Worn down by the hoofs of millions of half-wild Texas cattle driven along it to the railheads in Kansas, the trail was a bare, bro...wn, dusty strip hundreds of miles long, lined with the bleaching bones of longhorns and cow ponies. Here and there a broken-down chuck wagon or a small mound marking the grave of some cowhand buried by his partners "on the lone prairie" gave evidence to the hardships of the journey.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Hast ever ben in Omaha Where rolls the dark Missouri down,... Where four strong horses scarce can draw An empty wagon through the town? Where sand is blown from every mound To fill your eyes and ears and throat; Where all the steamboats are aground, And all the houses are afloat?... If not, take heed to what I say, You'll find it just as I have found it; And if it lies upon your way For God's sake, reader, go around it!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
--First a shiver, and then a thrill, Then something decidedly like a spill,--... And the parson was sitting up on a rock, At half-past nine by the meet'n'-house clock,-- Just the hour of the Earthquake shock! MWhat do you think the parson found, When he got up and stared around? The poor old chaise in a heap or mound, As if it had been to the mill and ground!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn Where a little headstone stood;... How the flakes were folding it gently, As did robins the babes in the wood.
Up spoke our own little Mabel, Saying, "Father, who makes it snow?" And I told of the good All-father Who cares for us here below.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When Dad can't get the diaper on straight, we laugh at him as though he were trying to walk around in high-heel shoes. Do we ever ...assist him by pointing out that all you have to do is lay out the diaper like a baseball diamond, put the kid's butt on the pitcher's mound, bring home plate up, then fasten the tapes at first and third base?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The place became crater on each side, sank down to its first skull,... shedding forests, oceans, dried bones and neons, as it fell through time like a forgotten pitted stone.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To muse and brood and live again in memory, With those old faces of our infancy... Heaped over with a mound of grass, Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Why should not our whole life and its scenery be actually thus fair and distinct? All our lives want a suitable background. They s...hould at least, like the life of the anchorite, be as impressive to behold as objects in a desert, a broken shaft or crumbling mound against a limitless horizon.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »