>PROJECT GUTENBERG AUSTRALIA
=======================================
MONTHLY NEWSLETTER -
March 2008 [includes details of ebooks placed online during February
2008]
Dear Subscriber,
Copyright laws are changing all over the
world. Be sure to check the copyright
laws for your country before
downloading or redistributing ebooks mentioned in this
newsletter.
CONTENTS:
---------------------------------------
*
News and Reviews
* Last month's postings
* Other Information (including
details of how to unsubscribe
NEWS AND
REVIEWS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHINESE
NEW YEAR - THE YEAR OF THE
RAT
-----------------------------------------------------------------
This
month one of our volunteers sent along three ebooks by Herbert A Giles, a past
Professor of Chinese in the University of Cambridge. The titles are listed below
in our February posting list.
I didn't know what to expect as I prepared
the ebooks for posting, but for a self-confessed quotation-freak, here was a
banquet, a feast, a veritable groaning board. All of the works are filled with
beautiful passages, as one might expect from Chinese writing.
Since the
Chinese have only recently celebrated the start of a new year, the Year of the
Rat, I will show admirable discipline by confining my quotations to that
subject. Hence:--
* Don't break a vase for a shy at a rat.
* It
takes a rat to know a rat.
That wasn't so bad, was it. Only 2 references
to rats. There was one other little parable in 'Gems of Chinese Literature:
Prose' titled 'A Rat's Cunning.' You will have to find that one
yourself.
John Bickers prepared these three ebooks. If you have ever had
a go at making one, you will appreciate his effort. My eye was caught by another
quote in one of the texts, "One man makes a road and another walks on it." John
has made the road, why not walk on it and pick up some of the gems with which it
is studded.
MAKING THE MOST OF
EBOOKS
---------------------------------------
In writing his book
"Australia's Pioneers, Heroes and Fools" Peter Macinnis acknowledged that "most
of all, though, I owe a debt of gratitude to the people at Project Gutenberg
Australia. These lovely people have scanned and proofed most of the journals of
the explorers, and that was my starting point for a database. I added text from
other sources, but my major source was Project Gutenberg Australia." (http://members.ozemail.com.au/~macinnis@ozemail.com.au/writing/pioneers2.htm)
The Australian Explorers Journals are at http://gutenberg.net.au/explorers-journals.html
Sometimes
volunteers must wonder whether the work they do will find an audience or whether
the books will just sit there as digital code taking up space on a computer hard
disk somewhere. It is nice to see good use is being made of the work of our
volunteers.
Quotable
Quotes
---------------------------------------
(From Doctor Widger's
Library (http://www.gutenberg.net.au/widger/home.html)
The
following are from The Essays of Montaigne, Volume 2, by Michel de
Montaigne
(http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/5/8/3582/3582.txt)
*
* * * *
It should seem that the nature of wit is to have its operation
prompt and
sudden, and that of judgment to have it more deliberate and more
slow.
* * *
But, above all, old men who retain the memory of
things past,
and forget how often they have told them, are dangerous company;
and I
have known stories from the mouth of a man of very great
quality,
otherwise very pleasant in themselves, become very wearisome by
being
repeated a hundred times over and over again to the same
people.
* * *
I was by no means pleased with a story, told me by a
man of very great
quality of a relation of mine, and one who had given a very
good account
of himself both in peace and war, that, coming to die in a very
old age,
of excessive pain of the stone, he spent the last hours of his life
in an
extraordinary solicitude about ordering the honour and ceremony of
his
funeral, pressing all the men of condition who came to see him to
engage
their word to attend him to his grave: importuning this very prince,
who
came to visit him at his last gasp, with a most earnest supplication
that
he would order his family to be there, and presenting before him
several
reasons and examples to prove that it was a respect due to a man of
his
condition; and seemed to die content, having obtained this promise,
and
appointed the method and order of his funeral parade. I have
seldom
heard of so persistent a vanity.
* * * * *
Australian
Poetry
---------------------------------------
A NEW GIRL UP AT
WHITE'S
There's a fresh track down the paddock
Through the
lightwoods to the creek,
And I notice Billy Craddock
And Maloney do
not speak,
And The Snag is slyly bitter
When he's criticising
Bill,
And there's quite a foreign glitter
On the fellows at the
mill.
Sid M'Mahon's turned out a dandy
With a masher coat and
tie,
And the engine-driver, Sandy,
Curls his whiskers on the
sly:
All the boys wear paper collars
And their tombstone shirts of
nights,
So it's ten to one in dollars
There's a new girl up at
White's.
She's a charmer from the river,
But she steeps the
lads in gloom,
With her blue eyes all a-quiver
And her hair like
wattle-bloom;
Though she's pretty and beguiling,
And so lit up,
like, with fun
That the flowers turn to her smiling,
Just as if she
was the sun.
But I wish she'd leave the valley,
For the camp is
dull to me,
Now the mill hands never rally
For the regulation
spree,
And there's not another joker
Gives a tinker's curse for
nap.,
Or will take a hand at poker
Or at euchre with a
chap!
Tom won't stir us with his fiddle
By the boilers as he
did
While Bob stepped it in the middle,
And we passed the
billy-lid.
Ah! we had some gay old nights there,
But the boys now
don't agree,
And they hang about at White's there,
When they've
togged up after tea.
With the gloves we have no battle;
Now
they sneak away and moon
Round with White, discussing cattle
All
the Sunday afternoon.
There's a want of old uprightness,
Too, has
come upon the push,
And a sort of cold politeness
That's not called
for in the bush.
They're all off, too, in that quarter;
Kate
goes sev'ral times a week
Seeing Andy Kelly's daughter,
Jimmy's
sister, up the creek;
And this difference seems a pity,
Since their
chances are so slim--
While they are running after Kitty,
She is
running after Jim.
From Rhymes from the Mines by Edward Dyson (http://gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty-a-m.html#dyson)
'Google'
Ads
---------------------------------------
Check out some of the
Google ads on our web pages. We receive revenue based on the number of clicks
and that revenue helps keep Project Gutenberg of Australia online. (http://gutenberg.net.au)
LAST
MONTH'S
POSTINGS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A
list of all the books we provide is available from http://gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty.html.
Check
there to see if there are other works by the authors listed below.
--
FEBRUARY POSTINGS --
Feb 2008 The Forger,
Edgar
Wallace
[080020xx.xxx] 1602A
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks08/0800201.txt
or .zip
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks08/0800201h.html
Feb
2008 The Loyal Karens of Burma,Donald Mackenzie Smeaton[080019xx.xxx]
1601A
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks08/0800191.txt
or .zip
Feb 2008 The Viper of Milan, Marjorie
Bowen
[080018xx.xxx] 1600A
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks08/0800181.txt
or .zip
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks08/0800181h.html
Feb
2008 Gems of Chinese Literature: Verse, Herbert A Giles[080017xx.xxx]
1599A
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks08/0800171.txt
or .zip
Feb 2008 Gems of Chinese Literature: Prose, Herbert A
Giles[080016xx.xxx] 1598A
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks08/0800161.txt
or .zip
Feb 2008 A History of Chinese Literature, Herbert A Giles
[080015xx.xxx] 1597A
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks08/0800151.txt
or .zip
Feb 2008 The Man at the Carlton, Edgar
Wallace
[080014xx.xxx] 1596A
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks08/0800141.txt
or .zip
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks08/0800141h.html
Feb
2008 Man Abroad,
Anonymous
[080013xx.xxx] 1595A
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks08/0800131.txt
or .zip
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks08/0800131h.html
Feb
2008 The Crystal Button, Chauncey
Thomas
[080012xx.xxx] 1594A
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks08/0800121.txt
or .zip
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks08/0800121h.html
Feb
2008 A History of Ireland and Her People, Eleanor Hull [080011xx.xxx]
1593A
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks08/0800111h.html
Feb
2008 Planetoid 127, Edgar
Wallace
[080010xx.xxx] 1592A
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks08/0800101.txt
or .zip
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks08/0800101h.html
Feb
2008 The Carolinian, Rafael
Sabatini
[080009xx.xxx] 1591A
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks08/0800091.txt
or .zip
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks08/0800091h.html
OTHER
INFORMATION
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsletter
Editor: Colin Choat
To visit the Project Gutenberg Australia web site, go
to http://gutenberg.net.au.
To
contact us, go to http://gutenberg.net.au/contact.html.
To
get HELP with downloading the ebooks available from Project Gutenberg Australia
go to http://gutenberg.net.au/help.html.
To
view past newsletters go to http://gutenberg.net.au/oldnews.html.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Project
Gutenberg Australia
a treasure-trove of literature
treasure-trove n.
treasure found hidden with no evidence of
ownership.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------