the main tube is still wide open, the anode is adjusted by means of a tool

40 thrust in through this open end. This is necessary in view of the fact that the platinum foil is occasionally bent during

the operation of forcing the anode into the bulb.

45 The cathode is a portion of a spherical surface of polished aluminium, a mode of preparing which will be given directly. The cathode having been placed inside the bulb, the wide glass

50 tube is carefully drawn down and cut off at such a point that when the cathode is in position its centre of curvature will lie slightly in front of the anode plate. For instance, if the radius of curvature of the

55 cathode be 1.5 inches, the centre of curvature may lie something like an eighth of an inch or less in front of the anode.

The cathode is rather smaller than is

60 advantageous. To make it much larger, however, the opening into the bulb would require to be considerably widened, and though this is not really a difficult operation, still it requires more

65 practice than my readers are likely to have had. The difficulty is not so much in widening out the entry as in closing it down again neatly.

Now as to making the anode. A disc of

70 aluminium is cut from a sheet which must not be too thick — one twenty- fifth of an inch is quite thick enough. This disc is bored at the centre to allow of the stem being riveted in position.

75 The disc is then annealed in the Bunsen flame and the stem riveted on.

The curvature is best got by striking between steel dies. Two bits of tool steel are softened and turned on the lathe, one

80 convex and the other concave. The concave die has a small hole drilled up the centre to admit the stem. The desired radius of curvature is easily attained by cutting out templates from sheet zinc

85   and using them to gauge the turning. The two dies are slightly ground together on the lathe with emery and oil and are then polished, or rather the

convex die is polished — the other one

90 does not matter. The polishing is most easily done by using graded emery and oil and polishing with a rag.

The aluminium disc is now struck between the dies by means of a hammer.

95 If the radius of curvature is anything more than one inch and the disc not more than one inch in diameter the cathode can be struck at once from the flat as described. For very deep curves

100 no doubt it will be better to make an intermediate pair of dies and to re- anneal the aluminium after the first striking. When the tube is successfully prepared

105 so far as the glassblowing goes it may be rinsed with strong pure alcohol both inside and out, and dried. The straight part of the side tube is then constricted ready for fusing off and the whole affair

110 is placed on the vacuum pump.

In spite of the great improvements made during recent years in the construction of so-called Geissler vacuum pumps —

i.e. pumps in which a Torricellian

115 vacuum is continually reproduced — I am of opinion that Sprengel pumps are, on the whole, more convenient for exhausting Crooke’s tubes. A full discussion of the subject of vacuum

120 pumps will be found in a work by Mr.

G. S. Ram (The Incandescent Lamp and its Manufacture), published by the Electrician Publishing Company, and it is not my intention to deal with the

125 matter here; the simplest kind of Sprengel pump will be found quite adequate for our purpose, provided that it is well made.

Method of Construction Source: Richard Threlfall