The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched upla...nds; even this may be the eventful year, which will drown out all our muskrats. It was not always dry land where we dwell. I see far inland the banks which the stream anciently washed, before science began to record its freshets. Every one has heard the story which has gone the rounds of New England, of a strong and beautiful bug which came out of the dry leaf of an old table of apple-tree wood, which had stood in a farmer's kitchen for sixty years, first in Connecticut, and afterward in Massachusetts,--from an egg deposited in the living tree many years earlier still, as appeared by counting the annual layers beyond it; which was heard gnawing out for several weeks, hatched perchance by the heat of an urn. Who does not feel his faith in a resurrection and immortality strengthened by hearing of this? Who knows what beautiful and winged life, whose egg has been buried for ages under many concentric layers of woodenness in the dead dry life of society, deposited at first in the alburnum of the green and living tree, which has been gradually converted into the semblance of its well-seasoned tomb,--heard perchance gnawing out now for years by the astonished family of man, as they sat round the festal board,--may unexpectedly come forth from amidst society's most trivial and handselled furniture, to enjoy its perfect summer life at last! I do not say that John or Jonathan will realize all this; but such is the character of that morrow which mere lapse of time can never make to dawn. The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Is it true or false that Belfast is north of London? That the galaxy is the shape of a fried egg? That Beethoven was a drunkard? T...hat Wellington won the battle of Waterloo? There are various degrees and dimensions of success in making statements: the statements fit the facts always more or less loosely, in different ways on different occasions for different intents and purposes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The master plan was laid out months ago. Jack Kemp would give 200 rubber-chicken dinners (sometimes it's meatballs or just cocktai...ls) between Jan. 1, 1995, and Jan. l, 1996. What the plan did not say was that he would be expected to deliver the same lines, ingratiate himself to political hangers-on and, most humiliating of all, beg them for money.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Clogged and soft and sloppy eyes Have lost the light that bites or terrifies.... There are no swans and swallows any more. The people settled for chicken and shut the door.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
At Joe's Eats You get your fish or chicken on meat platters.... With coleslaw, macaroni, candied sweets, Coffee and apple pie. You go out full. (The end is--isn't it?--all that really matters.)LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Surely, of all creatures we eat, we are most brutal to snails. Helix optera is dug out of the earth where he has been peacefully e...njoying his summer sleep, cracked like an egg, and eaten raw, presumably alive. Or boiled in oil. Or roasted in the hot ashes of a wood fire.... If God is a snail, Bosch's depictions of Hell are going to look like a vicarage tea-party.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Its idea of "production value" is spending a million dollars dressing up a story that any good writer would throw away. Its vision... of the rewarding movie is a vehicle for some glamour-puss with two expressions and eighteen changes of costume, or for some male idol of the muddled millions with a permanent hangover, six worn-out acting tricks, the build of a lifeguard, and the mentality of a chicken-strangler.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Never would it occur to a child that a sheep, a pig, a cow or a chicken was good to eat, while, like Milton's Adam, he would eager...ly make a meal off fruits, nuts, thyme, mint, peas and broad beans which penetrate further and stimulate not only the appetite but other vague and deep nostalgias. We are closer to the Vegetable Kingdom than we know; is it not for man alone that mint, thyme, sage, and rosemary exhale "crush me and eat me!"Mfor us that opium poppy, coffee-berry, teaplant and vine perfect themselves? Their aim is to be absorbed by us, even if it can only be achieved by attaching themselves to roast mutton.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »