I long to hear how my dear, dear, beloved Mr. Crisp does. My papa always mentions him by the name of my Flame--Indeed he is not mi...staken--himself is the only man on earth I prefer to him.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Hunger makes you restless. You dream about food--not just any food, but perfect food, the best food, magical meals, famous and awe...-inspiring, the one piece of meat, the exact taste of buttery corn, tomatoes so ripe they split and sweeten the air, beans so crisp they snap between the teeth, gravy like mother's milk singing to your bloodstream.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Kitchens were different then, too--not only what came out of them, but their smells and sounds. A hot pie cooling smells different... from a frozen pie thawing. Oilcloth and linoleum and apples in an open bowl and ruffled rubber aprons make a different aromatic mix from Formica and ceramic tile and mangoes in an acrylic fruit ripener and plastic-coated aprons printed with "Who invited all these tacky people?" And the kitchen sounds. I am not sure that today's kitchen is noisier. But the noises are different. Today you get the song of the food processor and the blender, the intermittent hum of the reefer and the freezer, the buzz-slosh-and-grunt of the dishwasher, the violently audible digestive processes of the waste disposal in the sink. Then it was the whir and clatter of the hand-powered eggbeater, the thunk-thunk-thunk of somebody mashing potatoes, or, in green-pea season, the crisp pop of pea pod and the rattle-rattle-rattle of peas into the pan.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We were observing once to Mr. [Samuel] Crisp that the good and the agreeable were seldom united--"Ay begad," cried he, "'tis rare ...enough to meet with the one or the other."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In chess we find several quite crisp distinctions that can also be discerned rather more problematically in the larger game of lif...e. There are, for instance, the "forced moves" in chess. Moves are occasionally forced by the rules of chess: in these instances one finds oneself so boxed in that one and only one legal move is available.... More interesting ... are the forced moves on those occasions when there is more than one legal move, but only one non-idiotic, non-"suicidal" move, which is said for that reason to be forced. It is forced not by the rules of chess, and not by the laws of physics, but by the dictates of reason. It is obviously the only rational thing to do, given one's interest in winning (or just not losing) the game.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No prayers or incense rose up in those hours Which grew to be years, and every day came mute... Ghosts from the ovens, sitting through crisp air, And settled upon his eyes in a black soot.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To-night, His frost will fasten on this mud and us, Shriveling many hands, puckering foreheads crisp.... The burying-party, picks and shovels in their shaking grasp, Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice, But nothing happens.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is pleasant to walk over the beds of these fresh, crisp, and rustling leaves. How beautifully they go to their graves! how gent...ly lay themselves down and turn to mould!--painted of a thousand hues, and fit to make the beds of us living. So they troop to their last resting-place, light and frisky.... They that soared so loftily, how contentedly they return to dust again, and are laid low, resigned to lie and decay at the foot of the tree, and afford nourishment to new generations of their kind, as well as to flutter on high! They teach us how to die. One wonders if the time will ever come when men, with their boasted faith in immortality, will lie down as gracefully and as ripe,--with such an Indian-summer serenity will shed their bodies, as they do their hair and nails.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Early in the morning, while all things are crisp with frost, men come with fishing-reels and slender lunch, and let down their fin...e lines through the snowy field to take pickerel and perch; wild men, who instinctively follow other fashions and trust other authorities than their townsmen, and by their goings and comings stitch towns together in parts where else they would be ripped. They sit and eat their luncheon in stout fear-naughts on the dry oak leaves on the shore, as wise in natural lore as the citizen is in artificial.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »