All that is necessary to do with this drink is to place it in an open saucer on the window sill and inhale deeply from across the ...room. In about eight seconds the top of the inhaler's head rises slowly and in a dignified manner until it reaches the ceiling where it floats, bumping gently up and down. The teeth then drop out and arrange themselves on the floor to spell "Portage High School, 1930" the eyes roll upward and backward, and a strange odor of burning rubber fills the room.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Farmers in overalls and wide-brimmed straw hats lounge about the store on hot summer days, when the most common sound is the thump...-thump-thump of a hound's leg on the floor as he scratches contentedly. Oldtime hunters say that fleas are a hound's salvation: his constant twisting and clawing in pursuit of the tormentors keeps his joints supple.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
New Yorkers speak more quickly and shift topics more rapidly. We all know that. But the way it's done is fascinating. At least it ...fascinated me when I first moved to New York. Someone has the floor and talks. As soon as I know what they are going to say, I can jump in, finish the sentence to show I understand, and take off into my own turn. The northern California I know isn't like that. Someone talks, and I lie back and listen and let them roll for a while. When they're done, there'll be a pause that will flash like a green light to announce that someone else can have the floor.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As debate is rare in the House of Representatives, since nearly all real business is done in the committees, it is very natural th...at such debate as there is should be very oratorical, should be "sounding off," not discussion. And this is one of the reasons why public speaking in America is still so rhetorical, why audiences for example do not often "heckle" a speaker, bombard him with questions, or embarrass him with ironical applause or laughter. It is almost as rare to interrupt a political speech as it is to interrupt a sermon. In the Senate, things are different. Any senator who can get the floor can talk as long as his wind lasts. He cannot be out of order unless he takes the most extravagant liberties. So Senate debates are often lively, often educational. They are very different from the formal pieces declaimed in the other house, or even printed and sent to the voters without being spoken at all. A senator has to persuade his colleagues, even those of his own party, or he has to intimidate them, and so the Senate has a high representation of public speakers who can discuss as well as declaim.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
By act of Congress, male officers are gentlemen, but by act of God, we are ladies. We don't have to be little mini-men and try to ...be masculine and use obscene language to come across. I can take you and flip you on the floor and put your arms behind your back and you'll never move again, without your ever knowing that I can do it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A "modern" man has nothing to add to modernism, if only because he has nothing to oppose it with. The well-adapted drop off the de...ad limb of time like lice.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The sky was as full of motion and change as the desert beneath it was monotonous and still,--and there was so much sky, more than ...at sea, more than anywhere else in the world. The plain was there, under one's feet, but what one saw when one looked about was that brilliant blue world of stinging air and moving cloud. Even the mountains were mere ant-hills under it. Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky. The landscape one longed for when one was away, the thing all about one, the world one actually lived in, was the sky, the sky!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"Trams and dusty trees. Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew... Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I hear you were seen running through Portugal in used B.V.D.'s, chewing ground glass and collecting material for a story about bou...le players; that you were publicity man for Lindbergh; that you have finished a novel a hundred thousand words long consisting entirely of the word "balls" used in new groupings; that you have been naturalized a Spaniard, dress always in a wine-skin with "zipper" vent and are engaged in bootlegging Spanish Fly between St. Sebastian and Biarritz where your agents sprinkle it on the floor of the Casino. I hope I have been misinformed but, alas!, it all has too true a ring.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »