Alexander Woollcott broadcasts the story of the wife who returned a dog to the Seeing Eye with this note attached: "I am sending t...he dog back. My husband used to depend on me. Now he is independent, and I never know where he is."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I shall venture to affirm, that there never was a popular religion, which represented the state of departed souls in such a light,... as would render it eligible for human kind, that there should be such a state. These fine models of religion are the mere product of philosophy. For as death lies between the eye and the prospect of futurity, that event is so shocking to nature, that it must throw a gloom on all the regions which lie beyond it; and suggest to the generality of mankind the idea of Cerberus and Furies; devils, and torrents of fire and brimstone.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown! The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's,eye, tongue, sword,... Th' expectancy and rose of the fair state, The glass of fashion and the mold of form, Th' observed of all observers, quite, quite down!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A mote it is to trouble the mind's eye. In the most high and palmy state of Rome,... A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets; As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood, Disasters in the sun; and the moist star Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse. And even the like precurse of feared events, As harbingers preceding still the fates And prologue to the omen coming on, Have heaven and earth together demonstrated Unto our climatures and countrymen.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As we shoved away from this rocky coast, before sunrise, the smaller bittern, the genius of the shore, was moping along its edge, ...or stood probing the mud for its food, with ever an eye on us, though so demurely at work, or else he ran along over the wet stones like a wrecker in his storm-coat, looking out for wrecks of snails and cockles. Now away he goes, with a limping flight, uncertain where he will alight, until a rod of clear sand amid the alders invites his feet; and now our steady approach compels him to seek a new retreat. It is a bird of the oldest Thalesian school, and no doubt believes in the priority of water to the other elements; the relic of a twilight antediluvian age which yet inhabits these bright American waters with us Yankees. There is something venerable in this melancholy and contemplative race of birds, which may have trodden the earth while it was yet in a slimy and imperfect state. Perchance their tracks, too, are still visible on the stones.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Once also it was my business to go in search of the relics of a human body, mangled by sharks, which had just been cast up, a week... after a wreck, having got the direction from a lighthouse: I should find it a mile or two distant over the sand, a dozen rods from the water, covered with a cloth, by a stick stuck up. I expected that I must look very narrowly to find so small an object, but the sandy beach, half a mile wide, and stretching farther than the eye could reach, was so perfectly smooth and bare, and the mirage toward the sea so magnifying, that when I was half a mile distant the insignificant sliver which marked the spot looked like a bleached spar, and the relics were conspicuous as if they lay in state on that sandy plain, or a generation had labored to pile up their cairn there. Close at hand they were simply some bones with a little flesh adhering to them, in fact only a slight inequality in the sweep of the shore. There was nothing at all remarkable about them, and they were singularly inoffensive both to the senses and the imagination. But as I stood there they grew more and more imposing. They were alone with the beach and the sea, whose hollow roar seemed addressed to them, and I was impressed as if there was an understanding between them and the ocean which necessarily left me out, with my snivelling sympathies. That dead body had taken possession of the shore, and reigned over it as no living one could, in the name of a certain majesty which belonged to it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The last public hanging in the State took place in 1835 on Prince Hill.... On the fatal day, the victim, a man named Watkins, peer...ing through the iron bars of his cell, and seeing the townfolk scurrying to the place of execution, is said to have remarked, 'Why is everyone running? Nothing can happen until I get there.'LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Resorts advertised for waitresses, specifying that they "must appear in short clothes or no engagement." Below a Gospel Guide colu...mn headed, "Where our Local Divines Will Hang Out Tomorrow," was an account of spirited gun play at the Bon Ton. In Jeff Winney's California Concert Hall, patrons "bucked the tiger" under the watchful eye of Kitty Crawhurst, popular "lady" gambler.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Religious fervor makes the devil a very real personage, and anything awe-inspiring or not easily understood is usually connected w...ith him. Perhaps this explains why, not only in the Ozarks but all over the State, his name crops up so frequently.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The first general store opened on the 'Cold Saturday' of the winter of 1833 ... Mrs. Mary Miller, daughter of the store's promoter..., recorded in a letter: 'Chickens and birds fell dead from their roosts, cows ran bellowing through the streets'; but she failed to state what effect the freeze had on the gala occasion of the store opening.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »