Kitchens were different then, too--not only what came out of them, but their smells and sounds. A hot pie cooling smells different... from a frozen pie thawing. Oilcloth and linoleum and apples in an open bowl and ruffled rubber aprons make a different aromatic mix from Formica and ceramic tile and mangoes in an acrylic fruit ripener and plastic-coated aprons printed with "Who invited all these tacky people?" And the kitchen sounds. I am not sure that today's kitchen is noisier. But the noises are different. Today you get the song of the food processor and the blender, the intermittent hum of the reefer and the freezer, the buzz-slosh-and-grunt of the dishwasher, the violently audible digestive processes of the waste disposal in the sink. Then it was the whir and clatter of the hand-powered eggbeater, the thunk-thunk-thunk of somebody mashing potatoes, or, in green-pea season, the crisp pop of pea pod and the rattle-rattle-rattle of peas into the pan.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Man you ought to see his plans for allsteel buildins. He's got an idea the skyscraper of the future'll be built of steel and glass.... We've been experimenting with vitrous tile recently... crist-amighty some of his plans would knock you out... He's got a great sayin about some Roman emperor who found Rome of brick and left it of marble. Well he says he's found New York of brick an that he's goin to leave it of steel... steel an glass.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Come see the north wind's masonry. Out of an unseen quarry evermore... Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer Curves his white bastions with projected roofLESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Yet oh! the tempting flatness of a book, To send it sailing out the attic window... Till it caught wind and, opening out its covers, Tried to improve on sailing like a tile By flying like a bird (silent in flight, But all the burden of its body song)....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
At the stumbling of a horse, the fall of a tile, the slightest pin prick, let us promptly chew on this: Well, what if it were deat...h itself? And thereupon let us stiffen and fortify ourselves.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
through the Sumner Tunnel, trunk by trunk through its sulphurous walls,... tile by tile like a men's urinal, slipping through like somebody else's package.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The day of the sun is like the day of a king. It is a promenade in the morning, a sitting on the throne at noon, a pageant in the ...evening.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
New York ... appeared to us ... a lovely and a noble city.... I think New York one of the finest cities I ever saw, and as much su...perior to every other in the Union, (Philadelphia not excepted), as London to Liverpool, or Paris to Rouen. Its advantages of position are, perhaps, unequalled any where. Situated on an island, which I think it will one day cover, it rises, like Venice, from the sea, and like that fairest of cities in the days of her glory, receives into its lap tribute of all the riches of the earth.... I think it covers nearly as much ground as Paris, but is much less thickly peopled. The extreme point is fortified towards the sea by a battery, and forms an admirable point of defence; but in these piping days of peace, it is converted into a public promenade, and one more beautiful, I should suppose, no city could boast.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I wri...te my reveries only for myself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »