Clay Lane

The Copy Book

A Library of History and Literature in English

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1435

Mathieu Martinel and the Drowning Soldier

A young French cavalry soldier took a tremendous risk to rescue a drowning man.

Mathieu Martinel enrolled in the French army in January 1816, at the age of sixteen. It was a time of relative peace, but opportunities for heroism appeared to come looking for him.

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Picture: © João-Martinho, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 3.0.. Source.

1436

Mathieu Martinel and the Fireworks

A firework display in Paris turned to tragedy in the narrow streets of the capital.

It is 1837, and Mathieu Martinel, a cavalry soldier in the French army, is now a senior officer in the military college in Paris. Fate, however, had not yet finished testing his mettle.

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Picture: © João-Martinho, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 3.0.. Source.

1437

The Cat Who Walks by Himself

The sly cat hatches a plan to get all the benefits of domestic life without any of the responsibilities.

In this short tale by Rudyard Kipling, we learn how the Cat tried to get all the comforts of domestic life without doing any work in return.

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Picture: © Serena, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0.. Source.

1438

The Iron Horse and the Iron Cow

Railways not only brought fresh, healthy food to the urban poor, they improved the conditions of working animals.

In the 1850s, London could not house enough cows for its population, so dairymen watered down their milk from cholera-infested roadside pumps, adding snails or sheep’s brains to thicken it (more). No legislation could have solved that dilemma of supply and demand. But railways did.

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Picture: © Alan Fleming, Geograph. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0.. Source.

1439

The Pig-and-Potato War

In 1859, peaceful co-existence on the Canadian border was severely tested by a marauding pig.

Even quite late in Queen Victoria’s reign, Britain and the United States of America were still carving up what had once been British colonial territory. One disputed region was San Juan Island near Vancouver, where a dead pig almost led to war.

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Picture: © Alan Fleming, Geograph. Licence: CC-BY-SA 3.0.. Source.

1440

Jane Eyre

Her enemies made Jane stronger, but her lover struck a blow from which she might never recover.

Rebellious Jane needed all her fiery spirit to carry her through a loveless childhood, and a shocking discovery at the altar.

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Picture: © J147, Geograph. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0.. Source.