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 »
There's plenty men dat takes a wife lak dey do a joint uh sugar-cane. It's round, juicy an' sweet when dey gits it. But de squeeze... an' grind, squeeze an' grind an' wring tell dey wring every drop uh pleasure dat's in 'em out. When dey's satisfied dat dey is wrung dry, dey treats dem jes lak dey do a cane-chew. Dey throws 'em away. Dey knows whut dey is doin' while dey is at it, an hates theirselves fuh it but they keeps on hangin' after huh tell she's empty. Den dey hates huh fuh bein' a cane-chew an' in de way.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Lie dry, rest robbed, my beast. You have kicked from a dark den, leaped up the whinnying light,... And dug your grave in my breast.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Lincoln, six feet one in his stocking feet, The lank man, knotty and tough as a hickory rail,... Whose hands were always too big for white-kid gloves, Whose wit was a coonskin sack of dry, tall tales, Whose weathered face was homely as a plowed field.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I was not at all shocked with this execution at the time. John died seemingly without much pain. He was effectually hanged, the ro...pe having fixed upon his neck very firmly, and he was allowed to hang near three quarters of an hour; so that any attempt to recover him would have been in vain. I comforted myself in thinking that by giving up the scheme I had avoided much anxiety and uneasiness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
John was a very political animal. The thing that politics did and that fame as an entertainer didn't do was provide you with an en...gine for propagating your theories and beliefs. The one thing John would have liked more than anything else was his own political machine. Even though he would profess that politics is bullshit, he just wouldn't call it "politics." He'd call it "peace."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
John Anderson my jo, John, We clamb the hill the gither;... And mony a canty day, John, We've had wi' ane anither: Now we maun totter down, John, And hand in hand we'll go; And sleep the gither at the foot, John Anderson my Jo.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »