If we should swap a good library for a second-rate stump speech and not ask for boot, it would be thoroughly in tune with our hear...ts. For deep within each of us lies politics. It is our football, baseball, and tennis rolled into one. We enjoy it; we will hitch up and drive for miles in order to hear and applaud the vitriolic phrases of a candidate we have already reckoned we'll vote against.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Once, when dust rolled up from the road and the fields were high with heavy-handled wheat and the leaves of every tree were gray a...nd curledup and hung head down, I went in the meadow with an old broom like a gun, where the dandelions had begun to seed and the low ground was cracked, and I flushed grasshoppers from the goldenrod in whirring clouds like quail and shot them down. I smelled wheat in the warm wind and every weed. I tasted dust in my mouth.... I hunted Horse Simon in the shade of a tree. I rode the broom over the brown meadow grass and with a fist like pistol butt and trigger shot the Indian on Horse Simon down.... My horse had a golden tail. Dust rolled up behind. He was on the tractor in a broad-brimmed hat. With a fist like a pistol butt and trigger, going fast, I shot him down.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It all ended with the circuslike whump of a monstrous box on the ear with which I knocked down the traitress who rolled up in a ba...ll where she had collapsed, her eyes glistening at me through her spread fingers--all in all quite flattered, I think. Automatically, I searched for something to throw at her, saw the china sugar bowl I had given her for Easter, took the thing under my arm and went out, slamming the door.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Man, her last work, who seemed so fair, Such splendid purpose in his eyes,... Who rolled the psalm to wintry skies, Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,
Who trusted God was love indeed And love Creation's final law-- Though Nature, red in tooth and claw With ravine, shrieked against his creed--LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
With a bending sail we glided rapidly by Tyngsborough and Chelmsford, each holding in one hand half of a tart country apple pie wh...ich we had purchased to celebrate our return, and in the other a fragment of the newspaper in which it was wrapped, devouring these with divided relish, and learning the news which had transpired since we sailed. The river here opened into a broad and straight reach of great length, which we bounded merrily over before a smacking breeze, with a devil-may-care look in our faces, and our boat a white bone in its mouth, and a speed which greatly astonished some scow boatmen whom we met. The wind in the horizon rolled like a flood over valley and plain, and every tree bent to the blast, and the mountains like school-boys turned their cheeks to it.... Thus we sailed, not being able to fly, but as next best, making a long furrow in the fields of the Merrimack toward our home, with our wings spread, but never lifting our heel from the watery trench; gracefully plowing homeward with our brisk and willing team, wind and stream, pulling together, the former yet a wild steer, yoked to his more sedate fellow. It was very near flying, as when the duck rushes through the water with an impulse of her wings, throwing the spray about her before she can rise. How we had stuck fast if drawn up but a few feet on the shore!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One day when I went out to my wood-pile, or rather my pile of stumps, I observed two large ants, the one red, the other much large...r, nearly half an inch long, and black, fiercely contending with one another. Having once got hold they never let go, but struggled and wrestled and rolled on the chips incessantly. Looking farther, I was surprised to find that the chips were covered with such combatants, that it was not a duellum, but a bellum, a war between two races of ants, the red always pitted against the black, and frequently two red ones to one black. The legions of these Myrmidons covered all the hills and vales in my wood-yard, and the ground was already strewn with the dead and dying, both red and black. It was the only battle which I have ever witnessed, the only battle-field I ever trod while the battle was raging.... On every side they were engaged in deadly combat, yet without any noise that I could hear, and human soldiers never fought so resolutely.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 »
Kids are without a doubt the most suspicious diners in the world. They will eat mud (raw or baked) rocks, paste, crayons, ball-poi...nt pens, moving goldfish, cigarette butts, and cat food. Try to coax a little beef stew into their mouths and they look at you like a puppy when you stand over him with the Sunday paper rolled up.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Powerful, yes, that is the word that I constantly rolled on my tongue, I dreamed of absolute power, the kind that forces others to... kneel, that forces the enemy to capitulate, finally converting him, and the more the enemy is blind, cruel, sure of himself, buried in his conviction, the more his admission proclaims the royalty of he who has brought on his defeat.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »