In baseball there are generalists, who keep their eye on the ball and see the big picture; football is full of special-duty charac...ters who are very limited in terms of their range but have depth. Baseball represents America before the frontier ended, when there was plenty of space and plenty of time, and philosophic anarchists roamed around on verdant fields "doing their thing" with a free and reckless abandon. The game is relaxing and not particularly taxing on the players, who play many times each week. Football is tremendously difficult on the players and is so tiring that sixty minutes of clock time--which amounts to several hours of real time--exhausts them. Baseball developed when we thought nature was a limitless reservoir and we would always live in abundance. Football reflects a different world view; everything has to be fought for, resources are precious, hostile people (guards, monster men) are everywhere and in such a world you have to grab what you can.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But the difficultest go to understand, And the difficultest job a man can do,... Is to come it brave and meek with thirty bob a week, And feel that that's the proper thing for you.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This is the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation, because as a result of what happened in this week, the w...orld is bigger, infinitely.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If it is not a tragical life we live, then I know not what to call it. Such a story as that of Jesus Christ,--the history of Jerus...alem, say, being a part of the Universal History. The naked, the embalmed, unburied death of Jerusalem amid its desolate hills,--think of it. In Tasso's poem I trust some things are sweetly buried. Consider the snappish tenacity with which they preach Christianity still. What are time and space to Christianity, eighteen hundred years, and a new world?--that the humble life of a Jewish peasant should have force to make a New York bishop so bigoted. Forty-four lamps, the gift of kings, now burning in a place called the Holy Sepulchre; a church-bell ringing; some unaffected tears shed by a pilgrim on Mount Calvary within the week.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I at length reached the last house but one, where the path to the summit diverged to the right, while the summit itself rose direc...tly in front. But I determined to follow up the valley to its head, and then find my own route up the steep as the shorter and more adventurous way. I had thoughts of returning to this house, which was well kept and so nobly placed, the next day, and perhaps remaining a week there, if I could have entertainment. Its mistress was a frank and hospitable young woman, who stood before me in a dishabille, busily and unconcernedly combing her long black hair while she talked, giving her head the necessary toss with each sweep of the comb, with lively, sparkling eyes, and full of interest in that lower world from which I had come, talking all the while as familiarly as if she had known me for years, and reminding me of a cousin of mine. She at first had taken me for a student from Williamstown, for they went by in parties, she said, either riding or walking, almost every pleasant day, and were a pretty wild set of fellows; but they never went by the way I was going.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As it grew later in the afternoon, and we rowed leisurely up the gentle stream, shut in between fragrant and blooming banks, where... we had first pitched our tent, and drew nearer to the fields where our lives had passed, we seemed to detect the hues of our native sky in the southwest horizon. The sun was just setting behind the edge of a wooded hill, so rich a sunset as would never have ended but for some reason unknown to men, and to be marked with brighter colors than ordinary in the scroll of time. Though the shadows of the hills were beginning to steal over the stream, the whole river valley undulated with mild light, purer and more memorable than the noon. For so day bids farewell even to solitary vales uninhabited by man. Two herons (Ardea herodias), with their long and slender limbs relieved against the sky, were seen traveling high over our heads,--their lofty and silent flight, as they were wending their way at evening, surely not to alight in any marsh on the earth's surface, but, perchance, on the other side of our atmosphere, a symbol for the ages to study.... The last vestiges of daylight at length disappeared, and as we rowed silently along with our backs toward home through the darkness, only a few stars being visible, we had little to say, but sat absorbed in thought, or in silence listened to the monotonous sound of our oars, a sort of rudimental music, suitable for the ear of Night and the acoustics of her dimly lighted halls; "Pulsae referunt ad sidera valles," and the valleys echoed the sound of the stars.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I went out there for a thousand a week, and I worked Monday, and I got fired Wednesday. The guy that hired me was out of town Tues...day.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »