If we eliminated the dog from our lives, nothing much would happen to our ecology. Independent of man, the dog is a vandal. With m...an, he does a little sheep-herding, a little watch-dogging. He helps law enforcement officers control the troublesome ghetto-dwellers and protest marchers. He sniffs out "hash" and "grass." He goes out on weekends and helps man murder other forms of life for pleasure. But mostly he is just an adjunct to man's ego.... The cat owes man nothing. Some experts estimate that there is one homeless cat managing on its own for every one with a home, which makes a total cat population in the U.S. of more than fifty million. That means the largest nonhuman animal population in the nation, short of rodents, whose number is beyond estimate. Eliminate cats from our ecology and, in a matter of weeks, we would be overrun by rodents.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The naturalistic literature of this country has reached such a state that no family of characters is considered true to life which... does not include at least two hypochondriacs, one sadist, and one old man who spills food down the front of his vest.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
On the Coast of Coromandel Where the early pumpkins blow,... In the middle of the woods Lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo. Two old chairs, and half a candle,-- One old jug without a handle,-- These were all his worldly goods: In the middle of the woods,LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Some have been puzzled to tell how the shore became so regularly paved. My townsmen have all heard the tradition--the oldest peopl...e tell me that they heard it in their youth--that anciently the Indians were holding a pow-wow upon a hill here, which rose as high into the heavens as the pond now sinks deep into the earth, and they used much profanity, as the story goes, though this vice is one of which the Indians were never guilty, and while they were thus engaged the hill shook and suddenly sank, and only one old squaw, named Walden, escaped, and from her the pond was named. It has been conjectured that when the hill shook these stones rolled down its side and became the present shore.... If the name was not derived from that of some English locality,--Saffron Walden, for instance,--one might suppose that it was called originally Walled-in Pond.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It so happened that, a few weeks later, "Old Ernie" [Ernest Hemingway] himself was using my room in New York as a hide-out from li...terary columnists and reporters during one of his rare stopover visits between Africa and Key West. On such all-too-rare occasions he lends an air of virility to my dainty apartment which I miss sorely after he has gone and all the furniture has been repaired.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Neither lemonade nor anything else can prevent the inroads of old age. At present, I am stoical under its advances, and hope I sha...ll remain so. I have but one prayer at heart; and that is, to have my faculties so far preserved that I can be useful, in some way or other, to the last.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »