phrases_us.txt

A sceptic is a person who, when he sees the handwriting on the wall and claims it's a forgery.
A successful marriage isn't finding the right person, it's being the right person.
Feed your faith and your doubts will starve to death.
God gave the angels Wings, and He gave humans Chocolate!
God wants spiritual fruit, NOT religious nuts.
If God had meant us to look back instead of forward, he would have put eyes in the back of our head.
If the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, you can bet the water bill is much higher.
It isn't difficult to make a mountain out of a molehill - just add a little more dirt.
It's all right to sit on your pity pot every now and again.
Just be sure to flush when you are done.
Kind and loving words are windows to the heart.
Many marriages are made in heaven, but they ALL have to be maintained on earth.
People who feel they need control lack self-control.
Some folks wear their halos much too tight which cuts off circulation to the brain.
Sorrow looks back, worry looks around, and faith looks UP.
Standing in the middle of the road is dangerous, you will get knocked down by the traffic from both directions.
The best way to get even is to forgive and then forget!
The mighty oak tree was once a little nut that held its ground.
The tongue must be heavy indeed, so few people can hold it.
To forgive is to set the prisoner free, and then discover all along the prisoner was you!
Too many people offer God prayers, with claw marks all over them.
Unless you can create the whole universe in 5 days, then perhaps giving advice to God, isn't such a good idea!
You have to wonder about humans, they think God is dead and Elvis is still alive!
You'll notice that a turtle only makes progress when it sticks out its neck.
It doesn't matter if you're on the right track, if you don't move, you'll get run over.
Men do not like to admit to even momentary imperfection.
My husband forgot the code to turn off the alarm.
When the police came, he wouldn't admit he'd forgotten the code.
Some people say that I must be a horrible person, but that's not true.
I have the heart of a young boy - in a jar on my desk.
If you water it and it dies, it's a plant.
If you pull it out and it grows back, it's a weed.
Clothes make the man.
Naked people have little or no influence on society.
The only winner in the War of 1812 was Tchaikovsky.
Blessed are we who can laugh at ourselves for we shall never cease to be amused.
Learn from the past.
Look to the future.
Live in the present.
Life is ours to be spent, not saved.
What makes old age so sad is not that our joys but our hopes cease.
If you wish you be like someone else, you waste the person you are.
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive.
The surest way of severely upsetting yourself for hours is by continuing to consider what concerns you most for a single moment too long.
Anxiety is interest paid on trouble before it is due.
Even the the most tempting rose has thorns.
I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty.
A home is not a mere transient shelter: its essence lies in the personalities of the people who live in it.
A lifetime of happiness!
No man alive could bear it; it would be hell on earth.
Poverty doesn't bring unhappiness; it brings degradation.
Be good and you will be lonesome.
I advise you to go on living solely to enrage those who are paying your annuities.
It is the only pleasure I have left.
In life, we are all in the gutter.
Some of us just tend to look up at the stars.
All who would win joy, must share it; happiness was born a twin.
Don't underestimate the value of doing nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering.
When the world has once begun to use us ill, it afterwards continues the same treatment with less scruple or ceremony, as men do to a whore.
For those who fight for it, life has a flavour the sheltered will never know.
Live each day as if it were the last day of your life, because so far, it is.
To live a perfect life, you must ask nothing, give nothing, and expect nothing.
Expect everything, and anything seems nothing.
Expect nothing, and anything seems everything.
A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.
If we couldn't laugh, we'd all go insane.
If life doesn't offer a game worth playing, then invent a new one.
There is more to life than increasing its speed.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two equals four.
If that is granted, all else follows.
Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind.
If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
Comedy is tragedy plus time.
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
He is happiest who hath power to gather wisdom from a flower.
Do not scorn the person who is perpetually happy.
He does know something you don't.
Joy is not in things, it is in us.
So go for the jump, and chase all your dreams.
It is not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves.
Sloppy, raggedyassed old life.
I love it.
I never want to die.
Everyone smiles in the same language.
So of cheerfulness, or a good temper, the more it is spent, the more it remains.
Life is short.
Live it up.
Every heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind.
Laughter is a tranquilizer with no side effects.
Living well is the best revenge.
Happiness is good health and a bad memory.
Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.
Here's to your love, health, and wealth - and time to enjoy each.
Waste not fresh tears over old griefs.
Learn not only to find what you like, learn to like what you find.
Realize that if you have time to whine and complain about something then you have the time to do something about it.
Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you will cease to be so.
I'm an idealist.
I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way.
The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
I can't complain, but sometimes I still do.
Nostalgia is the realization that things weren't as unbearable as they seemed at the time.
The gods too are fond of a joke.
Harmony seldom makes a headline.
And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down.
Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.
Everything human is pathetic.
The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow.
While farmers generally allow one rooster for ten hens, ten men are scarcely sufficient to service one woman.
A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.
When a man's wife learns to understand him, she usually stops listening to him.
It is the ordinary women that know something about love.
The gorgeous ones are too busy being gorgeous.
Girls are like pianos.
When they're not upright, they're grand.
If you have been involved with or enjoyed the company of a female for 6 months to a year, then you can say that you know a woman.
If you have been involved with or enjoyed the company of a female for 1 to 4 years, then you can say that you understand a woman.
If you have been involved with or enjoyed the company of a female for 4 or more years, then you can say that you have learned from a woman.
Woman inspires us to great things, and prevents us from achieving them.
A bachelor is a selfish, undeserving guy who has cheated some woman out of a divorce.
Give a man free hands and you'll know where to find them.
When a female has tears in her eyes the one who cannot see is the male.
Anatomy is destiny.
My notion of a wife at forty is that a man should be able to change her, like a bank note, for two twenties.
A woman has to be twice as good as a man, to be regarded as half that clever.
I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known.
A beautiful woman is the hell of the soul, the purgatory of the purse, and the paradise of the eyes.
Men mistake friendship, but not sex, for love; women mistake sex, but not friendship, for love.
Women like silent men.
They think they're listening.
A woman, especially if she has the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.
If there is anything disagreeable going on, men are always sure to get out of it.
Men like to pursue an elusive woman like a cake of wet soap - even men who hate baths.
A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never her age.
Large increases in cost with questionable increases in performance can be tolerated only in race horses and women.
Being kissed by a man who didn't wax his moustache was like eating an egg without salt.
Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.
There are really not many jobs that actually require a penis or a vagina, and all other occupations should be open to everyone.
Men who cherish for women the highest respect are seldom popular with them.
Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.
A diplomat is a man who can convince his wife she'd look stout in a fur coat.
Women make love for love, men make love for lust.
There's a difference between beauty and charm.
A beautiful woman is one I notice.
A charming woman is one who notices me.
Flirting is the gentle art of making a man feel pleased with himself.
Men don't need women - they just need certain parts of their anatomy.
A man is as good as he has to be, and a woman is as bad as she dares.
When God created two sexes, he may have been overdoing it.
A man needs a mistress, just to break the monogamy.
The more I know men, the more I love my dog.
I want to know the thoughts of God.
Everything else is just details.
The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.
Prophecy is many times the principal cause of the events foretold.
This sentence contradicts itself - no actually it doesn't.
In science as in love, too much concentration on technique can often lead to impotence.
If you love God, burn the church.
Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
Beware of the man who won't be bothered with details.
That which is static and repetitive is boring.
That which is dynamic and random is confusing.
In between lies art.
Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your shoes.
Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.
A budget is just a method of worrying before you spend money, as well as afterward.
Not all chemicals are bad.
For example, without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in beer.
There is nothing remarkable about love at first sight.
It's when people have been looking at each other for years that it becomes remarkable.
Teenaged girls use make-up to feel older sooner.
Their mothers use make-up to feel younger longer.
A mother may hope that her daughter will get a better husband than she did but she knows her son will never get as good a wife as his father did.
It is the mark of an educated mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness where only an approximation is possible.
I do not fear computers.
I fear the lack of them.
Every sentence that I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question.
To use a method is to compare the realm of mind to a stool.
The true thinker walks freely.
My sources are unreliable, but their information is fascinating.
The economy depends about as much on economists as the weather does on weather forecasters.
The socalled lessons of history are for the most part the rationalizations of the victors.
History is written by the survivors.
We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
Interestingly, according to modern astronomers, space is finite.
This is a very comforting thought - particularly for people who can never remember where they have left things.
It is not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them.
To generalize is to be an idiot.
The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident.
That's where we come in; we're computer professionals.
We cause accidents.
Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true.
Math is like love - a simple idea but it can get complicated.
Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.
Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.
The truth is out there.
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
The danger today is not so much that machines will learn to think and feel but that men will cease to do so.
Strong words are required for weak principles.
If we take science as our sole guide, if we accept and hold fast that alone which is verifiable, the old theology must go.
If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not crucify him.
They would ask him to dinner, hear what he had to say, and make fun of it.
Logic is a system whereby one may go wrong with confidence.
My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed.
Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds.
Biochemistry is the study of carbon compounds that crawl.
Give me a lever long enough, and a prop strong enough, and I can singlehandedly move the world.
The heresies we should fear are those which can be confused with orthodoxy.
According to the latest official figures, 43% of all statistics are totally worthless.
For my part, the longer I live the less I feel the need of any sort of theological belief, and the more I am content to let unseen powers go on their way with me and mine without question or distrust.
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's supposed to do.
There's always an easy solution to every human problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.
There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
Wonder, rather than doubt, is the root of knowledge.
Genealogy is based on the obviously silly idea that there is no such thing as a bastard.
It is impossible to travel faster than the speed of light, and certainly not desirable, as one's hat keeps blowing off.
Logic is like the sword - those who appeal to it shall perish by it.
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
In prayer, it is better to have a heart without words than words without heart.
It is bad luck to be superstitious.
History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.
No great advance has ever been made in science, politics, or religion, without controversy.
It is always easier to believe than to deny.
Our minds are naturally affirmative.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Absence of proof is not proof of absence.
I think, therefore I am.
Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour.
Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.
The biggest difference between time and space is that you can't reuse time.
If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?
The hands that help are better far than the lips that pray.
It is now proved beyond doubt that smoking is one of leading causes of statistics.
Whenever anyone says anything he is indulging in theories.
Ignorance is the mother of devotion.
Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.
It is the source of all true art and science.
No idea is so antiquated that it was not once modern; no idea is so modern that it will not someday be antiquated.
To "be" means to be related.
Religion is the opium of the masses.
Beware the man of one book.
Pray: To ask that the laws of the universe be nullified on behalf of a single petitioner, admittedly unworthy.
It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God but to create him.
There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
The church saves sinners, but science seeks to stop their manufacture.
Truth decays into beauty, while beauty soon becomes merely charm.
Charm ends up as strangeness, and even that doesn't last, but up and down are forever.
I don't have the lungs to cope with sustained plot loss.
Spel chekers, hoo neeeds em?
It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give up because by that time I was too famous.
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.
If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your style.
Become addicted to constant and neverending self-improvement.
There's nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
If you're strong enough, there are no precedents.
Seventy percent of success in life is showing up.
If at first you don't succeed, redefine success.
Having now got the hang of this intercom thing, I am now going to use it to bugger people mercilessly.
I am lost so I am cruel but I'd be love and sweetness if I had you.
New York City: No matter how many times I visit this great city I'm always struck by the same thing: a yellow taxi cab.
There are no depths to which I will not sink.
It looks like blind screaming hedonism won out.
You can run with the big dogs or sit on the porch and bark.
Hatred: A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's superiority.
Brooks' Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
If you pray for rain, don't be surprised if you're struck by lightning.
Focus 90% of your time on solutions and only 10% of your time on problems.
Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.
It's kind a fun to do the impossible.
As you ramble on through life, brother, whatever be your goal: keep your eyes upon the donut, and not upon the hole!
It is better to be defeated on principle than to win on lies.
We must believe in luck.
For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like?
Anything is possible if you wish hard enough.
Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better.
Don't fear change - embrace it.
To gain that which is worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else.
You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there.
Happiness: An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.
This is as true in everyday life as it is in battle: we are given one life and the decision is ours whether to wait for circumstances to make up our mind, or whether to act and, in acting, to live.
Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others.
No one really knows enough to be a pessimist.
Hard reality has a way of cramping your style.
The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.
A new idea is delicate.
It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a joke or worried to death by a frown on the right person's brow.
Kites rise highest against the wind - not with it.
There's no success like failure, And failure's no success at all.
I avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep going forward.
You don't drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there.
Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.
Sloppy thinking only gets worse with decapitation.
I have learned to use the word "impossible" with the greatest caution.
No pressure, no diamonds.
Intelligence is nothing without delight.
Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else - unless it is an enemy.
Whether you think that you can or that you can't, you are usually right.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
A celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.
The secret of success is constancy to purpose.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is lightly greased.
The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd.
The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been.
Luck can't last a lifetime unless you die young.
It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it's been though a blender first.
A conclusion is simply the place where someone got tired of thinking.
He who thinks he is raising a mound may only in reality be digging a pit.
Why be a man when you can be a success?
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
Selfrespect permeates every aspect of your life.
An empowered organization is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organizational success.
Hitch your wagon to a star.
No man can get through me but through my act.
To accomplish great things, you must not only act but also dream, not only dream but also believe.
Advertising is 85% confusion and 15% commission.
Misfortune: The kind of fortune that never misses.
When you reach for the stars, you may not quite get one, but you won't come up with a handful of mud either.
Every man is the architect of his own fortune.
A man who has committed a mistake and doesn't correct it, is committing another mistake.
When I discover who I am, I'll be free.
Inform all the troops that communications have completely broken down.
I kept on digging the hole deeper and deeper looking for the treasure chest until I finally lifted my head, looked up and realized that I had dug my own grave.
If at first you don't succeed, try, and try again.
Then give up.
There's no sense in being a damned fool about it.
Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninetynine per cent perspiration.
You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.
In laboring to be brief, I become obscure.
It is neither wealth nor splendor, but tranquility and occupation, that gives happiness.
A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.
A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar.
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have done.
People forget how fast you did a job - but they remember how well you did it.
A pint of sweat saves a gallon of blood.
Until you value yourself, you will not value your time.
Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.
Peter's Principle: In an organization, each person rises to the level of his own incompetence.
A committee is a thing which takes a week to do what one good man can do in an hour.
I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.
People who work sitting down are paid more than people who work standing up.
Work is only work if you'd rather be doing something else.
Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.
There's no real need to do housework - after four years it doesn't get any worse.
Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something.
Committee: A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit to do the unnecessary.
If food were free, why work?
Leemans' Law: Junk expands to fill the space allotted.
I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better.
Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.
He who rocks the boat seldom has time to row it.
Don't tell people how to do things.
Tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.
Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it.
Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.
We will burn that bridge when we come to it.
Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment.
He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Well done is better than well said.
The only way round is through.
For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him, he must regard himself as greater than he is.
Bullshit makes the flowers grow and that's Beautiful.
Trouble is only an opportunity in work clothes.
Parkinson's First Law: Work expands to fill the time available.
There is nothing so easy but that it becomes difficult when you do it reluctantly.
All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.
Try to relax and enjoy the crisis.
Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity, and in cold weather becomes frozen, even so does inaction sap the vigors of the mind.
Efficiency is intelligent laziness.
It is time I stepped aside for a less experienced and less able man.
My work is a game - a very serious game.
Most problems are either unimportant or impossible to solve.
If one has not given everything, one has given nothing.
It is by will alone that I set my mind in motion.
Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.
He has half the deed done who has made a beginning.
People who never do any more than they get paid for never get paid for any more than they do.
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
It gets late early out there.
The Lord gave us farmers two strong hands so we could grab as much as we could with both of them.
Never mistake motion for action.
Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America.
If I'm not there, I go to work.
A conference is just an admission that you want somebody to join you in your troubles.
Too much credit is given to the end result.
The true lesson is in the struggle that takes place between the dream and reality.
That struggle is a thing called life!
One of the major functions of skin is to keep people who look at you from throwing up.
Talk is cheap because supply exceeds demand.
A youth becomes a man when the marks he wants to leave on the world have nothing to do with tires.
A woman may very well form a friendship with a man, but for this to endure, it must be assisted by a little physical antipathy.
Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog: nobody enjoys it, and the frog usually dies as a result.
Don't think of it as being outnumbered, think of it as a wide target selection.
I will endure all this subhuman driveling shit with a smile.
A continuing flow of paper is sufficient to continue the flow of paper.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
No vacation goes unpunished.
Utility is when you have one telephone, luxury is when you have two, and paradise is when you have none.
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
Farming looks easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from a cornfield.
Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
If all the cars in the United States were placed end to end, it would probably be Labor Day weekend.
I'm a slow walker, but I never walk back.
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.
Not to be able to bear poverty is a shameful thing, but not to know how to chase it away by work is a more shameful thing yet.
I love deadlines.
I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
I want to be what I was when I wanted to be what I am now.
The Promised Land always lies on the other side of a wilderness.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Consistency is the final refuge of the unimaginative.
A snooze button is a poor substitute for no alarm clock at all.
Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings, they did it by killing all those who opposed them.
I've found Jesus, he was behind the sofa the whole time.
Well, aren't we just a ray of stinking sunshine?
Once you get people laughing, they're listening and you can tell them almost anything Trust everyone.
It's not like you have any really important secrets.
Trust no one.
Only those who you trust can betray you.
A baby is something you carry inside of you for 9 months, In your arms for three years, And in your heart till the day you die.
The only failure without dignity is the failure to try.
A woman's charm is her strength, a man's strength is his charm.
In spite of the costs of living, it's still popular.
Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.
You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.
There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.
Beer is good food.
It's easy if you try.
Anyone who doesn't believe in the Tooth Fairy is offending all the gay dentists in America.
Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.
A committee is a life form with six or more legs and no brain.
Lead us not into temptation.
Just tell us where it is; we'll find it.
We should not permit prayer to be taken out of the schools; that's the only way most of us got through.
A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother.
Medicine reports that it has already happened.
A new-born baby laughing like crazy, its hands full of pills.
A hospital is a place where men keep asking the nurses for dates and the nurses keep giving them prunes.
A man can be happy with any woman as long as he doesn't love her.
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
Love is a matter of chemistry, sex is a matter of physics.
Jesus died for our sins.
Let's not disappoint him.
The only thing that separates us from the animals is mindless superstition and pointless rituals.
Men never do evil so cheerfully and so completely as when they do so from religious conviction.
Last night I dreamed I ate a ten-pound marshmallow, and when I woke up the pillow was gone.
I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it.
Doing a thing well is often a waste of time.
He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death.
The secret of success is sincerity.
Once you can fake that, you've got it made.
Boy, everyone is stupid except me.
There may be some things better than sex and some things may be worse, but there is nothing exactly like it.
When doctors and undertakers meet, they always wink at each other.
There is not a man in America who at one time or another hasn't had a secret desire to boot a child in the ass.
The best cure for insomnia is plenty of sleep.
It's one thing to have to explain to a man why a billion dollar measure has been vetoed, but it is much more difficult to explain to a woman why the cap of the toothpaste has not been put back on.
A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes.
Happiness is a positive cash flow.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but whips and chains excite me.
Diarrhea is hereditary, it runs in your jeans.
A good day is when you wake up without a chalk outline around your body.
It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others.
The hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning.
Man does not control his own fate.
The women in his life do that for him.
What's another word for Thesaurus?
I always turn to the sports page first, which record people's accomplishments.
The front page has nothing but man's failures.
As is well known, an elk that is shot within fifteen feet of your hunting vehicle will still pull himself together enough to gallop to the very bottom of the steepest canyon within five miles.
Friends don't let Friends drive Naked.
The Schizophrenic: an unauthorized autobiography.
To err is human; to admit it is not.
When I was growing up, we were so poor that when I asked my father for something to play with, he cut a hole in my pants pocket.
I wanted to go the Paranoids Anonymous meeting, but they wouldn't tell me where it was.
Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our children.
A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls.
We're going to have the best-educated American people in the world.
The future will be better tomorrow.
A straight line may be the shortest distance between two points, but it is by no means the most interesting.
And which parallel universe did you crawl out of?
Jesus is coming; look busy!
For your convenience our staff is fluent in monosyllabic grunts.
There come's a time in the affairs of a man when he must take the bull by the tail and face the situation.
Be careful about reading health books.
You might die of a misprint.
We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake when you make it again.
No one is perfect.
The mere fact that one is human is a flaw in itself.
Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.
The only thing you can do easily is be wrong, and that's hardly worth the effort.
When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.
Men get laid, but women get screwed.
Shoot for the stars, otherwise gravity gets in your way.
We don't want to go back to tomorrow, we want to go forward.
Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.
I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy - but that could change.
I was recently on a tour of Latin America, and the only regret I have was that I didn't study Latin harder in school so I could converse with those people.
I loathe people who keep dogs.
They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves.
I think gods don't smite people anymore because people of many different religions now live in the same town.
No god wants to accidentally smite the wrong person and get sued by another god.
Since I brought along two cases of well-joggled wine, my main problems will be food and sex.
Not oddly, they're the same problems a lot of people have everywhere on Earth.
If your mind changes itself fast enough, the result is vertigo.
One of the curious effects of a bad hangover is that you think you're wrong whether you are or not.
Not wrong in particulars, but wrong in general, wrong about everything.
The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
Try calling up strangers in the phone book and forgiving them.
Not only will it loosen you up for the crucial real thing, the strangers will feel better.
Everyone likes to know they're forgiven.
Never do today what you can do tomorrow.
Something may occur to make you regret your premature action.
Never ruin an apology with an excuse.
Never give up.
And never, under any circumstances, face the facts.
Never take a job where winter winds can blow up your pants.
Never stand between a dog and the hydrant.
The reason most people play golf is to wear clothes they would not be caught dead in otherwise.
I would love to speak a foreign language but I can't.
So I grew hair under my arms instead.
I'm not into working out.
My philosophy: No pain, no pain.
It's like deja vu all over again.
If Man were meant to use the metric system, Jesus would have had 10 disciples.
This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever.
The German mind has a talent for making no mistakes but the very greatest.
Send lawyers, guns, and money - the shit has hit the fan.
If love is blind, then why do they make lingerie?
Lots of comedians have people they try to mimic.
I mimic my shadow.
I put tape on the mirrors in my house so I don't accidentally walk through into another dimension.
I've been doing a lot of abstract painting lately, extremely abstract.
No brush, no paint, no canvas, I just think about it.
My watch is three hours fast, and I can't fix it.
So I'm going to move to New York.
I like to reminisce with people I don't know.
I like to skate on the other side of the ice.
If you can't hear me, it's because I'm in parentheses.
Is it weird in here, or is it just me?
Every so often, I like to stick my head out the window, look up, and smile for a satellite picture.
I'm moving to Mars next week, so if you have any boxes.
Sorry, my mind was wandering.
One time my mind went all the way to Venus on mail order and I couldn't pay for it.
It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to have to paint it.
Cross country skiing is great if you live in a small country.
You can't have everything.
Where would you put it?
It's a good thing we have gravity, or else when birds died they'd just stay right up there.
Hunters would be all confused.
When I die, I'm leaving my body to science fiction.
I saw a bank that said "24 Hour Banking", but I don't have that much time.
My wife always keeps a bowl of wax fruit around, even though neither of us knows any mannequins.
I'm not saying my wife's a bad cook exactly but we have a complete set of soup knives.
I went to the museum where they had all the heads and arms from the statues that are in all the other museums.
Lord Birkenhead is very clever, but sometimes his brains go to his head.
On the other hand the early worm gets eaten.
Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time.
I think I've forgotten this before.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
I bought some powdered water, but I don't know what to add.
I spilled spot remover on my dog.
He's gone now.
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.
Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.
Mistress - Somewhere between a mister and a mattress.
Ecstasy - A feeling you feel when you feel you are going to feel a feeling you never felt before.
Adultery - Two wrong people doing the right thing.
Quote me as saying I was misquoted.
I must confess, I was born at a very early age.
Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
Are you any relation to your brother Marv?
I've never had major knee surgery on any other part of my body.
Smoking kills.
I was a pilot flying an airplane and it just so happened that where I was flying made what I was doing spying.
A personal injustice is stronger motivation than any instinct for philanthropy.
There are two kinds of people, those who finish what they start and so on.
Serious people have few ideas.
People with ideas are never serious.
A slipping gear could let your M203 grenade launcher fire when you least expect it.
That would make you quite unpopular in what's left of your unit.
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like and do what you'd druther not.
The world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.
German in the most extravagantly ugly language - it sounds like someone using a sick bag on a 747.
The Englishman who has lost his fortune is said to have died of a broken heart.
The English think soap is civilization.
I know why the sun never sets on the British Empire: God wouldn't trust an Englishman in the dark.
Britain is the only country in the world where the food is more dangerous than the sex.
Never criticize Americans.
They have the best taste that money can buy.
Americans always try to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.
In America, only the successful writer is important, in France all writers are important, in England no writer is important, and in Australia you have to explain what a writer is.
But his wife loves him, and so did all his mistresses.
If you can't live without me, why aren't you dead already?
A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance and to turn round three times before lying down.
A women's work is never done by men.
When a man brings his wife flowers for no reason - there's a reason.
Martyrdom is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.
The surest way to make a monkey out of a man is to quote him.
A kleptomaniac is a person who helps himself because he can't help himself.
It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
If triangles had a God, He'd have three sides.
Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.
What can you say about a society that says God is dead and Elvis is alive?
Maybe Computer Science should be in the College of Theology.
Somebody's boring me.
I think it's me.
Abstention is a vote in favor of the oppressor.
How much patience you have, for instance.
Men have died and worms have eaten them - but not for love!
English is the language up with which I will not put.
It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what other say in a whole book.
Man is still the most extraordinary computer of all.
Give me five lines by the best of men, and I will find something in it to hang him.
In the realm of human destiny, the depth of man's questioning is more important than his answers.
Rodgers and Hammerstein are America's answer to Mozart!
Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything.
If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.
I have seen hypocrisy that was so artful that it was good judgment to be deceived by it.
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we dislike.
Never raise your hands to your kids.
It leaves your groin unprotected.
The second day of a diet is always easier than the first.
By the second day you're off it.
I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.
Her kisses left something to be desired - the rest of her.
Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps.
Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Axiom: No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats - approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl.
If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there are men on base.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.
Karate is a form of martial arts in which people who have had years and years of training can, using only their hands and feet, make some of the worst movies in the history of the world.
Applying computer technology is simply finding the right wrench to pound in the correct screw.
Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that man doesn't have to experience it.
In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our Universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to time.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
When I was a kid, all we had to do was just sit around and hope somebody would invent television so we could play Nintendo.
History doesn't repeat itself - historians merely repeat each other.
In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct, beyond all need of checking, is the mistake.
The first bug to hit a clean windshield lands directly in front of your eyes.
If you hit two keys on the typewriter, the one you don't want hits the paper.
If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee - that will do them in.
When it comes to music lessons, most kids make it a practice not to practice.
When we seek to discover the best in others, we somehow bring out the best in ourselves.
When you fool a fool you strike a blow for intelligence.
When your dreams turn to dust, vacuum.
Where love leads, happiness follows.
Who says nothing is impossible, I have been doing nothing for years.
Whoever said you can't buy happiness forgot about puppies.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
Sterilize: What you do to your first baby's pacifier by boiling it and to your last baby's pacifier by blowing on it.
Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty, and persistence.
Take time to laugh - it is the music of the soul.
You can't shake hands with a clenched fist.
You cannot acquire experience by making experiments.
You cannot create experience.
You must undergo it.
Sometimes you gotta laugh through the tears, smile through the pain so that you can live through the sorrow.
Standard mathematics has recently been rendered obsolete by the discovery that for years we have been writing the numeral five backward.
This has led to reevaluation of counting as a method of getting from one to ten.
Students are taught advanced concepts of Boolean algebra, and formerly unsolvable equations are dealt with by threats of reprisals.
Stress is when you wake up screaming and you realize you haven't fallen asleep yet.
Success is the best revenge.
Table manners must have been invented by people who were never hungry.
Take away love and earth is a tomb.
Tear is a powerful weapon that can change the future of oneself or even the world.
People living in the war, they cry.
People love someone, they cry.
Through crying, people can express their feeling and their mind.
The answers to life's problems aren't at the bottom of a bottle, they're on TV!
The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.
The nice thing about meditation is that it makes doing nothing quite respectable.
Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.
Of course there's a lot of knowledge in universities: the freshmen bring a little in; the seniors don't take much away, so knowledge sort of accumulates.
My mother's menu consisted of two choices: Take it or leave it.
When I give a lecture, I accept that people look at their watches, but what I do not tolerate is when they look at it and raise it to their ear to find out if it stopped.
In politics, merit is rewarded by the possessor being raised, like a target, to a position to be fired at.
Sex without love is an empty gesture.
But as empty gestures go, it is one of the best.
Reject hatred without hating.
Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.
Be bad while you are young - then you can spend the rest of your life repenting and improving.
Alliance: In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted into each others' pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.
Eulogy: Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.
I never forget my wife's birthday.
It's usually the day after she reminds me about it.
When I have a birthday I take the day off.
But when my wife has a birthday, she takes a year or two off.
My folks were so poor we couldn't give my sister a sweet 16 party until she was 28.
On my 60th birthday my wife gave me a superb birthday present.
She let me win an argument.
A well adjusted woman is one who not only knows what she wants for her birthday, but even knows what she's going to exchange it for.
We know when we're getting old when the only thing we want for our birthday is not to be reminded of it.
It's so sad to grow old alone.
My wife hasn't had a birthday in 4 years.
She was born in the year of our Lord-only-knows.
By the time the last candle was lit on her birthday cake in February, the first one had gone out.
If she ever told her real age her birthday cake would be a fire hazard.
When it was fully lit it looked like a prairie fire.
Some people are alive only because it's illegal to kill them.
God must love stupid people, he made so many.
I took an IQ test and the results were negative.
Death is life's way of telling you you're fired.
My child beat up your honor student!
If everything is coming your way, then you're in the wrong lane.
I just love nonverbal communication!
You can't be late until you show up.
The report of my death was an exaggeration.
It's funny how most people love the dead, once you're dead your made for life.
When I was a boy the Dead Sea was only sick.
They say such nice things about people at their funerals that it makes me sad that I'm going to miss mine by just a few days.
When you've told someone that you've left them a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once.
You know you're getting old when you stoop to tie your shoelaces and wonder what else you could do while you're down there.
My grandmother was a very tough woman.
She buried three husbands and two of them were just napping.
On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down.
People ask me what I'd most appreciate getting for my eighty-seventh birthday.
I tell them, a paternity suit.
At my age flowers scare me.
The reason a dog has so many friends is that he wags his tail instead of his tongue.
Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.
The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.
No animal should ever jump up on the dining-room furniture unless absolutely certain that he can hold his own in the conversation.
If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.
I wonder what goes through his mind when he sees us peeing in his water bowl.
A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down.
I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult.
Anybody who doesn't know what soap tastes like never washed a dog.
If your dog is fat, you aren't getting enough exercise.
Outside of a dog, a book is probably man's best friend; inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.
Either he's dead or my watch has stopped.
To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work, I want to achieve it through not dying.
A man's only as old as the woman he feels.
For three days after death, hair and fingernails continue to grow but phone calls taper off.
I was with this girl the other night and from the way she was responding to my skillful caresses, you would have sworn that she was conscious from the top of her head to the tag on her toes.
All good things in life are either immoral, fattening or overpriced.
If you go back in time, don't step on anything.
Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams.
The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.
If it weren't for the killings, Washington would have one of the lowest crime rates in the country.
Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes.
That way, when you criticize them, you are a mile away from them, and you have their shoes.
A horror movie without the horror is like the turkey sandwich without the Miracle Whip.
One ply toilet paper: If you can see through it, you can wee through it.
I can't decide if indecision is good or bad.
Imagine if there were no hypothetical situations.
Drive-in banks were established so most of the cars today could see their real owners.
Nobody goes where the crowds are anymore.
It's too crowded.
When they asked George Washington for his ID, he just took out a quarter.
Why do people sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" when they're already there?
When you come to a fork in the road, take it.
Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are driving taxi cabs and cutting hair.
Conscience is the inner voice warning us that someone may be looking.
Always carry a flagon of whiskey in case of snakebite and furthermore always carry a small snake.
What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream?
Or what's worse, what if only that fat guy in the third row exists?
Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.
If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.
When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second.
When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour.
My girlfriend always laughs during sex - no matter what she's reading.
Not only is there no God, but try finding a plumber on Sunday.
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.
When I sell liquor, it's called bootlegging; when my patrons serve it on silver trays on Lake Shore Drive, it's called hospitality.
The best way to remember your wife's birthday is to forget is once.
To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call whatever you hit the target.
The best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.
I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific.
Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.
It's the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have the time.
I have lost friends, some by death, others through sheer inability to cross the street.
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.
The main purpose of the stock market is to make fools of as many men as possible.
No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.
Honesty is the key to a relationship.
If you can fake that, you're in.
How much patience you have for instance.
Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger.
I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more.
For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.
Work like you don't need the money.
Love like you've never been hurt.
Dance like nobody's watching.
Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
I hate mankind, for I think myself to be one of them, and I know how bad I am.
Sex is God's joke on human beings.
I have not failed.
I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
To find out a girl's faults, praise her to her girl friends.
When ideas fail, words come in very handy.
When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
A fanatic is a person who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
A woman's mind is cleaner than a man's.
She changes it more often.
To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend to be witty.
Instead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better to change the locks.
The person who knows how to laugh at himself will never cease to be amused.
Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation; the other eight are unimportant.
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
If you're going to do something tonight that you'll be sorry for tomorrow, sleep late.
You can't be a Real Country unless you have a BEER and an airline.
It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a BEER.
It isn't necessary to be rich and famous to be happy.
It's only necessary to be rich.
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.
Even if it doesn't work, there is something healthy and invigorating about direct action.
A gossip is one who talks to you about others, a bore is one who talks to you about himself; and a brilliant conversationalist is one who talks to you about yourself.
I figure you have the same chance of winning the lottery whether you play or not.
I could dance till the cows come home.
On second thought, I'd rather dance with the cows till you come home.
Eighty percent of married men cheat in America.
The rest cheat in Europe.
A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere.
Radio news is bearable.
This is due to the fact that while the news is being broadcast the disc jockey is not allowed to talk.
From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter.
Some day I intend reading it.
The male is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness and kindness, can be trained to do most things.
You know when you put a stick in water and it looks bent?
That's why I never take baths.
Men should be like Kleenex, soft, strong and disposable.
A genius is a man who can rewrap a new shirt and not have any pins left over.
The quickest way to a man's heart is through his chest.
When I eventually met Mr Right I had no idea that his first name was Always.
No man is an island, but some of us are pretty long peninsulas.
If you've got them by the balls their hearts and minds will follow.
Women complain about PMS, but I think of it as the only time of the month when I can be myself.
Women: Can't live with them, can't bury them in the back yard without the neighbours seeing.
If a woman insists on being called Ms, ask her if it stands for miserable.
Gain of mis-trust makes a man to miss his miss; gain of miss' trust makes his miss to miss her miss.
For sensual light, man's match-stick ignites woman's candle.
Humour kills murmur in marriage.
Marriage is adjustment of complementaries for mutuality; and sex is enjoyment of complementaries for mutuality.
Mix sex with love creates sentiments, lest it creates resentments.
From your parent learn the love; from your partner earn the love.
Funs and puns invalidate even nuns and guns.
In sex, man is hardware and woman is software, and for the consequence, man is a software and the woman is a hardware.
In sex, for man, upper part of woman is attraction, and lower part is an invitation.
Man is in woman and can be in woman, but woman, neither is in, nor can be, in man.
If you're smarter than your boss, his ego will reject you, but if you're fooler than your boss his sense will reject you.
Better lose to gain but never win to lose.
In a committed sex, satisfying the other is one's duty.
For ardent sexual interaction: supplement with motivation; experiment with innovation; and complement with satisfaction.
Complementary of each other in marriage should be made use of so as to complimenting each other.
In life: torture the evil, puncture the bad, and nurture the good.
If your wife is your life, her satisfaction should be your satiation.
In sexuality doing naughty with a beauty in reality on mutuality is maturity.
Doing nasty against society hurting individuality, even such thinking mentality, is vulgarity.
Empathise empathy emphatically in your approach to every interpersonal relationship.
Empathising empathy retains relationships; encouraging egoism retaliates relationships.
Couple's fusion by man's intromission for their satisfaction gives immense satiation.
A loving heart is the truest wisdom.
Love is a fruit in season at all times, and in reach of every hand.
Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.
Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back.
Those who wish to sing always find a song.
At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.
Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.
Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and blows up the bonfire.
The greatest happiness of life it the conviction that we are loved - loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.
You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.
Give me ambiguity or give me something else.
We are born naked, wet and hungry; then things get worse.
I'm not a complete idiot, some parts are missing!
He who laughs last thinks slowest!
Always remember you're unique, just like everyone else.
Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math.
Hard work has a future payoff.
Friends help you move.
Real friends help you move bodies.
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.
I used to have a handle on life, then it broke.
Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
Early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
I'm not cheap, but I am on special this week.
I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met.
I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol.
I intend to live forever - so far, so good.
I love defenseless animals, especially in a good gravy.
If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?
If you ain't makin' waves, you ain't kickin' hard enough!
Mental backup in progress - Do Not Disturb!
Mind Like A Steel Trap - Rusty And Illegal In 37 States.
The only substitute for good manners is fast reflexes.
When everything's coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.
Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.
If I worked as much as others, I would do as little as they.
If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
Many people quit looking for work when they find a job.
Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.
All those who believe in psychogenesis raise my hand.
A clean desk is a sign of a cluttered desk drawer.
The Universe is a figment of its own imagination.
Why was the Tomato blushing?
Because he saw the salad dressing.
How do you catch a squirrel?
Climb into a tree and act like a nut.
Why didn't the skeleton cross the road?
Because he/she had no guts!
Why didn't the chicken cross the road?
Because he was too chicken.
What do you call a person with leprosy in a bath tub?
Did you hear about the cannibal who passed his brother in the woods one day?
What lies at the bottom of the ocean and twitches?
A nervous wreck!
Why don't cannibals eat comedians?
Because they taste funny.
What's brown and sticky?
How do you describe the average cannibal?
A guy with a wife and ate children.
What do you give an elephant with diarrhea?
What does Mozart do now that he is dead?
Why did the squirrel sleep on his stomach?
To keep his nuts warm.
Why do they put bells on cows?
Because their horns don't work!
Why did the bee cross his legs?
Because he couldn't find the BP station.
What do you get when you put a canary in a blender?
Shredded tweet.
What's clear and smells like carrots?
A Rabbit fart.
What do you call a missing parrot?
A polygon.
Where does a one armed man shop?
At a second hand store!
What Happened to the fly on the toilet seat?
He got pissed off!
What did the cannibal do after he dumped his girlfriend?
Wiped his butt.
What do you call a sleeping cow?
A bulldozer.
Why did the girl fall off the swing?
Because she had no arms!
Did you hear about the cat who swallowed a ball of yarn?
She had mittens!
Why can't skeletons play music in church?
They have no organs!
What's the ultimate doom for a leper?
An epileptic fit.
What's brown and sounds like a bell?
What bird can lift the most weight?
The Crane.
Why was the man arrested for waiting in the Big Top?
He was loitering within tent.
Because he saw his phone bill.
Why were all the ink spots crying?
Their father was in the pen.
There's no future in time travel.
Tonight's weather: Dark with continued darkness until dawn.
Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface.
DCE seeks DTE for mutual exchange of data.
Death is hereditary.
Multitasking - screwing up several things at once.
Dyslexics of the world, untie!
If at first you don't succeed, buy her another beer!
Beat the 5 o'clock rush - Leave work at noon!
Arachibutyrophobia: fear of peanut butter sticking to roof of mouth.
Please return Stewardess to original upright position.
Polynesia: memory loss in parrots.
A good pun is its own reword.
Friends may come and go, but enemies tend to accumulate.
Man who smoke pot choke on handle.
A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
He who hesitates is probably right.
Never do card tricks for the group you play poker with.
No one is listening until you make a mistake.
The colder the X-ray table, the more of your body is required on it.
The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread.
The severity of the itch is proportional to the reach.
To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.
To succeed in politics, it is often necessary to rise above your principles.
Two wrongs are only the beginning.
You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.
The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
If you must choose between two evils, pick the one you've never tried before.
A fool and his money are soon partying.
Money can't buy love.
But it CAN rent a very close imitation.
Attempt to get a new car for your spouse - it'll be a great trade!
Hell hath no fury like the lawyer of a woman scorned.
Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks.
Hard work pays off in the future.
Eagles may soar, but weasels aren't sucked into jet engines.
Borrow money from pessimists - they don't expect it back.
Half the people you know are below average.
A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.
If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you!
Some just don't have film.
If you choke a smurf, what color does it turn?
OK, so what's the speed of dark?
Wisdom and beauty form a very rare combination.
Education: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the fool their lack of understanding.
Vote: The instrument and symbol of a free man's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and whatever you hit, call it the target.
I was educated once, and it took me years to get over it.
The surest way to remain a winner is to win once, and then not play any more.
Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other.
Riot: A popular entertainment given to the military by innocent bystanders.
It is not the bad times on which we should dwell, it is only poison to the mind and soul.
We shall rise up after we fall, and continue to go on - dwelling on the good, high-spirited times of our lives.
If you suffer, thank God!
It is a sure sign that you are alive.
If what Proust says is true, that happiness is the absence of fever, then I will never know happiness.
For I am possessed by a fever for knowledge, experience, and creation.
The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of.
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Trouble is part of your life - if you don't share it, you don't give the person who loves you a chance to love you enough.
He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much.
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.
Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.
Were there no women, men might live like gods.
Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.
Bachelors know more about women than married men do.
If they didn't, they'd be married too.
You come out of a woman and you spend the rest of your life trying to get back inside.
Sex is what women have and men want.
The only thing that men and women have in common, is that they both prefer the company of men.
A woman never forgets the men she could have had; a man, the women he couldn't.
I've had one child.
My husband wants to have another.
I'd like to watch him have another.
Women first want to find out what is in your wallet, and second what is in your pants.
I'm still an atheist, thank God.
Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
The only thing that stops God from sending another flood is that the first one was useless.
I predict that exact reproduction through cloning will not become popular.
Too many people already find it difficult to live with themselves.
Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool.
A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.
Disorder increases with time because we measure time in the direction in which disorder increases.
I don't necessarily agree with everything I say.
Nothing is more intolerable than to have to admit to yourself your own errors.
Man is able to do what he is unable to imagine.
His head trails a wake through the galaxy of the absurd.
I like pigs.
Dogs look up to us.
Cats look down on us.
Pigs treat us as equals.
Most of life is choices, and the rest is pure dumb luck.
Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.
I have made mistakes, but have never made the mistake of claiming I never made one.
It's not over until it's over.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Don't worry about people stealing your ideas.
If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.
The brain is a wonderful organ.
It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get to work.
Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.
The quality of an organization can never exceed the quality of the minds that make it up.
Parkinson's Fourth Law: The number of people in any working group tends to increase regardless of the amount of work to be done.
You will break the bow if you keep it always stretched.
Give me a museum and I'll fill it.
The beginning is the most important part of the work.
He that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools.
Tell a man that there are 400 billion stars in the sky, and he'll believe you.
Tell him a bench has wet paint and he has to touch it.
Thank God for dirty dishes, they have a tale to tell.
While others may go hungry, we've eaten very well.
With home, health and happiness, I shouldn't want to fuss.
By the stack of evidence, God's been very good to us.
The act of putting pen to paper encourages pause for thought, this in turn makes us think more deeply about life, which helps us regain our equilibrium.
The best thing to sleep on is a clear conscience.
The computer only crashes when printing a document you haven't saved.
The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
The last day of school before summer vacation is the shortest day of a mother's year.
The life you have led doesn't need to be the only life you have.
The more we learn, the more we realize how little we know.
The only abnormality is the incapacity to love.
The past is but the beginning of a beginning, and all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn.
Of all the things which wisdom provides to make life entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship.
Every now and again take a good look at something not made with hands - a mountain, a star, the turn of a stream.
There will come to you wisdom and patience and solace and, above all, the assurance that you are not alone in the world.
Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain.
It's not something you learn in school.
But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything.
I am not in this world to live up to other people's expectations, nor do I feel that the world must live up to mine.
Friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life; and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine.
Life is no brief candle to me.
It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong.
Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.
Live all you can.
It is a mistake not to.
It doesn't matter so much what you do in particular, so long as you have your life.
If you haven't had that, what have you had?
No one gets out of this world alive, so the time to live, learn, care, share, celebrate, and love is now.
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.
Love is a state in which a man sees things most decidedly as they are not.
Love wasn't put in your heart to stay.
Love isn't love 'til you give it away.
Let love be your greatest aim.
If thou must love me, let it be for naught except for love's sake only.
He whom love touches not walks in darkness.
To live without loving is not really to live.
At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet.
The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is mingled with grief, love grows perhaps the greater.
True love doesn't consist of holding hands, it consists of holding hearts.
Age does not protect you from love.
But love, to some extent, protects you from age.
Lots of people are willing to die for the person they love, which is a pity, for it is a much grander thing to live for that person.
It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them.
The supreme happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved.
Don't be so humble - you are not that great.
Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.
The school of hard knocks is an accelerated curriculum.
I am always doing things I can't do, that's how I get to do them.
Nagging is the repetition of unpalatable truths.
Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry.
I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.
The dreams in my spirit mirror the solitude of my dark solitude.
No computer has ever been designed that is ever aware of what it's doing; but most of the time, we aren't either.
Accept no one's definition of your life, but define yourself.
Smash forehead on keyboard to continue!
Press any key to continue, or any other key to quit.
Close your eyes and press escape three times.
This will end your Windows session.
Do you want to play another game?
Ellen Degeneres Virus - Your IBM suddenly claims it's a MAC.
Monica Lewinski Virus - Sucks all the memory out of your computer.
Titanic Virus - Makes your whole computer go down.
Disney Virus - Everything in the computer goes goofy.
Mike Tyson Virus - Quits after one byte.
Prozac Virus - Screws up your RAM but your processor doesn't care.
Sharon Stone Virus - Makes a huge initial impact, then you forget it's there.
Tim Allen Virus - Appears helpful, only to destroy your hard drive upon contact.
Woody Allen Virus - Bypasses the motherboard and turns on a daughter card.
Saddam Hussein Virus - Won't let you into any of your programs.
George Michael Virus - Runs its course, occasionally releasing excess data buildup.
Joey Buttafuoco Virus - Only attacks minor files.
X-files Virus - All your icons start shape-shifting.
Spice Girl Virus - Has no real function, but makes a pretty desktop.
Ronald Reagan Virus - Saves your data, but forgets where it is stored.
Sonny Bono Virus - Just when you get surfing the web, a firewall appears out of nowhere.
Martha Stewart Virus - Takes all your files, sorts them by category and folds them into cute little doilies to be displayed on your desktop.
Freudian Virus - Your computer becomes obsessed with its own motherboard.
Or becomes very jealous of the size of your friend's hard drive.
Hillary Rodham Clinton Virus - Instantly turns 1K of disk space into 1 Meg.
Ollie North Virus - Plays a patriotic WAV while it shreds your files.
Jane Fonda Virus - Attacks your hard drive's FAT.
Oprah Winfrey Virus - Your 200MB hard drive suddenly shrinks to 80MB, and then slowly expands to 300MB.
AT&T Virus - Every three minutes it tells you what great service you are getting.
MCI Virus - Every three minutes it reminds you that you're paying too much for the AT&T virus.
Politically Correct Virus - Never calls itself a "virus", but instead refers to itself as an "electronic microorganism".
Ross Perot Virus - Activates every component in your system, just before the whole darn thing quits.
Arnold Schwarzenegger Virus - Terminates and stays resident; It'll be back!
Government Economist Virus - Nothing works, but all your diagnostic software says everything is fine.
Federal Bureaucrat Virus - Divides your hard disk into hundreds of little units, each of which does practically nothing, but all of which claim to be the most important part of your computer.
Adam and Eve Virus - Takes a couple of bytes out of your Apple computer.
Congressional Virus #1 - The computer locks up, screen splits erratically with a message appearing on each half blaming the other side for the problem.
Congressional Virus #2 - Runs every program on the hard drive simultaneously but doesn't allow the user to accomplish anything.
Airline Virus - You're in Dallas, but your data is in Singapore.
PBS Virus - Your computer stops every few minutes to ask for money.
Jimmy Hoffa Virus - Your programs can never be found again.
LAPD Virus - It claims it feels threatened by the other files on your PC and erases them in "self-defense".
The E-mail of the species is more deadly than the mail.
A journey of a thousand sites begins with a single click.
You can't teach a new mouse old clicks.
Great groups from little icons grow.
Speak softly and carry a cellular phone.
Don't put all your hypes in one home page.
Pentium wise; pen and paper foolish.
The modem is the message.
Too many clicks spoil the browse.
The geek shall inherit the earth.
A chat has nine lives.
Don't byte off more than you can view.
Fax is stranger than fiction.
What boots up must come down.
Windows will never cease.
In Gates we trust.
Virtual reality is its own reward.
Modulation in all things.
A user and his leisure time are soon parted.
Know what to expect before you connect.
Oh, what a tangled web-site we weave, when first we practice.
Speed thrills.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him to use the Web and he won't bother you for weeks.
My mother was like a sister to me, only we didn't have sex quite so often.
It's so long since I've had sex I've forgotten who ties up who.
If it wasn't for pick-pockets I'd have no sex life at all.
Sex without love is an empty experience, but as empty experiences go it's a pretty good one.
Like most men, I am consumed with desire whenever a lesbian gets within twenty feet.
The big difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money costs less.
There we were in the middle of a sexual revolution wearing clothes that guaranteed we wouldn't get laid.
My classmates would copulate with anything that moved, but I never saw any reason to limit myself.
It's better to be black than gay because when you're black you don't have to tell your mother.
Life is a sexually transmitted disease and the mortality rate is one hundred percent.
Love is the answer - but while you're waiting for the answer sex raises some pretty good questions.
An intellectual is someone who has found something more interesting than sex.
Show me a woman who doesn't feel guilt and I'll show you a man.
I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.
As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.
When women kiss it always reminds me of prize fighter shaking hands.
When women go wrong, men go right after them.
She looked as if she'd been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say when.
Women are nothing but machines for producing children.
An archaeologist is best husband a woman can have: the older she gets, the more interested he is in her.
All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power.
An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing.
Beauty: That power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
Black holes are where God divided by zero.
Boycott shampoo!
By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve.
Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research.
Corduroy pillows: They're making headlines!
Demand the REAL poo!
Energizer Bunny arrested, charged with battery.
Everyone has a photographic memory.
Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.
Failure to prepare is preparing to fail.
For Sale: Parachute.
Give a man a free hand and he'll run it all over you.
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
How do you tell when you run out of invisible ink?
I couldn't repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder.
I don't have any solution but I certainly admire the problem.
I tried sniffing Coke once, but the ice cubes got stuck in my nose.
I used to have an open mind but my brains kept falling out.
I'm writing a book.
I've got the page numbers done.
If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
If the effort that went in research on the female bosom had gone into our space program, we would now be running hot-dog stands on the moon.
If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning.
If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life.
It is by fighting and triumphing over the enemies of the Buddha that we ourselves become Buddhas.
It's not that I'm afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens.
Join the Army, meet interesting people, kill them.
Knowledge and belief are two separate tracks that run parallel to each other and never meet, except in the child.
Laughing stock: cattle with a sense of humor.
Laziness pays off now.
Man is only happy as he finds a work worth doing, and does it well.
Most plans are just inaccurate predictions.
My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
My schedule is already full.
Only used once, never opened, small stain.
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
Reality is a crutch for people who can't handle drugs.
Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
Shin: a device for finding furniture in the dark.
Some don't have film.
Success always occurs in private, and failure in full view.
Support your right to bare arms!
That's relativity.
The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.
The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.
There cannot be a crisis next week.
Time's fun when you're having flies.
Truth comes out of error more easily than out of confusion.
We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified.
Wear short sleeves!
What happens if you get scared half to death twice?
Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?
Why do psychics have to ask you for your name?
Women should be obscene and not heard.
You can learn many things from children.
There was Gertrude.
And there was his sister Marian.
She had worked in the cannery the preceding summer, and her slim, pretty hands were all scarred with the tomato-knives.
He remembered the hard palms of his mother as she lay in her coffin.
He sat back on the bed with a bitter laugh, and finished taking off his shoes.
And then, suddenly, before his eyes, on the foul plaster-wall appeared a vision.
He stood in front of a gloomy tenement house.
It was night-time, in the East End of London, and before him stood Margey, a little factory girl of fifteen.
He had seen her home after the beanfeast.
She lived in that gloomy tenement, a place not fit for swine.
His hand was going out to hers as he said good night.
Somehow he was afraid of her.
And then her hand closed on his and pressed feverishly.
He felt her callouses grind and grate on his, and a great wave of pity welled over him.
Her glad little cry rang in his ears, and he felt her clinging to him like a cat.
Poor little starveling!
He continued to stare at the vision of what had happened in the long ago.
His flesh was crawling as it had crawled that night when she clung to him, and his heart was warm with pity.
It was a gray scene, greasy gray, and the rain drizzled greasily on the pavement stones.
He took the Browning and the Swinburne from the chair and kissed them.
Just the same, she told me to call again, he thought.
Understand!
Norman and Arthur knew that speech.
He had heard them talking it.
And they were her brothers.
He left the alcove in despair.
From every side the books seemed to press upon him and crush him.
He had never dreamed that the fund of human knowledge bulked so big.
He was frightened.
How could his brain ever master it all?
And so he wandered on, alternating between depression and elation as he stared at the shelves packed with wisdom.
In a way, it spoke a kindred speech.
Both he and it were of the sea.
There it was; he would teach himself navigation.
He would quit drinking, work up, and become a captain.
Ruth seemed very near to him in that moment.
As a captain, he could marry her (if she would have him).
He cast his eyes about the room and closed the lids down on a vision of ten thousand books.
No; no more of the sea for him.
There was power in all that wealth of books, and if he would do great things, he must do them on the land.
Besides, captains were not allowed to take their wives to sea with them.
Noon came, and afternoon.
But when he found the right shelf, he sought vainly for the answer.
He abandoned his search.
The man nodded.
Are you a sailor?
"Yes, sir," he answered.
Now, how did he know that?
A terrible restlessness that was akin to hunger afflicted Martin Eden.
He could not steel himself to call upon her.
He was afraid that he might call too soon, and so be guilty of an awful breach of that awful thing called etiquette.
The many books he read but served to whet his unrest.
Every page of every book was a peep-hole into the realm of knowledge.
His hunger fed upon what he read, and increased.
Also, he did not know where to begin, and continually suffered from lack of preparation.
The commonest references, that he could see plainly every reader was expected to know, he did not know.
And the same was true of the poetry he read which maddened him with delight.
He read more of Swinburne than was contained in the volume Ruth had lent him; and "Dolores" he understood thoroughly.
But surely Ruth did not understand it, he concluded.
These thoughts he had tried to share, but never had he found a woman capable of understanding - nor a man.
He had tried, at times, but had only puzzled his listeners.
And as his thoughts had been beyond them, so, he argued now, he must be beyond them.
He felt power move in him, and clenched his fists.
Those bold black eyes had nothing to offer.
He knew the thoughts behind them - of ice-cream and of something else.
They offered books and painting, beauty and repose, and all the fine elegance of higher existence.
Behind those black eyes he knew every thought process.
It was like clockwork.
He could watch every wheel go around.
Their bid was low pleasure, narrow as the grave, that palled, and the grave was at the end of it.
He had caught glimpses of the soul in them, and glimpses of his own soul, too.
"Lizzie," she replied, softening toward him, her hand pressing his arm, while her body leaned against his.
He talked on a few minutes before saying good night.
I kept it for you.
A week of heavy reading had passed since the evening he first met Ruth Morse, and still he dared not call.
Time and again he nerved himself up to call, but under the doubts that assailed him his determination died away.
But his eyes were strong, and they were backed by a body superbly strong.
Furthermore, his mind was fallow.
It had never been jaded by study, and it bit hold of the knowledge in the books with sharp teeth that would not let go.
It seemed to him, by the end of the week, that he had lived centuries, so far behind were the old life and outlook.
But he was baffled by lack of preparation.
He attempted to read books that required years of preliminary specialization.
It was the same with the economists.
He was bewildered, and yet he wanted to know.
She had never had any experiences of the heart.
She did not know the actual fire of love.
She did not dream of the volcanic convulsions of love, its scorching heat and sterile wastes of parched ashes.
She knew neither her own potencies, nor the potencies of the world; and the deeps of life were to her seas of illusion.
It was only natural.
There was something cosmic in such things, and there was something cosmic in him.
He came to her breathing of large airs and great spaces.
The blaze of tropic suns was in his face, and in his swelling, resilient muscles was the primordial vigor of life.
He was untamed, wild, and in secret ways her vanity was touched by the fact that he came so mildly to her hand.
Likewise she was stirred by the common impulse to tame the wild thing.
His swift development was a source of surprise and interest.
She detected unguessed finenesses in him that seemed to bud, day by day, like flowers in congenial soil.
She read Browning aloud to him, and was often puzzled by the strange interpretations he gave to mooted passages.
Then she played to him - no longer at him - and probed him with music that sank to depths beyond her plumb-line.
In an immediate way it personified his life.
But her singing he did not question.
It was too wholly her, and he sat always amazed at the divine melody of her pure soprano voice.
She enjoyed singing and playing to him.
Besides, it was pleasant to be with him.
He did not repel her.
That first repulsion had been really a fear of her undiscovered self, and the fear had gone to sleep.
Though she did not know it, she had a feeling in him of proprietary right.
Also, he had a tonic effect upon her.
Strength was what she needed, and he gave it to her in generous measure.
To come into the same room with him, or to meet him at the door, was to take heart of life.
And when he had gone, she would return to her books with a keener zest and fresh store of energy.
She knew her Browning, but it had never sunk into her that it was an awkward thing to play with souls.
As her interest in Martin increased, the remodelling of his life became a passion with her.
Butler, Charles Butler he was called, found himself alone in the world.
His father had come from Australia, you know, and so he had no relatives in California.
She paused for breath, and to note how Martin was receiving it.
Butler; but there was a frown upon his face as well.
How could he live on it?
He must have lived like a dog.
His early denials are paid for a thousand fold.
Martin looked at her sharply.
Her eyes dropped before his searching gaze.
By nature he is sober and serious.
He always was that.
"You can bet he was," Martin proclaimed.
Her own limits were the limits of her horizon; but limited minds can recognize limitations only in others.
"But I have not finished my story," she said.
Butler was always eager to work.
He never was late, and he was usually at the office a few minutes before his regular time.
And yet he saved his time.
Every spare moment was devoted to study.
He quickly became a clerk, and he made himself invaluable.
Father appreciated him and saw that he was bound to rise.
He became a lawyer, and hardly was he back in the office when father took him in as junior partner.
He is a great man.
Such a life is an inspiration to all of us.
It shows us that a man with will may rise superior to his environment.
"He is a great man," Martin said sincerely.
And then, in splendor and glory, came the great idea.
He would write.
He would write - everything - poetry and prose, fiction and description, and plays like Shakespeare.
There was career and the way to win to Ruth.
Butlers who earned thirty thousand a year and could be Supreme Court justices if they wanted to.
Once the idea had germinated, it mastered him, and the return voyage to San Francisco was like a dream.
He was drunken with unguessed power and felt that he could do anything.
In the midst of the great and lonely sea he gained perspective.
Clearly, and for the first lime, he saw Ruth and her world.
The thought was fire in him.
He would begin as soon as he got back.
The first thing he would do would be to describe the voyage of the treasure-hunters.
He would sell it to some San Francisco newspaper.
He would not tell Ruth anything about it, and she would be surprised and pleased when she saw his name in print.
While he wrote, he could go on studying.
There were twenty-four hours in each day.
He was invincible.
He knew how to work, and the citadels would go down before him.
She did not think much of his plan.
Not that I know anything about it, of course.
I only bring common judgment to bear.
This education is indispensable for whatever career you select, and it must not be slipshod or sketchy.
You should go to high school.
"I would have to," he said grimly.
I must live and buy books and clothes, you know.
This change in him was her handiwork, and she was proud of it and fired with ambition further to help him.
But the most radical change of all, and the one that pleased her most, was the change in his speech.
Not only did he speak more correctly, but he spoke more easily, and there were many new words in his vocabulary.
Also, there was an awkward hesitancy, at times, as he essayed the new words he had learned.
He was just beginning to orientate himself and to feel that he was not wholly an intruder.
He told her of what he had been doing, and of his plan to write for a livelihood and of going on with his studies.
But he was disappointed at her lack of approval.
Up to then he had accepted existence, as he had lived it with all about him, as a good thing.
Who could tell?
He did not know enough to ask the man at the desk, and began his adventures in the philosophy alcove.
He had heard of book philosophy, but had not imagined there had been so much written about it.
The high, bulging shelves of heavy tomes humbled him and at the same time stimulated him.
Here was work for the vigor of his brain.
He could read English, but he saw there an alien speech.
How could she, living the refined life she did?
Higginbotham, who would have preferred the money taking the form of board.
On another night, his vigil was rewarded by a glimpse of Ruth through a second-story window.
He saw only her head and shoulders, and her arms raised as she fixed her hair before a mirror.
Then she pulled down the shade.
She was of the class that dealt with banks.
In one way, he had undergone a moral revolution.
He had always been easy-going.
It was not in his nature to give rebuff.
In the old days he would have smiled back, and gone further and encouraged smiling.
But now it was different.
He did smile back, then looked away, and looked no more deliberately.
But several times, forgetting the existence of the two girls, his eyes caught their smiles.
It was nothing new to him.
But it was different now.
He had it in his heart to wish that they could possess, in some small measure, her goodness and glory.
And not for the world could he hurt them because of their outreaching.
He was not flattered by it; he even felt a slight shame at his lowliness that permitted it.
He left his seat before the curtain went down on the last act, intent on seeing Her as she passed out.
They were looking for him, he knew; and for the moment he could have cursed that in him which drew women.
Their casual edging across the sidewalk to the curb, as they drew near, apprised him of discovery.
They slowed down, and were in the thick of the crown as they came up with him.
One of them brushed against him and apparently for the first time noticed him.
She was a slender, dark girl, with black, defiant eyes.
But they smiled at him, and he smiled back.
Also, she was struck by his face.
It was almost violent, this health of his, and it seemed to rush out of him and at her in waves of force.
And he, in turn, knew again the swimming sensation of bliss when he felt the contact of her hand in greeting.
The difference between them lay in that she was cool and self-possessed while his face flushed to the roots of the hair.
He stumbled with his old awkwardness after her, and his shoulders swung and lurched perilously.
Once they were seated in the living-room, he began to get on easily - more easily by far than he had expected.
She made it easy for him; and the gracious spirit with which she did it made him love her more madly than ever.
She had thought of this often since their first meeting.
She wanted to help him.
The old fascination of his neck was there, and there was sweetness in the thought of laying her hands upon it.
It seemed still a wanton impulse, but she had grown more used to it.
She did not dream that in such guise new-born love would epitomize itself.
Nor did she dream that the feeling he excited in her was love.
She did not know she desired him; but with him it was different.
As he gazed at her and listened, his thoughts grew daring.
He reviewed all the wild delight of the pressure of her hand in his at the door, and longed for it again.
His gaze wandered often toward her lips, and he yearned for them hungrily.
But there was nothing gross or earthly about this yearning.
Their substance was not mere human clay.
I was never inside a house like this.
I wanted it.
I want it now.
Here it is.
I want to make my way to the kind of life you have in this house.
Mebbe I ought to ask him.
Ruth did not speak immediately.
She had never looked in eyes that expressed greater power.
And for that matter so complex and quick was her own mind that she did not have a just appreciation of simplicity.
And yet she had caught an impression of power in the very groping of this mind.
It had seemed to her like a giant writhing and straining at the bonds that held him down.
Her face was all sympathy when she did speak.
You should go back and finish grammar school, and then go through to high school and university.
"But that takes money," he interrupted.
But then you have relatives, somebody who could assist you?
He shook his head.
The oldest died in India.
What it means is that a trust is like an egg, and it is not like an egg.
If you want to break an egg you have to do it from the outside.
The only way to break up a trust is from the inside.
Keep sitting on it until it hatches.
Somewhat to my surprise he acknowledged the corner.
"Once," said he.
But we lost out.
"Some unforeseen opposition came up, I suppose," I said.
We were self-curbed.
It was a case of auto-suppression.
There was a rift within the loot, as Albert Tennyson says.
That man was the most talented conniver at stratagems I ever saw.
Andy was educated, too, besides having a lot of useful information.
Oh, yes, the mine was all right.
The other half interest must have been worth two or three thousand.
I often wondered who owned that mine.
The town had about 2,000 inhabitants, mostly men.
I figured out that their principal means of existence was in living close to tall chaparral.
Me and Andy put up at a hotel that was built like something between a roof-garden and a sectional bookcase.
It began to rain the day we got there.
As the saying is, Juniper Aquarius was sure turning on the water plugs on Mount Amphibious.
But we could see the townspeople making a triangular procession from one to another all day and half the night.
Everybody seemed to know what to do with as much money as they had.
Bird City was built between the Rio Grande and a deep wide arroyo that used to be the old bed of the river.
Andy looks at it a long time.
And then he unfolds to me a instantaneous idea that has occurred to him.
Right there was organized a trust; and we walked back into town and put it on the market.
The river had busted through its old channel, and the town was surrounded by roaring torrents.
But the worst was yet to come.
So, naturally the body politic emits thirsty ejaculations of surprise and ports hellum for the Blue Snake.
And what does it find there?
The town marshal is there with two deputies to keep order, having been promised free drinks by the trust.
The nearest railroad was thirty miles away; and it would be two weeks at least before the river would be fordable.
So they began to cuss, amiable, and throw down dollars on the bar till it sounded like a selection on the xylophone.
It was beautiful and simple as all truly great swindles are.
We told the bartenders to take advantage of the lull, and do the same.
Then me and Andy counted the receipts.
He got off the safe and lit the biggest cigar in the house.
We have sure handed the small consumer a giant blow in the sole apoplectic region.
This little turn in bug juice is, verily, all to the Skibo.
It was the first drink I had ever known him to take.
I watched him to see what turn the whiskey was going to take in him.
There are two times when you never can tell what is going to happen.
One is when a man takes his first drink; and the other is when a woman takes her latest.
He was outwardly decent and managed to preserve his aquarium, but inside he was impromptu and full of unexpectedness.
I feel like if I once turned loose people would begin to call Senator Beveridge the Grand Young Sphinx of the Wabash.
Me and the boys will take care of the business.
Everybody will be through dinner pretty soon, and salt pork and beans makes a man pretty thirsty.
The streets were deserted except for some ducks and ladies going to the stores.
There was only a light drizzle falling then.
We put him in bed while he still muttered and gesticulated with his hands and feet.
I met a man who told me all about it.
Andy had made the finest two hour speech that had ever been heard in Texas, he said, or anywhere else in the world.
And say, Jeff, make that succotash fancier give you nice, clean, new bills.
I drove out to the Plunkett farm and hitched.
There was a man sitting on the front steps of the house.
He had on a white flannel suit, a diamond ring, golf cap and a pink ascot tie.
I see the left pocket of your coat sags a good deal.
Out with the goldbrick first.
I put it back in my pocket.
Yes; this is Plunkett, of Woodbine Centre.
Reserve four orchestra seats for Friday evening - my usual ones.
Have you got him there?
Let me see him.
Get away from the transmitter.
Now make him trot in a circle.
Yes, I can hear him.
Keep on - faster yet.
Now lead him up to the phone.
Get his nose nearer.
Then he passes the Henry Clays and sets out a bottle of green chartreuse, and goes over and looks at the ticker tape.
The horse turned round and took me back to the hotel.
I hitched him and went in to see Andy.
It looks incredulous to me that he could have inoculated himself against all the preordained systems of bucolic bunco.
Farmers was made for a purpose; and that was to furnish a livelihood to men like me and you.
Else why was we given brains?
His vest is red with blue dots, and he wears a high silk hat.
Wait here till I come back.
My life is never safe.
There was no pause of the realities wherein he moved.
He saw her hand coming out to his, and she looked him straight in the eyes as she shook hands, frankly, like a man.
The women he had known did not shake hands that way.
For that matter, most of them did not shake hands at all.
But he shook them aside and looked at her.
Never had he seen such a woman.
The women he had known!
Immediately, beside her, on either hand, ranged the women he had known.
There were women of the cattle camps, and swarthy cigarette-smoking women of Old Mexico.
She repressed a smile at sight of the red line that marked the chafe of the collar against the bronzed neck.
He was evidently unused to stiff collars.
This was a new experience for him.
All his life, up to then, he had been unaware of being either graceful or awkward.
Such thoughts of self had never entered his mind.
He sat down gingerly on the edge of the chair, greatly worried by his hands.
They were in the way wherever he put them.
Arthur was leaving the room, and Martin Eden followed his exit with longing eyes.
He felt lost, alone there in the room with that pale spirit of a woman.
I am sure it must have been some adventure.
"A Mexican with a knife, miss," he answered, moistening his parched lips and clearing hip throat.
After I got the knife away, he tried to bite off my nose.
But of all this no hint had crept into his speech.
"He tried to bite off my nose," he concluded.
"Oh," the girl said, in a faint, far voice, and he noticed the shock in her sensitive face.
Such sordid things as stabbing affrays were evidently not fit subjects for conversation with a lady.
People in the books, in her walk of life, did not talk about such things - perhaps they did not know about them, either.
There was a brief pause in the conversation they were trying to get started.
Then she asked tentatively about the scar on his cheek.
"It was just an accident," he said, putting his hand to his cheek.
"This man Swineburne," he began, attempting to put his plan into execution and pronouncing the I long.
"Swineburne," he repeated, with the same mispronunciation.
"Swinburne," she corrected.
"I never clapped eyes on him," was the reply.
How do you like his poetry?
And thereat she began to talk quickly and easily upon the subject he had suggested.
Here was intellectual life, he thought, and here was beauty, warm and wonderful as he had never dreamed it could be.
He forgot himself and stared at her with hungry eyes.
Here was something to live for, to win to, to fight for - ay, and die for.
The books were true.
There were such women in the world.
She was one of them.
But she, who knew little of the world of men, being a woman, was keenly aware of his burning eyes.
She had never had men look at her in such fashion, and it embarrassed her.
She stumbled and halted in her utterance.
The thread of argument slipped from her.
He frightened her, and at the same time it was strangely pleasant to be so looked upon.
She was clean, and her cleanness revolted; but she was woman, and she was just beginning to learn the paradox of woman.
"Yes, thank you," she said.
There are many of his poems that should never be read.
Not a line of the great poets can be spared without impoverishing the world by that much.
I had no idea he was such a - a scoundrel.
I guess that crops out in his other books.
He broke off lamely.
He was confused, painfully conscious of his inarticulateness.
He had felt the bigness and glow of life in what he had read, but his speech was inadequate.
Well, he decided, it was up to him to get acquainted in this new world.
It sounded like a threat.
His voice was determined, his eyes were flashing, the lines of his face had grown harsh.
And to her it seemed that the angle of his jaw had changed; its pitch had become unpleasantly aggressive.
At the same time a wave of intense virility seemed to surge out from him and impinge upon her.
"I think you could make it in - in your class," she finished with a laugh.
And though he sat there, blushing and humble, again she felt drawn to him.
She was surprised by a wanton thought that rushed into her mind.
She was shocked by this thought.
It seemed to reveal to her an undreamed depravity in her nature.
Besides, strength to her was a gross and brutish thing.
Her ideal of masculine beauty had always been slender gracefulness.
Yet the thought still persisted.
It bewildered her that she should desire to place her hands on that sunburned neck.
In truth, she was far from robust, and the need of her body and mind was for strength.
But she did not know it.
Never trained that way, you see.
Mebbe you can put me right.
"By going to school, I fancy, and by studying," she answered.
"I went to school when I was a kid," he began to object.
He felt that she had become remoter from him by at least a million miles.
He did not know what "English" meant, but he made a mental note of that item of ignorance and passed on.
You have never attended high school?
"I had two years to run, when I left," he answered.
At the same moment he became aware that a woman was entering the room.
He saw the girl leave her chair and trip swiftly across the floor to the newcomer.
That must be her mother, he thought.
She was a tall, blond woman, slender, and stately, and beautiful.
Her gown was what he might expect in such a house.
His eyes delighted in the graceful lines of it.
She and her dress together reminded him of women on the stage.
Next his mind leaped to the Grand Hotel at Yokohama, where, too, from the sidewalk, he had seen grand ladies.
Then the city and the harbor of Yokohama, in a thousand pictures, began flashing before his eyes.
But he swiftly dismissed the kaleidoscope of memory, oppressed by the urgent need of the present.
The process of getting into the dining room was a nightmare to him.
Between halts and stumbles, jerks and lurches, locomotion had at times seemed impossible.
But at last he had made it, and was seated alongside of Her.
The array of knives and forks frightened him.
He watched them eating, and decided that they ate like pigs.
Well, he would be careful here.
He would make no noise.
He would keep his mind upon it all the time.
He glanced around the table.
They were her brothers, he reminded himself, and his heart warmed toward them.
How they loved each other, the members of this family!
Not in his world were such displays of affection between parents and children made.
It was a revelation of the heights of existence that were attained in the world above.
It was the finest thing yet that he had seen in this small glimpse of that world.
He was moved deeply by appreciation of it, and his heart was melting with sympathetic tenderness.
He had starved for love all his life.
His nature craved love.
It was an organic demand of his being.
Yet he had gone without, and hardened himself in the process.
He had not known that he needed love.
Nor did he know it now.
He merely saw it in operation, and thrilled to it, and thought it fine, and high, and splendid.
Morse was not there.
It was difficult enough getting acquainted with her, and her mother, and her brother, Norman.
Arthur he already knew somewhat.
The father would have been too much for him, he felt sure.
It seemed to him that he had never worked so hard in his life.
He was oppressed throughout the meal by the thought of finger-bowls.
Irrelevantly, insistently, scores of times, he wondered when they would come on and what they looked like.
What should his attitude be?
He wrestled continually and anxiously with the problem.
It was during the first part of the dinner, struggling to decide upon his attitude, that he was very quiet.
So he sat at table, perturbed by his own unfitness and at the same time charmed by all that went on about him.
For the first time he realized that eating was something more than a utilitarian function.
He was unaware of what he ate.
It was merely food.
He was feasting his love of beauty at this table where eating was an aesthetic function.
It was an intellectual function, too.
His mind was stirred.
The romance, and beauty, and high vigor of the books were coming true.
He curbed the impulse, arising out of his sea-training, to say "Yes, sir," and "No, sir," to her brothers.
Also, it was a dictate of his pride.
He was a civilized man, that was what he was, shoulder to shoulder, at dinner, with people he had read about in books.
He was in the books himself, adventuring through the printed pages of bound volumes.
He was no gentle lamb, and the part of second fiddle would never do for the high-pitched dominance of his nature.
Besides, he was confident that he could not keep it up.
He was by nature powerful of thought and sensibility, and the creative spirit was restive and urgent.
But he recovered himself quickly.
His cheeks were hot.
He took it as an exposure of another of his deficiencies.
"Yes," he said depreciatingly.
I can hit like a mule with my arms and shoulders.
He was not happy at what he had said.
He was filled with disgust at himself.
He had loosed the guard upon his tongue and talked about things that were not nice.
He certainly had not succeeded so far.
The masquerade would fail, and besides, masquerade was foreign to his nature.
There was no room in him for sham or artifice.
Whatever happened, he must be real.
Upon that he was resolved.
"Mathematics, arithmetic," was the answer.
Martin Eden nodded.
He had caught a glimpse of the apparently illimitable vistas of knowledge.
What he saw took on tangibility.
His abnormal power of vision made abstractions take on concrete form.
It was like wine to him.
Martin Eden remembered his decision.
He had been a member of the crew of the smuggling schooner Halcyon when she was captured by a revenue cutter.
He saw with wide eyes, and he could tell what he saw.
He brought the pulsing sea before them, and the men and the ships upon the sea.
He communicated his power of vision, till they saw with his eyes what he had seen.
And while he talked, the girl looked at him with startled eyes.
His fire warmed her.
She wondered if she had been cold all her days.
She felt that she must lean toward him, and resisted by an effort.
Then, too, there was the counter impulse to shrink away from him.
And ever and again would come the draw of him, till she thought he must be evil to have such power over her.
All that was most firmly established in her mind was rocking.
His romance and adventure were battering at the conventions.
This man from outer darkness was evil.
Her mother saw it, and her mother was right.
The fire of him was no longer warm, and the fear of him was no longer poignant.
He gazed upon her in awe.
In his mind, as in her own, the gulf widened; but faster than it widened, towered his ambition to win across it.
He was remarkably susceptible to music.
It banished sordid fact, flooded his mind with beauty, loosed romance and to its heels added wings.
He did not understand the music she played.
It was different from the dancehall piano-banging and blatant brass bands he had heard.
Once, it entered his mind that there was a deliberate rebuff in all this.
He caught her spirit of antagonism and strove to divine the message that her hands pronounced upon the keys.
Then he dismissed the thought as unworthy and impossible, and yielded himself more freely to the music.
The old delightful condition began to be induced.
The known and the unknown were commingled in the dream-pageant that thronged his vision.
He entered strange ports of sun-washed lands, and trod market-places among barbaric peoples that no man had ever seen.
Swift as thought the pictures came and went.
He lay on a coral beach where the cocoanuts grew down to the mellowsounding surf.
It was a sensuous, tropic night.
In the background a volcano crater was silhouetted against the stars.
Overhead drifted a pale crescent moon, and the Southern Cross burned low in the sky.
He did not merely feel.
And she, glancing at him across her shoulder, saw something of all this in his face.
She was startled.
His mood was essentially religious.
He was humble and meek, filled with selfdisparagement and abasement.
In such frame of mind sinners come to the penitent form.
He was convicted of sin.
But this possession of her was dim and nebulous and totally different from possession as he had known it.
My house is closed.
Cease knocking at my door, and be off.
Inside was heard the clink of chain and bar, and the door was flung open.
David followed the Marquis out of the carriage.
"Assist the lady," he was ordered.
The poet obeyed.
He felt her small hand tremble as he guided her descent.
"Into the house," was the next command.
The room was the long dining-hall of the tavern.
A great oak table ran down its length.
The huge gentleman seated himself in a chair at the nearer end.
The lady sank into another against the wall, with an air of great weariness.
David stood, considering how best he might now take his leave and continue upon his way.
A dozen more lighted candles shone in the hall.
The great bulk of the marquis overflowed his chair.
He was dressed in fine black from head to foot save for the snowy ruffles at his wrist and throat.
Even the hilt and scabbard of his sword were black.
His expression was one of sneering pride.
The ends of an upturned moustache reached nearly to his mocking eyes.
The lady sat motionless, and now David perceived that she was young, and possessed of pathetic and appealing beauty.
He was startled from the contemplation of her forlorn loveliness by the booming voice of the marquis.
I am a poet.
The moustache of the marquis curled nearer to his eyes.
She is of noble descent and is possessed of ten thousand francs a year in her own right.
As to her charms, you have but to observe for yourself.
Do not interrupt me.
You, shepherd, are the first.
Mademoiselle must be wed this night.
If not you, then another.
You have ten minutes in which to make your decision.
Do not vex me with words or questions.
Ten minutes, shepherd; and they are speeding.
The marquis drummed loudly with his white fingers upon the table.
He sank into a veiled attitude of waiting.
It was as if some great house had shut its doors and windows against approach.
"Mademoiselle," he said, and he marvelled to find his words flowing easily before so much elegance and beauty.
I have also had the fancy, at times, that I am a poet.
If it be the test of a poet to adore and cherish the beautiful, that fancy is now strengthened.
Can I serve you in any way, mademoiselle?
The young woman looked up at him with eyes dry and mournful.
He is my uncle, the brother of my father, and my only relative.
He loved my mother, and he hates me because I am like her.
He has made my life one long terror.
I am afraid of his very looks, and never before dared to disobey him.
But to-night he would have married me to a man three times my age.
You will forgive me for bringing this vexation upon you, monsieur.
You will, of course, decline this mad act he tries to force upon you.
But let me thank you for your generous words, at least.
I have had none spoken to me in so long.
Poet he must have been, for Yvonne was forgotten; this fine, new loveliness held him with its freshness and grace.
The subtle perfume from her filled him with strange emotions.
His tender look fell warmly upon her.
She leaned to it, thirstily.
But here David found housing commensurate to his scant purse.
Daylight and candlelight found him at pen and paper.
One afternoon he was returning from a foraging trip to the lower world, with bread and curds and a bottle of thin wine.
A loose, dark cloak, flung open, showed a rich gown beneath.
Her eyes changed swiftly with every little shade of thought.
One hand raised her gown, undraping a little shoe, high-heeled, with its ribbons dangling, untied.
So heavenly she was, so unfitted to stoop, so qualified to charm and command!
Perhaps she had seen David coming, and had waited for his help there.
Ah, would monsieur pardon that she occupied the stairway, but the shoe!
He leaned against the balustrade, clutching his bottle of sour wine.
"You have been so good," she said, smiling.
I have met him twice or thrice upon the stairs.
I questioned him, fearing that he might dwell too near the room in which we are accustomed to meet.
He is mine, if I will.
He writes poems in his garret, and I think he dreams of me.
He will do what I say.
He shall take the message to the palace.
The marquis rose from his chair and bowed.
"You did not permit me to finish my sentence, countess," he said.
I believe you to be good and true, and I know of no other help.
How I flew through the streets among the swaggering men!
Monsieur, my mother is dying.
My uncle is a captain of guards in the palace of the king.
Some one must fly to bring him.
And then, sitting there, his eye fell upon a bright star, one that he and Yvonne had named for theirs.
That set him thinking of Yvonne, and he wondered if he had not been too hasty.
Why should he leave her and his home because a few hot words had come between them?
Was love so brittle a thing that jealousy, the very proof of it, could break it?
Mornings always brought a cure for the little heartaches of evening.
There was yet time for him to return home without any one in the sweetly sleeping village of Vernoy being the wiser.
David rose, and shook off his unrest and the wild mood that had tempted him.
He set his face steadfastly back along the road he had come.
By the time he had retravelled the road to Vernoy, his desire to rove was gone.
The corner of her eye was engaged in a search for David, albeit her set mouth seemed unrelenting.
He saw the look; braved the mouth, drew from it a recantation and, later, a kiss as they walked homeward together.
Three months afterwards they were married.
He gave them a wedding that was heard of three leagues away.
Both the young people were favourites in the village.
The sheep and the cottage descended to him.
He already had the seemliest wife in the village.
But you must keep your eyes upon her yard, for her flower beds were so neat and gay they restored to you your sight.
But a day came when David drew out paper from a long-shut drawer, and began to bite the end of a pencil.
Spring had come again and touched his heart.
Poet he must have been, for now Yvonne was well-nigh forgotten.
This fine new loveliness of earth held him with its witchery and grace.
The perfume from her woods and meadows stirred him strangely.
Daily had he gone forth with his flock, and brought it safe at night.
But now he stretched himself under the hedge and pieced words together on his bits of paper.
Her pans and kettles grew dull, but her eyes had caught their flash.
She pointed out to the poet that his neglect was reducing the flock and bringing woe upon the household.
David hired a boy to guard the sheep, locked himself in the little room at the top of the cottage, and wrote more poems.
The boy, being a poet by nature, but not furnished with an outlet in the way of writing, spent his time in slumber.
Sometimes she would stand in the yard and rail at David through his high window.
Papineau, the kind, wise, meddling old notary, saw this, as he saw everything at which his nose pointed.
It would distress me to be obliged to attest a paper signifying the bankruptcy of his son.
But that is what you are coming to.
I speak as an old friend.
He took David inside to his study and sat him down upon a little island beat upon by a sea of books.
Monsieur Bril had a conscience.
He flinched not even at a mass of manuscript the thickness of a finger-length and rolled to an incorrigible curve.
He broke the back of the roll against his knee and began to read.
He slighted nothing; he bored into the lump as a worm into a nut, seeking for a kernel.
Meanwhile, David sat, marooned, trembling in the spray of so much literature.
It roared in his ears.
He held no chart or compass for voyaging in that sea.
Half the world, he thought, must be writing books.
Then he took off his spectacles, and wiped them with his handkerchief.
"In the best of health," said David.
The flock has had ill fortune.
To that number it has decreased from eight hundred and fifty.
The sheep brought you plenty.
You went into the fields with them and lived in the keen air and ate the sweet bread of contentment.
Am I right thus far?
"It was so," said David.
"I see a crow," said David, looking.
You know that bird, Monsieur Mignot; he is the philosopher of the air.
He is happy through submission to his lot.
None so merry or full-crawed as he with his whimsical eye and rollicking step.
The fields yield him what he desires.
Is the nightingale any happier, do you think?
David rose to his feet.
The crow cawed harshly from his tree.
"I thank you, Monsieur Bril," he said, slowly.
"I could not have missed it," said Monsieur Bril, with a sigh.
Live your poetry, man; do not try to write it any more.
"I thank you," said David, again.
Back along the road to Vernoy he trudged with his poems under his arm.
I must purchase firearms to protect them.
What have you?
There are some choice firearms in the lot.
This pistol - oh, a weapon fit for a prince!
"I will charge it," said Zeigler.
David laid his pistol under his coat and walked to his cottage.
Yvonne was not there.
Of late she had taken to gadding much among the neighbours.
But a fire was glowing in the kitchen stove.
David opened the door of it and thrust his poems in upon the coals.
As they blazed up they made a singing, harsh sound in the flue.
He went up to his attic room and closed the door.
So quiet was the village that a score of people heard the roar of the great pistol.
They flocked thither, and up the stairs where the smoke, issuing, drew their notice.
The women chattered in a luxury of zealous pity.
Robert, taking his cigar from his mouth.
Robert began to mask, as was his habit, a tendency to softheartedness with a spurious anger.
I told you to go home, Bushrod.
Miss Lucy said that, did she?
Confound it!
Are you going to stand there all night gabbing like a coffee-coloured gander?
The train whistled again.
Now it was at the water tank, a mile away.
"Marse Robert," said Uncle Bushrod, laying his hand on the satchel that the banker held.
I knows where you got it in de bank.
Uncle Bushrod bowed his head to the expected storm, but he did not flinch.
If the house of Weymouth was to fall, he would fall with it.
The banker spoke, and Uncle Bushrod blinked with surprise.
The storm was there, but it was suppressed to the quietness of a summer breeze.
You have presumed upon the leniency with which you have been treated to meddle unpardonably.
So you know what is in this satchel!
Your long and faithful service is some excuse, but - go home, Bushrod - not another word!
But Bushrod grasped the satchel with a firmer hand.
The headlight of the train was now lightening the shadows about the station.
The roar was increasing, and folks were stirring about at the track side.
The train was standing at the station.
Some men were pushing trucks along the side.
Two or three sleepy passengers got off and wandered away into the night.
Robert released his hold on the satchel.
You can understand that, of course.
"Listen," said the millionaire, impressively.
"Then you force me to say good night," said the millionaire.
Twice that day had his money been scorned by simple ones to whom his dollars had appeared as but tin tobacco-tags.
Pilkins walked away rapidly, and then turned abruptly and returned to the bench where the young couple sat.
He took off his hat and began to speak.
His voice just suited me.
Man, three days of that light-housekeeping was plenty for me.
Aunt Maggie was affectionate as ever.
She was a hedger from Hedgersville, Hedger County.
Seventy-five cents a day was the limit she set.
We cooked our own meals in the room.
She offers to move into a swell room with a two-burner stove and running water.
I walked straight to the Acropolis and asked for my job back, and I got it.
How did you say your writings were getting along?
And, by the way, did you ever happen to know a newspaper artist - oh, shut up!
I know I asked you before.
I wonder what paper he works on?
Ida Bates saw who it was with her back-hair comb.
I saw her turn pink, perfect statue that she was - a miracle that I share with Pygmalion only.
After the ceremony I dragged Lathrop aside.
It was me that they hung out paper flowers and palm branches for.
I am not a jealous man; I am stating facts.
The people were Nebuchadnezzars; they bit the grass before me; there was no dust in the town for them to bite.
They bowed down to Judson Tate.
They knew that I was the power behind Sancho Benavides.
Looking handsome.
Oh, what a mistake!
But I was going to tell you.
The Little Big High Low Jack-in-the-game of the town came around and kowtowed.
They had heard about Judson Tate.
But there are compensations.
For instance, I am It in this country as far as the eye can reach, and then a few perches and poles.
Or large, either.
With your reputation and my looks combined in one man, how can she resist him?
And what do you think he wants me to do?
For him to ask me was a compliment - an acknowledgment of his own shortcomings.
Well, Fergus and the duenna, Francesca, attended to the details.
And one night they fetched me a long black cloak with a high collar, and led me to the house at midnight.
And, smothering a laugh as I thought of the tongue-tied Fergus, I began to talk.
Both of us knew English and Spanish; so in two languages I tried to win the heart of the lady for my friend Fergus.
But for the bars to the window I could have done it in one.
At the end of the hour she dismissed me and gave me a big, red rose.
I handed it over to Fergus when I got home.
At last she admitted that her heart was mine, and spoke of having seen me every afternoon when she drove in the plaza.
It was Fergus she had seen, of course.
But it was my talk that won her.
And she put her hand between the bars for me to kiss.
I bestowed the kiss and took the news to Fergus.
But I went; and children and dogs took to the banana groves and mangrove swamps as soon as they had a look at my face.
I saw at a glance that I must be hers and she mine forever.
I thought of my face and nearly fainted; and then I thought of my other talents and stood upright again.
And I had been wooing her for three weeks for another man!
But she never looked at me.
And that handsome man only ruffles his curls and smirks and prances like a lady-killer at my side.
I am no man to play tricks on a friend.
Struck too, are you?
Francesca tells me that Anabela talks of nothing but me, day and night.
Judson Tate.
But up prances the alcalde and almost wipes the dust off my shoes with his forehead.
No mere good looks could have won me that sensational entrance.
Fergus was at the other end of the room trying to break away from two maroons and a claybank girl.
When she took the first look at my face she dropped her fan and nearly turned her chair over from the shock.
When she heard me speak she jumped, and her eyes got as big as alligator pears.
She was coming my way.
She knew of Judson Tate, and what a big man he was, and the big things he had done; and that was in my favour.
I ranged from the second G below the staff up to F-sharp above it.
I set my voice to poetry, art, romance, flowers, and moonlight.
Oh, the vocal is the true art - no doubt about that.
Handsome is as handsome palavers.
In two weeks Anabela was engaged to me, and Fergus was out.
I was calling regular every evening then, and we were to be married in a month.
She looked at my rugged features without any expression of fear or repugnance.
I walked slowly up to the little park near my hotel, leaving Judson Tate alone with his conscience.
My feelings were lacerated.
He had poured gently upon me a story that I might have used.
And, at the last it had proven to be a commercial pill, deftly coated with the sugar of fiction.
The worst of it was that I could not offer it for sale.
Advertising departments and counting-rooms look down upon me.
And it would never do for the literary.
Therefore I sat upon a bench with other disappointed ones until my eyelids drooped.
I went to my room, and, as my custom is, read for an hour stories in my favourite magazines.
This was to get my mind back to art again.
And as I read each story, I threw the magazines sadly and hopelessly, one by one, upon the floor.
And when the last one was hurled from me I took heart.
Genius, whose coronations alone are democratic, had woven a chaplet of chaparral for the brow of Lonny Briscoe.
The outcome, seven feet by twelve of besmeared canvas, stood, gilt-framed, in the lobby of the Capitol.
The boarding-houses were corralling the easy dollars of the gamesome law-makers.
Order reigned within her borders.
Life and property were as safe there, sir, as anywhere among the corrupt cities of the effete East.
With impunity might the tenderfoot ventilate his "stovepipe" or his theories of culture.
The arts and sciences received nurture and subsidy.
Rarely has the San Saba country contributed to the spread of the fine arts.
Why he came to woo art is beyond postulation.
Beyond doubt, some spore of the afflatus must have sprung up within him in spite of the desert soil of San Saba.
The landscape presented fitting and faithful accessories.
Chaparral, mesquit, and pear were distributed in just proportions.
A richly mottled rattlesnake lay coiled beneath a pale green clump of prickly pear in the foreground.
Citizens and lawmakers passed there by twos and groups and sometimes crowds to gaze upon it.
Many - perhaps a majority of them - had lived the prairie life and recalled easily the familiar scene.
Hundreds of connoisseurs had straddled their broncos and ridden miles to view it before its removal to the capital.
Senator Mullens desired reelection, and he knew the importance of the San Saba vote.
He also knew that with the help of Senator Kinney - who was a power in the legislature - the thing could be put through.
Few artists have uncovered their first picture to the world under happier auspices than did Lonny Briscoe.
It looks like the worst kind of a chromo to me.
The man who carved the state out of the wilderness.
The man who settled the Indians.
The man who cleaned out the horse thieves.
The man who refused the crown.
Do you see the point now?
"Wrap up the picture," said Kinney.
By the hour and minute of it you must dwell under the sway and direct authority of Phoebe, the ninth satellite.
And for many years before.
I told him that for the time we would banish both astrology and astronomy from our heads.
The manifest valour and enthusiasm of the man drew me.
We sent for a tug to tow us back and lost three days.
When we struck the blue waters of the Gulf, all the storm clouds of the Atlantic seemed to have concentrated above us.
He weathered every storm on deck, smoking a black pipe, to keep which alight rain and sea-water seemed but as oil.
And he shook his fist at the black clouds behind which his baleful star winked its unseen eye.
When the skies cleared one evening, he reviled his malignant guardian with grim humour.
Twinkle, twinkle, little devil!
Get busy and sink the ship, you one-eyed banshee.
Sounds as mild as a milkmaid.
Five days only should have landed us in Esperando.
Also in the manual of arms - but, alas!
Even a Mexican might have crossed his path in safety while he was in this mood.
The Kid openly boarded the north-bound passenger train that departed five minutes later.
But at Webb, a few miles out, where it was flagged to take on a traveller, he abandoned that manner of escape.
There were telegraph stations ahead; and the Kid looked askance at electricity and steam.
Saddle and spur were his rocks of safety.
The man whom he had shot was a stranger to him.
Most of them waited, half asleep, with sagging limbs and drooping heads.
But one, a long-legged roan with a curved neck, snorted and pawed the turf.
For the Kid there was no turning back now.
With the springing roan under him he felt little care or uneasiness.
A sailor had been dispatched for the missing cargo.
Meanwhile the captain paced the sands, chewing profanely at his pocket store.
His complexion was naturally dark; and the sun and wind of an outdoor life had burned it to a coffee brown.
He looked beyond Captain Boone at the gulf with the impersonal and expressionless dignity of a Chinese emperor.
I never saw it before.
I was just looking at it.
Not thinking of selling it, are you?
"Not this trip," said the captain.
Boone, skipper.
Cargo - lumber, corrugated iron, and machetes.
The bananys and oranges and hurricanes and pineapples that ye eat comes from there.
Second cabin.
"All right, buddy," said the captain.
Thacker, the United States consul at Buenas Tierras, was not yet drunk.
They told me it was customary to light at your camp before starting in to round up the town.
I just came in on a ship from Texas.
The Kid laughed.
"Sprague Dalton," he said.
Try a cigar?
"They speak Spanish here," said the consul.
Everybody speaks it on the range where I come from.
He regarded the kid absorbedly.
"You look like a Spaniard, too," he continued.
And I come down to your parrot-and-monkey range just for to smell the morning-glories and marigolds.
Thacker got up and closed the door.
"Let me see your hand," he said.
"I can do it," he said excitedly.
It will heal in a week.
But no barehanded scrapping, like ladies at a tea-party, for me.
Old Santos Urique lives there.
He owns half the gold-mines in the country.
Twelve years ago they lost a kid.
Everybody knows about it.
Brace up, and make a man of yourself.
Stop cracking safes, and live straight.
"Oh, no," laughed the warden.
How was it you happened to get sent up on that Springfield job?
Or was it simply a case of a mean old jury that had it in for you?
Unlock him at seven in the morning, and let him come to the bull-pen.
Better think over my advice, Valentine.
The warden gave him a cigar, and shook hands.
They came by the hotel where Jimmy still boarded, and he ran up to his room and brought along his suitcase.
Then they went on to the bank.
The clerks were pleased to be greeted by the good-looking, agreeable young man who was going to marry Miss Annabel.
Jimmy set his suit-case down.
Ralph, how heavy it is?
Feels like it was full of gold bricks.
The Elmore Bank had just put in a new safe and vault.
Adams was very proud of it, and insisted on an inspection by every one.
The vault was a small one, but it had a new, patented door.
It fastened with three solid steel bolts thrown simultaneously with a single handle, and had a time-lock.
Spencer, who showed a courteous but not too intelligent interest.
The two children, May and Agatha, were delighted by the shining metal and funny clock and knobs.
Suddenly there was a scream or two from the women, and a commotion.
Robbins, an investigator by nature, sent a curious glance roving about the room.
Oh, madame!
Since when - oh!
At his words, Madame Tibault and Dumars approached.
Where I get them from?
Robbins explained.
Mister Morin was right.
He dragged Dumars by the arm into the outer room.
I advise you to join me.
Now, that green stuff you drink is no good.
It stimulates thought.
What we want to do is to forget to remember.
Her name is Belle of Kentucky, twelveyear-old Bourbon.
In quarts.
How does the idea strike you?
A man with a thick black-leather wallet under his arm left the train and walked rapidly up the main street of the town.
Indecision had no part in the movements of the man with the wallet.
He was well dressed in the prevailing Eastern style.
His air denoted a quiet but conscious reserve force, if not actual authority.
Upon one corner stood the post-office.
The cashier was examining the mail when he noticed the stranger standing at his window.
He had had to make that statement so often to early birds since San Rosario adopted city banking hours.
"I am well aware of that," said the other man, in cool, brittle tones.
Walk right around, please.
Edlinger, the cashier - a middle-aged gentleman of deliberation, discretion, and method.
Not overly much money on hand, but able to stand the storms, sir, stand the storms.
I will take the cash first, please.
He knew it was right to a cent, and he had nothing to fear, but he was nervous and flustered.
So was every man in the bank.
He looked to be a man who would never make nor overlook an error.
Nettlewick first seized the currency, and with a rapid, almost juggling motion, counted it by packages.
Then he spun the sponge cup toward him and verified the count by bills.
The air was full of fractional currency when he came to the halves and quarters.
He counted the last nickle and dime.
He had the scales brought, and he weighed every sack of silver in the vault.
This newly-imported examiner was so different from Sam Turner.
Halves and quarters and dimes?
Not for Sam Turner.
"No chicken feed for me," he would say when they were set before him.
List of over-drafts, please.
Unsigned bills of the bank, next.
Two men of very different types shook hands.
One was a finished product of the world of straight lines, conventional methods, and formal affairs.
The other was something freer, wider, and nearer to nature.
Tom Kingman had not been cut to any pattern.
He had been mule-driver, cowboy, ranger, soldier, sheriff, prospector, and cattleman.
We will take them up now, if you please.
He had gone through the First National at almost record-breaking speed - but thoroughly, as he did everything.
The running order of the bank was smooth and clean, and that had facilitated his work.
There was but one other bank in the town.
He received from the Government a fee of twenty-five dollars for each bank that he examined.
He should be able to go over those loans and discounts in half an hour.
Otherwise, he would have to spend the night and Sunday in this uninteresting Western town.
Nettlewick was rushing matters.
Nobody in the bank knows those notes as I do.
Next, he took up the larger loans, inquiring scrupulously into the condition of their endorsers or securities.
The clerical work seems to be done accurately and punctually.
Your past-due paper is moderate in amount, and promises only a small loss.
And now, there is one thing more, and I will have finished with the bank.
They are secured, according to their faces, by various stocks, bonds, shares, etc.
Those securities are missing from the notes to which they should be attached.
I suppose you have them in the safe or vault.
You will permit me to examine them.
I have taken them.
You may hold me personally responsible for their absence.
Nettlewick felt a slight thrill.
He had not expected this.
He had struck a momentous trail when the hunt was drawing to a close.
"The securities were taken by me," repeated the major.
There was a desk, and a table, and half-a-dozen leather-covered chairs.
On the wall was the mounted head of a Texas steer with horns five feet from tip to tip.
You are aware, also, of what my duty must compel me to do.
Do your duty.
But, I spoke of my friend.
I did want you to hear me tell you about Bob.
Nettlewick settled himself in his chair.
There would be no leaving San Rosario for him that day.
It was not the first crime the examiner had unearthed.
One cashier had shot himself at his desk before him.
The day is that hot, senor.
Maybeso it is of desirableness to leave him out to get the cool.
I know what you want.
You want to tell me that story again about Johnny Ammiger and the widow on the train.
Sitting on ice, and calling his best friends pseudonyms.
Now, what was it Johnny said to the widow first?
Yes, neither me nor Jones breathed with soul so dead.
He was some pumpkin both in politics and colour, and the friend of me and Jones.
While he was in the States he had acquired a synopsis of the English language and the art of admiring our institutions.
The hearts of Americans and Salvadorians should beat together.
Of your history and your great Washington I know.
It made us feel good.
He must have heard the news going round in Philadelphia about that disturbance we had with England.
We were talking about it when you came in.
He might suspend the rules for one day.
He will aid us.
He dug his trench on the plaza, and got half a beef on the coals for an all-night roast.
None of them have ever held Federal positions.
They have been land-holders, slave-owners, and planters on a large scale.
Have you decided to accept this appointment, William?
"I am thinking it over," said Billy, slowly, regarding the ash of his cigar.
"You have been a good son to me," continued the Governor, stirring his pipe with the handle of a penholder.
Especially in this, our native town, is your name linked with mine in the talk of our citizens.
"I never knew anyone to forget the vindculum," murmured Billy, unintelligibly.
I have not hesitated to exert it in your behalf whenever opportunity offered.
And you have deserved it, William.
And now this appointment comes to take you away from me.
I have but a few years left to live.
I am almost dependent upon others now, even in walking and dressing.
What would I do without you, my son?
A tear trickled from his eye.
Elmville is good enough for me.
The General whistled.
When does he leave?
We must have a reception.
Great Gatlings!
Think of it!
Our little, wood-sawing, mealy-mouthed Billy!
Elmville is disgraced forever until she lines up in a hurry for ratification and apology.
The venerable Moloch smiled fatuously.
He refuses to leave me in my old age.
He is a good son.
The commissioner betrayed a slight impatience.
Am I just a knot on a mesquite stump?
Charge it up to Insurance and the other two sideshows.
Come, now, Uncle Frank, let her have the money.
The clerks were beginning to listen.
Neither can you.
The treasurer called him back.
"Never mind, Uncle Frank," said the commissioner, in a softer tone.
Besides, her case is in my hands.
It seems to be about as important as an almanac or a hotel register.
You want to keep your eye on the Department of Insurance, Statistics, and History.
The commissioner returned to his office, looking thoughtful.
He opened and closed an inkstand on his desk many times with extreme and undue attention.
The department will see you through.
He is living there now.
He wanted to give a dinner at his old home to a few friends.
The prairies were somewhat dim, and the moonlight was pale orange, diluted with particles of an impalpable, flying mist.
Santa turned her face to the southeast and threw three kisses thitherward; for there was none to see.
Then she sped silently to the blacksmith-shop, fifty yards away; and what she did there can only be surmised.
But the forge glowed red; and there was a faint hammering such as Cupid might make when he sharpens his arrow-points.
To the corral where the Sussex cattle were penned she sped with these things swiftly in the moonlight.
She opened the gate and slipped inside the corral.
The Sussex cattle were mostly a dark red.
But among this bunch was one that was milky white - notable among the others.
And now Santa shook from her shoulder something that we had not seen before - a rope lasso.
She freed the loop of it, coiling the length in her left hand, and plunged into the thick of the cattle.
The white cow was her object.
She swung the lasso, which caught one horn and slipped off.
The next throw encircled the forefeet and the animal fell heavily.
Santa made for it like a panther; but it scrambled up and dashed against her, knocking her over like a blade of grass.
Again she made her cast, while the aroused cattle milled around the four sides of the corral in a plunging mass.
And then she ran swiftly to her furnace at the gate and brought the branding-iron, queerly shaped and white-hot.
The beasts arrived at Rancho Seco one evening at dusk; and were received and counted by the foreman of the ranch.
He dismounted stiffly, and strode, with whizzing spurs, to the house.
His horse gave a great sigh and swayed foam-streaked, with down-drooping head and closed eyes.
But waste not your pity upon Belshazzar, the flea-bitten sorrel.
The horseman stumbled into the house.
"I was a skunk," said Webb Yeager.
"I saw it," said Webb.
What they meant God knows; and you shall know, if you rightly read the primer of events.
I was a mangy, sheep-stealing coyote.
Do you know who I am?
I am Santa Yeager, First Lady of the Bedchamber.
Come here.
She dragged him from the gallery into the room to the right.
Down on your knees and look at his Highness.
Them beeves is just turned out on the trail.
"You hear your boss, Bud," said Webb Yeager, with a broad grin - just as he had said a year ago.
"I thought so," said Quinn.
What brand is that?
I turned to "What to do in Case of Accidents," on page 117.
I run my finger down the page, and struck it.
Good old Herkimer, he never overlooked anything!
It said: Suffocation from Inhaling Smoke or Gas.
There is nothing better than flaxseed.
Place a few seed in the outer corner of the eye.
I shoved the Handbook back in my pocket, and grabbed a boy that was running by.
Four of the firemen and citizens grabs hold of me.
And then I busted into the house.
I was a heap more cooked than the hurry-up orders of broiled chicken that you get in restaurants.
I carried her out fifty yards from the house and laid her on the grass.
They fetched my coat, and I gets out the Handbook.
Flaxseed in the outer corner of the eye, it says.
That flaxseed done me more good than anything I ever tried.
Sampson, embellishing and adorning it.
Some of the boys been telling you about me and that pancake racket?
Was there a story about pancakes?
They never irritated me like they do most cowmen.
I never thought it was worth while to be hostile with a snoozer.
The sheep person helped her off; and they stood throwing each other sentences all sprightful and sagacious for a while.
His seeing arrangement was grey enough, but his eye-lashes was pink and his hair was sandy, and that gave you the idea.
Sheep man?
I popped over one after the other with my forty-five, just to show him.
That is a bad habit you have got of riding with young ladies over at Pimienta.
What would I do with a wife?
If you ever saw that ranch of mine!
I do my own cooking and mending.
She sang some, and exasperated the piano quite a lot with quotations from the operas.
Thinks I, if Jackson Bird can now be persuaded to migrate, I win.
Pancakes is just whirling in my head like wagon wheels.
Start her off, now - pound of flour, eight dozen eggs, and so on.
He turns around to get a glass on the table, and I see a forty-five in his hip pocket.
We got there in time for dinner; and I put our thumb-prints on the register of the most expensive hotel in the city.
Object is no expense.
It was all served at once.
The dinner comes in threes of a kind.
Louis topics, the water supply and the colour line.
Solly gets up and comes around to me.
I thought you said they had some beans here.
He saw a saddleshop open, and some of the sadness faded from his eyes.
Eleven hundred dollars the two cost him.
In a little side street, where there was no street and no sidewalks and no houses, he finds what he is looking for.
We go into a shanty and sit on high stools among stevedores and boatmen, and eat beans with tin spoons.
Yes, sir, beans - beans boiled with salt pork.
And the building-and-loan associations and the fair have about killed it.
Guess we might as well go to bed.
Wait till you see Chicago, though.
But not for the grass-fed man of the pampas!
Solly grew sadder day by day.
And I got fearful about my salary, and knew I must play my trump card.
I knew his habits by then; so in a couple of hours I found him in a saddle-shop.
He invested about nine hundred dollars in there.
I wanted to know where to look for Solly when he got lost.
I showed him the horse-cars on Broadway and the Staten Island ferry-boats.
And then I piled up the sensations on him, but always keeping a lot of warmer ones up my sleeve.
They were out in numerous quantities, with the fat of the land showing in their clothes.
It was his first in two weeks, and it gave me hope.
She was a chorus-girl in a Broadway musical comedy.
I followed him.
I wondered whether anybody was.
But pretty soon afterward Solly failed to show up at dinner-time for several days.
I cornered him.
He confessed that he had found a restaurant on Third Avenue where they cooked beans in Texas style.
I made him take me there.
The minute I set foot inside the door I threw up my hands.
And then we sat down and had beans.
I saw her working it.
She was healthy-looking and plain dressed.
When she wants a man, she manages it so that every time he looks at her he finds her looking at him.
I went out and found a cab.
I felt sure there was something wrong.
Neither was the smooth-haired lady.
I asked Solly to step around the corner for a few words.
He was grinning clear across his face; but I had not administered the grin.
And they are fit for kings to ride on.
The six he sent me must have cost him three thousand dollars.
Who would buy one except one of these rajahs and princes of Asia and Africa?
I know every tan royal dub and smoked princerino from Mindanao to the Caspian Sea.
Now look here.
From an inside pocket he drew a tightly folded newspaper with muchworn edges, and indicated a paragraph.
"Read that," said the saddler to royalty.
His stables contain more than a thousand horses of the purest Persian breeds.
It is said that this powerful prince contemplates a visit to the United States at an early date.
Polk triumphantly.
Have you three dollars that you could loan me for a short time?
It happened that I had; and I did.
The floor was bare and clean.
White curtains waved in the gulf breeze through the open windows.
Some well-mounted heads of deer and one of an enormous black javeli projected from the walls.
A wide, cool cot-bed stood in a corner.
Nueces County people regarded this guest chamber as fit for a prince.
McGuire showed his eyeteeth at it.
He took out his nickel and spun it up to the ceiling.
Well, you can frisk me if you wanter.
Once was quite a plenty.
I never held you up for a cent.
I never gave you a hard-luck story till you asked me.
Here I am fifty miles from a bellboy or a cocktail.
Raidler went to the door and called.
A slender, bright-complexioned Mexican youth about twenty came quickly.
Raidler spoke to him in Spanish.
He is very sick.
What doesn't belong in this list: Meat, Eggs, Wife, Blowjob?
Blowjob: You can beat your meat, eggs or wife, but you can't beat a blowjob.
Q: What's the speed limit of sex?
A: 68 because at 69 you have to turn around.
What do a Rubix cube and a penis have in common?
The longer you play with them, the harder they get.
What's the difference between your paycheck and your cock?
You don't have to beg your wife to blow your paycheck!
Three words to ruin a man's ego.
How does a guy know if he has a high spermcount?
If the girl has to chew, before she swallows.
What do you get when you cross Raggedy Ann and the Pillsbury Dough Boy?
A red headed bitch with a yeast infection.
Q: What do you do with 365 used rubbers?
A: Melt them down, make a tire, and call it Goodyear.
What does bungee jumping and hookers have in common?
They both cost a hundred bucks and if the rubber breaks, you're screwed.
Curl Up and Die.
I walked into a hair salon with my husband and three kids in tow and asked loudly, How much do you charge for a shampoo and a blow job?
Pad, please!
An insurance man visited me at home to talk about our mortgage insurance.
He was throwing a lot of facts and figures at me, and I wanted to follow as best I could, so I told my 6-year-old son to run and get me a pad.
He came back and handed me a Kotex right in front of our guest.
Ho, Ho, Ho.
I was taking a shower when my two year old son came into the bathroom and wrapped himself in toilet paper.
Although he made a mess, he looked adorable, so I ran for my camera and took a few shots.
They came out so well that I had copies made and included one with each of our Christmas cards.
Days later, a relative called about the picture, laughing hysterically, and suggesting I take a closer look.
Puzzled, I stared at the photo and was shocked to discover that in addition to my son, I had captured my reflection in the mirror - wearing nothing but a camera!
Lady Golfer.
I was at the golf store comparing different kinds of golf balls.
I was unhappy with the women's type I had been using.
After browsing for several minutes, I was approached by one of the good-looking gentlemen who works at the store.
He asked if he could help me.
Without thinking, I looked at him and said, I think I like playing with men's balls.
Nuts about You.
My sister and I were at the mall and passed by a store that sold a variety of nuts.
As we were looking at the display case, the boy behind the counter asked if we needed any help.
I replied, No, I'm just looking at your nuts.
My sister started to laugh hysterically, the boy grinned, and I turned beet-red and walked away.
To this day, my sister has never let me forget.
Na-na na-na na-nah!
While in line at the bank one afternoon, my toddler decided to release some pent-up energy and ran amok.
I was finally able to grab hold of her after receiving looks of disgust and annoyance from other patrons.
I told her that if she did not start behaving right now she would be punished.
To my horror, she looked me in the eye and said in a voice just as threatening, If you don't let me go right now, I will tell Grandma that I saw you kissing Daddy's pee-pee last night!
The silence was deafening after this enlightening exchange.
Even the tellers stopped what they were doing.
I mustered up the last of my dignity and walked out of the bank with my daughter in tow.
The last thing I heard when the door closed behind me were screams of laughter.
It was the day before my eighteenth birthday.
I was living at home, but my parents had gone out for the evening, so I invited my girlfriend over for a romantic night alone.
As we lay in bed after making love, we heard the telephone ring downstairs.
I suggested to my girlfriend that I give her a nude piggyback ride to the phone.
Since we didn't want to miss the call, we didn't have time to get dressed.
My entire family: aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins and all my friends were standing there.
My girlfriend and I were frozen in a state of shock and embarrassment for what seemed like an eternity.
Since then, no one in my family has planned a surprise party again.
Priceless.
One of the funniest most-embarrassing-moment stories I've come upon in a long time was about a lady who picked up several items at a discount store.
When she finally got up to the checker, she learned that one of her items had no price tag.
In a business-like tone, a voice boomed back over the intercom.
Mom's Advice.
A teacher noticed that a little boy at the back of the class was squirming around, scratching his crotch and not paying attention.
The teacher told him to go down to the principal's office.
He was to phone his mother and ask her what he should do about it.
He did it and returned to his class.
Suddenly, there was a commotion at the back of the room.
She went back to investigate only to find him sitting at his desk with his penis hanging out.
I thought I told you to call your mom, she screamed.
I did, he said, And she told me that if I could stick it out till noon, she'd come and pick me up from school.
An escape convict, imprisoned for 1st degree murder, had spend 25-years of his sentence in prison.
While on the run, he broke into a house and tied up a young couple who had been sleeping in the bedroom.
He tied the man to a chair on one side of the room.
He got on the bed right over the woman, and it appeared he was kissing her neck.
Suddenly he got up and left the room.
I saw him kissing on your neck and then he left in a hurry.
Just cooperate and do anything he wants.
If he wants to have sex with you, just go along with it and pretend you like it.
Our lives depend on it!
You are right, he hasn't seen a woman in years, but he wasn't kissing my neck.
He was whispering in my ear.
He said that he thinks you are really cute and ask if we keep the Vaseline in the bedroom.
I'm making a black man cake cause I'm hungry as hell.
And the sweet tooth I have, only a brother can break the spell.
Let me reach into my spice rack to see what I can get.
To make a mix that will stick to my stomach you can bet.
Cause he's got to be sweet, mental, sound and deep.
Cinnamon is always good to accent the taste.
A few cups of culture So he's down for his race.
You see I won't bite into anything That's not conscious of its own.
That's why I stick to chocolate And leave the angel food alone.
I am adding butter cause he must be smooth.
I must add nuts so he can reproduce.
Can't leave him hanging cause I like kids too!
I think I'll add a little salt to balance him out.
And a dominant profile to show him some clout.
For a responsible man I'll throw in some yeast So he can rise to the occasion when I'm ready to feast.
I'll add 8 cups of strength and into the oven to bake.
Turn it up to 360 degrees to balance out his mental state.
Now that it's done, I'm sorry ladies I won't share the wealth That's why I'm sharing the recipe because I'm eating this black man all by myself.
Alcohol was an acquired taste.
Because of the warmth of the day I had had several drinks before casting my ballot, and divers drinks after casting it.
She uttered an exclamation of surprise.
For, be it known, in my younger days, despite my ardent democracy, I had been opposed to woman suffrage.
In my later and more tolerant years I had been unenthusiastic in my acceptance of it as an inevitable social phenomenon.
I answered.
I answered at length.
I answered indignantly.
The more I answered, the more indignant I became.
I was lighted up, I was feeling "good," I was pleasantly jingled.
"When the women get the ballot, they will vote for prohibition," I said.
I never am.
I am never less his friend than when he is with me and when I seem most his friend.
He is the king of liars.
He is the frankest truthsayer.
He is the august companion with whom one walks with the gods.
He is also in league with the Noseless One.
His way leads to truth naked, and to death.
He gives clear vision, and muddy dreams.
He is a red-handed killer, and he slays youth.
And Charmian looked at me, and I knew she wondered where I had got it.
I continued to talk.
As I say, I was lighted up.
In my brain every thought was at home.
Every thought, in its little cell, crouched ready-dressed at the door, like prisoners at midnight a jail-break.
I liked saloons.
Especially I liked the San Francisco saloons.
And once, I remember, a barkeeper mixed me a sweet temperance drink of syrup and sodawater.
My father did not pay for it.
I dreamed daydreams of him for years.
The saloon was south of Market Street in San Francisco.
It stood on the west side of the street.
As you entered, the bar was on the left.
On the right, against the wall, was the free lunch counter.
It was a long, narrow room, and at the rear, beyond the beer kegs on tap, were small, round tables and chairs.
The barkeeper was blue-eyed, and had fair, silky hair peeping out from under a black silk skullcap.
He and my father talked long, and I sipped my sweet drink and worshipped him.
And for years afterward I worshipped the memory of him.
Here was a child, forming its first judgments of the world, finding the saloon a delightful and desirable place.
Yes, the saloon was a mighty fine place, and it was more than that.
By the time I was ten years old, my family had abandoned ranching and gone to live in the city.
And here, at ten, I began on the streets as a newsboy.
One of the reasons for this was that we needed the money.
Another reason was that I needed the exercise.
I had found my way to the free public library, and was reading myself into nervous prostration.
On the poor ranches on which I had lived there had been no books.
In ways truly miraculous, I had been lent four books, marvellous books, and them I had devoured.
I was not a forward child.
Unlike Oliver Twist, I was incapable of asking for more.
When I returned the "Alhambra" to the teacher I hoped she would lend me another book.
I waited and yearned for her to lend me another book.
Here were thousands of books as good as my four wonder-books, and some were even better.
Libraries were not concerned with children in those days, and I had strange adventures.
I read everything, but principally history and adventure, and all the old travels and voyages.
I read mornings, afternoons, and nights.
You make me nervous.
And so, at ten, I was out on the streets, a newsboy.
I had no time to read.
I was busy getting exercise and learning how to fight, busy learning forwardness, and brass and bluff.
I had an imagination and a curiosity about all things that made me plastic.
Not least among the things I was curious about was the saloon.
And I was in and out of many a one.
In the saloons life was different.
Men talked with great voices, laughed great laughs, and there was an atmosphere of greatness.
Here was something more than common every-day where nothing happened.
There were no big moments when I trudged along the street throwing my papers in at doors.
And more, the saloons were right.
The city fathers sanctioned them and licensed them.
They were not the terrible places I heard boys deem them who lacked my opportunities to know.
Besides, in saloons I saw reporters, editors, lawyers, judges, whose names and faces I knew.
They put the seal of social approval on the saloon.
They verified my own feeling of fascination in the saloon.
They, too, must have found there that something different, that something beyond, which I sensed and groped after.
What it was, I did not know; yet there it must be, for there men focused like buzzing flies about a honey pot.
Not that I drank at that time.
From ten to fifteen I rarely tasted liquor, but I was intimately in contact with drinkers and drinking places.
Big jovial Josie Harper ran a road house at Telegraph Avenue and Thirty-ninth Street.
Here for a year I delivered an evening paper, until my route was changed to the water-front and tenderloin of Oakland.
I was ashamed to refuse, so I drank it.
The others asked for beer.
The boys snickered, and I noticed the barkeeper favoured me with a strange, searching scrutiny.
Nevertheless, he opened a bottle of ginger ale.
Afterward, back in the alleys, in the pauses between games, the boys enlightened me.
I had offended the barkeeper.
Besides, beer was food.
I could work better on it.
There was no food in ginger ale.
I was always aware that I was missing something.
What I really liked in those days was candy.
For five cents I could buy five "cannon-balls" - big lumps of the most delicious lastingness.
I could chew and worry a single one for an hour.
Then there was a Mexican who sold big slabs of brown chewing taffy for five cents each.
It required a quarter of a day properly to absorb one of them.
And many a day I made my entire lunch off one of those slabs.
In truth, I found food there, but not in beer.
I wanted to go to sea.
I wanted to get away from monotony and the commonplace.
Little I guessed how all the warp and woof of that manworld was entangled with alcohol.
So, one day, as I hoisted sail on my skiff, I met Scotty.
He was a husky youngster of seventeen, a runaway apprentice, he told me, from an English ship in Australia.
He had just worked his way on another ship to San Francisco; and now he wanted to see about getting a berth on a whaler.
Across the estuary, near where the whalers lay, was lying the sloop-yacht Idler.
The caretaker was a harpooner who intended sailing next voyage on the whale ship Bonanza.
Would I take him, Scotty, over in my skiff to call upon the harpooner?
And the harpooner who was caretaker!
How often had I seen him and envied him his freedom.
He never had to leave the water.
He slept aboard the Idler each night, while I had to go home upon the land to go to bed.
Would I take Scotty, the runaway sailor, to visit the harpooner, on the opiumsmuggler Idler?
The harpooner came on deck to answer our hail, and invited us aboard.
We went below.
It was the first sea-interior I had ever seen.
The clothing on the wall smelled musty.
But what of that?
Was it not the sea-gear of men?
And everywhere was in evidence the economy of space - the narrow bunks, the swinging tables, the incredible lockers.
At last I was living.
The harpooner suggested the eminent desirableness of a drink, and Scotty searched his pockets for dimes and nickels.
We drank the cheap rotgut out of tumblers.
Was I any the less strong, any the less valiant, than the harpooner and the sailor?
They were men.
They proved it by the way they drank.
Drink was the badge of manhood.
Divers times we filled the flask that afternoon.
I was only fourteen, and had never been on the ocean in my life.
We unbent.
Our inhibitions and taciturnities vanished.
The harpooner told of misadventures and secret shames.
And Scotty proved it.
Nor was I loath.
I could whip any runaway sailor seventeen years old.
By this time the singing stage was reached, and I joined Scotty and the harpooner in snatches of sea songs and chanties.
I was beginning to grasp the meaning of life.
We were not ordinary.
We were three tipsy young gods, incredibly wise, gloriously genial, and without limit to our powers.
But this is not a world of free freights.
Intenseness and duration are as ancient enemies as fire and water.
They are mutually destructive.
They cannot co-exist.
And John Barleycorn, mighty necromancer though he be, is as much a slave to organic chemistry as we mortals are.
We pay for every nerve marathon we run, nor can John Barleycorn intercede and fend off the just payment.
Yet the foregoing is all in after wisdom spoken.
His talk grew incoherent.
He groped for words and could not find them, while the ones he found his lips were unable to form.
His poisoned consciousness was leaving him.
The brightness went out of his eyes, and he looked as stupid as were his efforts to talk.
His face and body sagged as his consciousness sagged.
All his correlations were breaking down.
He strove to take another drink, and feebly dropped the tumbler on the floor.
Then, to my amazement, weeping bitterly, he rolled into a bunk on his back and immediately snored off to sleep.
Then the harpooner faded away into his bunk, and I was left alone, unthrown, on the field of battle.
I was very proud, and John Barleycorn was proud with me.
I could carry my drink.
I had drunk two men, drink for drink, into unconsciousness.
And I was still on my two feet, upright, making my way on deck to get air into my scorching lungs.
The fortunate man is the one who cannot take more than a couple of drinks without becoming intoxicated.
There were plenty of bunks below.
I did not need to go home.
But I wanted to demonstrate to myself how much I was a man.
There lay my skiff astern.
The last of a strong ebb was running out in channel in the teeth of an ocean breeze of forty miles an hour.
I set sail, cast off, took my place at the tiller, the sheet in my hand, and headed across channel.
The skiff heeled over and plunged into it madly.
The spray began to fly.
I was at the pinnacle of exaltation.
I sang "Blow the Man Down" as I sailed.
I was no boy of fourteen, living the mediocre ways of the sleepy town called Oakland.
I was a man, a god, and the very elements rendered me allegiance as I bitted them to my will.
The tide was out.
A full hundred yards of soft mud intervened between the boat-wharf and the water.
It was then that my correlations began to break down.
I lost my balance and pitched head-foremost into the ooze.
But what of it?
Across the channel two strong sailormen lay unconscious in their bunks where I had drunk them.
I was still on my legs, if they were knee-deep in mud.
I disdained to get back into the skiff.
I waded through the mud, shoving the skiff before me and yammering the chant of my manhood to the world.
I paid for it.
I was sick for a couple of days, meanly sick, and my arms were painfully poisoned from the barnacle scratches.
For a week I could not use them, and it was a torture to put on and take off my clothes.
The price was too stiff.
I had no moral qualms.
My revulsion was purely physical.
No exalted moments were worth such hours of misery and wretchedness.
When I got back to my skiff, I shunned the Idler.
I would cross the opposite side of the channel to go around her.
The harpooner was still about, but him I avoided.
Once, when he landed on the boat-wharf, I hid in a shed so as to escape seeing him.
I was afraid he would propose some more drinking, maybe have a flask full of whisky in his pocket.
It was memorable.
My mind dwelt on it continually.
I went over the details, over and over again.
The harpooner had told me terribly wonderful things of himself.
I had got behind my own soul and found unguessed potencies and greatnesses.
Yes, that day stood out above all my other days.
To this day it so stands out.
The memory of it is branded in my brain.
But the price exacted was too high.
I refused to play and pay, and returned to my cannon-balls and taffy-slabs.
The point is that all the chemistry of my healthy, normal body drove me away from alcohol.
It was abominable.
And detest and hate him all the time.
Month in and month out, the shortest day I ever worked was ten hours.
There was no time to wipe the bar, nor wash glasses, nor do anything save fill glasses.
The Oakland water-front can be real thirsty on occasion.
This method of jamming and struggling in front of the bar was too slow for us.
The drink was ours.
It was not a clear vision, however, and there were two phases of it, somewhat jumbled at the time.
Everywhere I saw men doing, drunk, what they would never dream of doing sober.
It was the penalty that must be paid.
Crime was destructive.
And then the police gathered them in and they vanished from our ken.
When they took sick, even with trifling afflictions that any ordinary man could pull through, they just pegged out.
So I considered my situation and knew that I was getting into a bad way of living.
It made toward death too quickly to suit my youth and vitality.
And there was only one way out of this hazardous manner of living, and that was to get out.
I met the seal-hunter, Pete Holt, and agreed to be his boat-puller and to sign on any schooner he signed on.
And I had to have half a dozen drinks with Pete Holt there and then to seal our agreement.
And at once awoke all my old unrest that John Barleycorn had put to sleep.
I lived more circumspectly, drank less deeply, and went home more frequently.
When drinking grew too wild, I got out.
When Nelson was in his maniacal cups, I managed to get separated from him.
Yet never did he refuse me any sum I asked of him.
Unfortunately, before I became prosperous, he moved away to another city.
And to this day I regret that he is gone.
It is the code I have learned.
This is not to exalt saloon-keepers.
But to return to the run of my narrative.
Nobody about me drank.
If any had drunk, and had they offered it to me, I surely would have drunk.
Also, I had found my way into the realm of the mind, and I was intellectually intoxicated.
I grew impatient.
Bud turned on his high boot-heels.
She looked at her husband with surprise in her steady gray eyes.
Barber has handled every head of stock from this ranch in that market for five years.
She faced Bud Turner.
"Deliver those cattle to Barber," she concluded positively.
Bud gazed impartially at the water-jar hanging on the gallery, stood on his other leg, and chewed a mesquite-leaf.
"Nonsense," said Santa impatiently.
Let me tell you.
I was a man before I married a cattle-queen.
What am I now?
The laughing-stock of the camps.
Santa looked at him closely.
Do I ever interfere in your management of the cattle?
I know the business side of the ranch much better than you do.
I learned it from Dad.
Be sensible.
I punch the cattle and you wear the crown.
These he began to tie deliberately upon his saddle.
Santa, a little pale, followed him.
Webb swung up into the saddle.
His serious, smooth face was without expression except for a stubborn light that smouldered in his eyes.
Lobos have killed three of the calves.
I forgot to leave orders.
"I am going to be a man again," he answered.
It is dark in there.
He will wear my red skirt and blue waist and brown mantilla.
I send you a hundred kisses.
Come surely and shoot quickly and straight.
Even the lady passenger was moved to expression.
"I think it is quite charming," she said, in her slow, crystal tones.
At intervals some one of the passengers would rise and humorously explore the room.
There was little evidence to be collected of its habitation by old man Redruth.
He never allowed nobody to come nigh him.
There was spinning-wheels up in his loft, all right.
Just ordinary trouble.
I never heard of no romance.
She never married him.
This man said she was the kind of girl you like to have reach across you in a car to pay the fare.
Although she was a staked claim, Miss Alice and the new entry seemed to strike a mutual kind of a clip.
Then he lifts his hat and walks away, and that was the last anybody in that town seen of him, as far as this man knew.
A little silence followed, except for the wind and the crackling of the fire.
Nameless to us, he travels the road from Paradise to Sunrise City.
He began with a rasping chuckle that gradually formed itself into words.
My money on the lad with the butterfly tie and the certified checks in his trouserings.
All right.
Away with him!
Get platonic, if you please.
No jack-pots for mine.
Go and hate your friend some more.
What turned him into a hermit?
One says laziness; one says remorse; one says booze.
I say women did it.
How old is the old man now?
He conducted his hermit shop here for twenty years.
Say he was twenty-five when he took off his hat at the gate.
That leaves twenty years for him to account for, or else be docked.
Where did he spend that ten and two fives?
Up for bigamy.
Redruth gets his cases mixed, and they send him up the road.
Enclosed find stamps.
If she be worthy of the name, no gold or rank will outweigh with her a genuine devotion.
Yet, who is on trial?
Not Redruth, for he has been punished.
Not those immortal passions that clothe our lives with the joy of the angels.
Each man of us here to-night stands at the bar to answer if chivalry or darkness inhabits his bosom.
To judge us sits womankind in the form of one of its fairest flowers.
I have not found woman to be so unspiritual or venal.
Tormented by jealousy, young Redruth vanished from his native haunts.
But had he just cause to do so?
There is no evidence for or against.
Then his withdrawal from the world of sorrow and the subsequent derangement of his faculties becomes intelligible.
She is old now.
Her hair is white and smoothly banded.
Each day she sits at the door and gazes longingly down the dusty road.
Presently, from the other, as Kinney and I sat without, there burst a volume of sudden and brilliant music.
A piano, and one so well played, seemed to me to be an unusual thing to find in that small and unpromising ranchhouse.
"A wise and generous theory," I assented.
Kinney plays well.
I am not learned in the science of music, but I should call her an uncommonly good performer.
She has technic and more than ordinary power.
"I did," said I.
I could see by the broken corrals that no one lived there.
And she was the most elegant kind of a housekeeper.
He had a pretty bad cold and cough.
I stayed to supper.
I like a man who is kind to animals.
Yes; there was even admiration in her gaze now.
After all, there was a hero rising out of the ruins of the anti-climax.
She held out her hand penitently.
There was a bright, unshed drop in each of her eyes.
Givens took the proffered hand.
Dry Valley had had no youth.
Even his childhood had been one of dignity and seriousness.
His life as a young man had been wasted.
But a sheepman is a hardy animal.
Dry Valley Johnson had weathered too many northers to turn his back on a late summer, spiritual or real.
He would show them.
Dry Valley kept indoors closely for a week except for frequent sallies after youthful strawberry snatchers.
Then, a few days later, he suddenly emerged brilliantly radiant in the hectic glow of his belated midsummer madness.
A jay-bird-blue tennis suit covered him outwardly, almost as far as his wrists and ankles.
A little flat straw hat with a striped band desecrated his weather-beaten head.
Lemon-coloured kid gloves protected his oak-tough hands from the benignant May sunshine.
It lasted two weeks and then came to a sudden end.
"Merry Christmas, little boy," said Cherokee.
What do I want with dolls and tin horses?
I want to go home.
Trinidad stepped into the breach.
But me and the Judge was sure we could round up a wagonful of candidates for your gimcracks.
We can dump the stuff down a shaft or throw it away.
Bobby had retreated to a distant chair, and was coldly regarding the scene with ennui plastered thick upon him.
Cherokee, lingering with his original idea, went over and sat beside him.
"Granite Junction," said Bobby without emphasis.
The room was warm.
Cherokee took off his cap, and then removed his beard and wig.
The boy hesitated.
"On the bureau at home," he answered.
The picture belongs to my mother.
She puts it under her pillow of nights.
And once I saw her kiss it.
But women are that way.
Cherokee rose and beckoned to Trinidad.
"Keep this boy by you till I come back," he said.
I wish I was at home.
Bobby slipped a cigarette from his pocket and was trying to snap a match.
"Throw that cigarette away," said Cherokee, in a quiet but new voice.
Bobby hesitated, and then dropped the cylinder overboard.
"Throw the box, too," commanded the new voice.
More reluctantly the boy obeyed.
I seen her do it.
Will you get me one?
Cherokee took out his watch.
Are you cold?
Sit closer, son.
Down in the hotel office three or four of the labourers were growling and swearing over a belated game of checkers.
Heavy odours of stewed meat, hot grease, and cheap coffee hung like a depressing fog about the house.
Lena lit the stump of a candle and sat limply upon her wooden chair.
She was eleven years old, thin and ill-nourished.
Her back and limbs were sore and aching.
But the ache in her heart made the biggest trouble.
The last straw had been added to the burden upon her small shoulders.
Fritz urged them along, himself dizzy and muddled over his fearful adventure.
According to schedule time, he should have reached Fredericksburg at daylight.
He stopped his team at the gate and called.
Her little Lena drown herself!
Why had they sent her from home?
What could be done?
Perhaps it would be too late by the time they could send for her now.
Peter Hildesmuller dropped his meerschaum on the walk and it shivered into pieces.
It is your fault if she comes home to us no more.
Fritz stared at her with eyes that bulged behind his spectacles.
What an opportunity it would offer to Calliope!
He had only to step out the other door, mount the train, and away.
The members of the posse heard one shot fired inside, and then there was silence.
At length the wounded man opened his eyes.
After a blank space he again could see and hear and feel and think.
Turning his eyes about, he found himself lying on a wooden bench.
A tall man with a perplexed countenance, wearing a big badge with "City Marshal" engraved upon it, stood over him.
He was trying to get these facts fixed in his mind and connected with past events, when the old woman began to talk.
That bullet never tetched ye!
Jest skeeted along the side of your head and sort of paralysed ye for a spell.
You just lay still a while longer and let me bathe your head.
I come in on that train from Alabama to see my son.
This is my son, sir.
Jest think, now, that little boy of mine has got to be a officer - a city marshal of a whole town!
But, laws!
I never was much of a hand to git skeered.
I knowed him at oncet.
He sat, somewhat weakly yet, leaning against the wall.
He was a rugged man, big-boned and straight.
His eyes, steady and keen, seemed to linger upon the face of the man standing so still above him.
Be a good man, and leave liquor alone and live peaceably and goodly.
Keep away from bad company and work honest and sleep sweet.
The black-mitted hand of the old pleader gently touched the breast of the man she addressed.
Very earnest and candid her old, worn face looked.
Still the man to whom she spoke gazed above her head, contemplating the silent son of the old mother.
The tall man moved uneasily.
He fingered the badge on his breast for a moment, and then he put an arm around the old woman and drew her close to him.
The other man rose to his feet, trying his limbs and stretching his muscles.
The unblessed condition of Yellowhammer had been truly described.
Later they would come.
But of children there were none.
Christmas would come on Thursday.
On Tuesday morning Trinidad, instead of going to work, sought the Judge at the Lucky Strike Hotel.
You might say that that man made this town.
I am indebted to Cherokee for past favours.
I learned about that Latin word at school.
"I will accompany you," declared the Judge, waving his cane.
Trinidad made careful notes of all such, and then hastened to secure a vehicle and team.
He sat in the snow, arms tied behind him, waiting the torture.
He stared curiously before him at a huge Cossack, prone in the snow, moaning in his pain.
The men had finished handling the giant and turned him over to the women.
Subienkow looked on, and shuddered.
He was not afraid to die.
He had carried his life too long in his hands, on that weary trail from Warsaw to Nulato, to shudder at mere dying.
But he objected to the torture.
It offended his soul.
This would not be nice.
To pass out bravely and cleanly, with a smile and a jest - ah!
There had been no chance to escape.
He sighed.
"A husband," said Santa cordially.
"Come on and have a beer," I invited.
"I wish you success in a praiseworthy attempt," she said, with a sudden coldness.
"S-s-sh," says I.
"Small beer for me, Johnny," I said, when the others had ordered schooners.
"Sure," Johnny agreed, with a smile.
After a couple more drinks, for which I insisted on paying, Nelson decided to go.
Again we stood at the bar and drank and talked, but this time it was I who paid ten cents!
All you got to do is walk right up and call for it.
Almost it seemed the final badge of manhood.
Amongst strong men I had proved myself strong.
And sitting there on the stringer-piece in my shame, I did a great deal of thinking and transvaluing of values.
And the heat of my shame burned up my neck and into my cheeks and forehead.
And then it had been only one little undershirt.
And up runs the boy with the flaxseed.
And we had another, and I paid for it.
And when I never drew a sober breath, on one stretch, for three solid weeks, I was certain I had reached the top.
And when he reached the horizon he might have ridden on into blue space as far as knowledge of him on the Nopalito went.
At Haywards there were no drinks either.
At once I became possessed with a desire to have a page in that book.
Aye, even the barkeeper was giving me a recommendation as a man.
Be Strong and I Love You.
Be Strong and I Love you.
Besides, I was learning.
Then an idea came to me.
Very well.