Well, on the official record you're my son. But on this post you're just another trooper. You heard me tell the recruits what I ne...ed from them. Twice that I will expect from you.... You've chosen my way of life. I hope you have the guts enough to endure it. But put outa your mind any romantic ideas that it's a way to glory. It's a life of suffering and of hardship and uncompromising devotion to your oath and your duty.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
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 »
But the angel said to him, "Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, ...and you will name him John. You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He must never drink wine or strong drink; even before his birth he will be filled with the Holy Spirit.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I went to my father's at night. He spoke of poor John [Boswell's brother] with disgust. I was shocked and said, "He's your son, an...d God made him." He answered very harshly, "If my sons are idiots, can I help it?"LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everla...sting life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Sir Walter, being strangely surprised and put out of his countenance at so great a table, gives his son a damned blow over the fac...e. His son, as rude as he was, would not strike his father, but strikes over the face the gentleman that sat next to him and said "Box about: 'twill come to my father anon."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Cow and horse dung, as muck goes, are relatively agreeable. You can even become nostalgic about them. They smell of fermented grai...n, and on the far side of their smell there is hay and grass. Chicken shit is disagreeable and rasps the throat because of the quantity of ammonia. When you are cleaning out the henhouse, you're glad to go to the door and take a deep breath of fresh air. Pig and human excrement, however, smell the worst because men and pigs are carnivorous and their appetites are indiscriminate. The smell includes the sickeningly sweet one of decay. And on the far side of it is death.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »