The Hare was once boasting of his speed before the other animals.

"I 've
never yet been beaten," said he, "when I put forth my full speed. I challenge
any one to race with me."

The Tortoise said quietly, "I accept your challenge."

"That is a good joke," said the Hare

"Keep your boasting until you've been beaten" answered the Tortoise.

So a course was fixed and the hare darted out of sight at once, but soon
stopped to have a nap. The tortoise plodded on and when the hare awoke
from his nap, he saw the tortoise nearing the finish line, he could not catch up
in time to save the race.

Jane Austen was born on the sixteenth of December seventeen seventy-five in

Hampshire. She was one of eight children of a clergyman and grew up in a
close-knit community. She began to write as a teenager. Her brother Henry
helped her to negotiate with a publisher and her first novel, 'Sense and
Sensibility', appeared in eighteen eleven. Her next work 'Pride and Prejudice',
got great reviews. She wrote four more novels and left one incomplete. All of
them were published anonymously. Her books set among the english upper
and middle classes are notable for their wit, social observation and insights
into the lives of early nineteenth century women.

If you don’t count the necessity of drinking water, tea is the most consumed
drink in the world. Tea is made by brewing the leaves, flowers and buds of the
Camellia plant, commonly called the tea plant. Historians trace the first use of
tea around six hundred BC. Tea was likely first drunk in the eastern Himalayas
by Buddhist monks in India and China to help facilitate meditation. It has
proven health benefits. It can promote either friendship and community or
introspection and solitude. It can be calming or invigorating. Tea is arguably
the most versatile beverage on Earth.

Charles Dickens was a tireless walker of London, the English city that served
as the main setting of many of his novels. As a routine he visited the capital’s
central neighbourhoods before dinner and after midnight. In the two hundredth
anniversary year of the author’s birth a walking tour of central London brings a
new appreciation to Dickens’s novels, as fans can perceive many of the same
details that the author observed during his often nocturnal travels around town.
Though London was heavily damaged by the bombings of World War two,
vestiges of the city's eighteen hundreds architecture survive in different
places.