A red-headed cowhand with blunt features came into the door of the Diamond Palace. "I'll give five hundred dollars to see that man dead!" Tetlow shouted.
The redhead's eyes shifted. He remembered what he had heard about Kilkenny and drew back into the shadows of the saloon. Five hundred was a year's wages, but a dead man couldn't spend a dime.
(from Kilkenny, by Louis L'Amour)
Winter in the Tennessee Mountains had now set in with a vengeance. Snow fell almost daily and the biting, icy wind cut to the bone. Shoes had long since worn out in the Texas Brigade, creating indescribable suffering. Some of the Arkansans cut a make-shift shoe out of green cowhide, which was laced to the feet in a wraparound fashion. After wearing this poor substitute for a short time, the cowhide became so pliable that it was soon difficult even to keep those shoes on the feet. At night, after holding them near the fire to thaw frozen toes, they became so hard they could not be bent. The soldiers' feet, already painful from the cold, were cut and blistered.
(from They'll Do T Tie To! by Major Calvin Collier)
[After Gettysburg] Lee's first thought was for his wounded. Imboden had reached Williamsport safely with the trains after a day and night march of unspeakable horror. He said years later that the cries, scream, and moans of the wounded, some of them entreating to be shot to end their misery, would remain vividly in his memory till death. At Greencastle, the citizens ran into the streets with axes and cut the wheels from under some wagons, dumping their pain-wracked loads into the road. Imboden galloped back into the town in a towering rage and arrested every man he could find and held them as prisoners of war.
(from They'll Do To Tie To, by Major Calvin Collier)
In just one short week the reputation of the [Third Arkansas Regiment] with a rifle had become legend. Their deadly markmanship was a source of wonder to men from other states training in the area. The hill men of "F" Company claimed that they learned this trade while "barking" squirrels in Arkansas. This, they said, was the art of firing a bullet between a spuirrel's ers so close to his head tht the shock killed him, thereby doing no damage to the animal. Witnesses who saw them shoot had no doubt as to the accuracy of this tale! These men with the strange, soft accent, so foreign to the men of Virginia, had brought with them a peculiar piece of equipment which also became legend in the Army - a vicious-looking knife. This weapon was about twelve inches long and had a peculiar-shaped, slightly-curved blade of three inches in width that ended in a sudden, razor-edged point. This nasty instrument had the dubious title of "Arkansas toothpick." Practically every man in the regiment carried one of these weapons and through mock battles demonstrated that they were masters in its use!
(from They'll Do to Tie To, by Major Calvin L. Collier) My great-grandfather served in this regiment.
"As a man becomes more aged and has bettered his reasoning, the clarer insight he has to the great danger of unreasoned public agitation." (William A. Fletcher, from Rebel Private: Front and Rear)
Fletcher's comments about slaughter are not for the squeamish. He felt not a whit of regret at the sight of the enemy's dead. On the contrary, such scenes elated him. The more blue-coated corpses he saw, the greater his satisfaction. He shrugs at seeming callous in this respect, for his pleasure had a practical foundation: the heavier the enemy's losses, the better his own chances of staying alive. This is a line of thought common to combat soldiers, but few tend to voice it so coolly
(from the Introduction to Rebel Private: Front and Rear. The introduction is by Richard Wheeler, and the book was by William A. Fletcher.)
"When I met Cynthia in Market Blandings, she told me what the trouble was which made her husband leave her. What do you suppose it was?"
"From my brief acquaintance with Comrade McTodd, I would hazard the guess that he tried to tab her with the bread-knife. He struck me as a murderous-looking specimen."
"They had some poeple to dinner, and there was chicken, and Cynthia gave all the giblets to the guests, and her husband bounded out of his seat with a wild cry, and, shouting 'You know I love those things better than anything in the world!' rushed from the house, never to return!"
"Precisely how I would have wished him to rush, had I been Mrs. McTodd."
"Cynthia told me that he had rushed from the house, never to return, six times since they were married."
(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
To find oneself locked out of a country-house at half-past two in the morning in lemon-coloured pyjamas can never be an unmixedly agreeable experience, and Baxter was a man less fitted by nature to endure it with equanimity than most men. His was a fiery and an arrogant soul, and he seethed in furious rebellion against the intolerable position into which Fate had manoeuvred him. He even went so far as to give the front door a petulant kick. Finding, however, that this hurt his toes and accomplished no useful end, he addressed himself to the task of ascertaining whether there was any way of getting in - short of banging the knocker and rousing the house, a line of action which did commend itself to him. He made a practice of avoiding as far as possible the ribald type of young man of which the castle was now full, and he had no desire to meet them at this hour in his present costume.
(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
As he approached her now, he was thinking pleasantly of all those delightful walks, those excellent driftings on the lake, and those cheery conversations which had gone to cement his conviction that of all possible girls she was the only possible one. It seemed to him that in addition to being beautiful she brought out all that was best in him of intellect and soul. That is to say, she let him talk oftener and longer than any girl he had ever known.
(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Miss Peavey eyed a clump of bushes some dozen yards farther down the drive. They were quivering slightly, as though tthey sheltered some alien body; and Miss Peavey, whose temper was apt to be impatient, registered a resolve to tell Edward Cotes that, if he couldn't hide behind a bush without dancing about like a cat on hot bricks, he had better give up his profession and take to selling jellied eels. In which, it may be mentioned, she had wronged her old friend. He had been as still as a statue until a moment before, when a large and exitable beetle had fallen down the space between his collar and his neck, an experience which might well have tried the subtlest woodsman.
(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"A noble emotion," said Psmith courteously. "When did you feel it coming on?"
"I've been in love with her for months. But she won't look at me."
"That, of course," agreed Psmith, "must be a disadvantage. Yes, I should imagine that that would stick the gaff into the course of true love to no small extent."
"I mean, won't take me seriously, and all that. Laughs at me, don't you know, when I propose. What would you do?"
"I should stop proposing," said Psmith, having given the matter thought.
"But I can't."
"Tut, tut!" said Psmith severely. "And, in case the expression is new to you, what I mean is 'Pooh, pooh!' Just say to yourself, 'From now on I will not start proposing until after lunch.' That done it will be an easy step to do no proposing during the afternoon. And by degrees you will find that you can give it up altogether. Once you have conquered the impulse for the after-breakat proposal, the rest will be easy. The first ne of the day is always the hardest to drop."
(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehoue)
"You know Miss Peavey's work, of course?" said Lady Constance, smiling pleasantly on her two celebrities.
"Who does not?" said Psmith courteously.
"Oh, do you?" said Miss Peavy, gratification causing her slender body to perform a sort of ladylike shimmy down its whole length. "I scarcely hoped that you would know my name. My Canadian sales have not been large."
"Quite large enough," said Psmith. "I mean, of couse," he added with a paternal smile, "that, while your delicate art may not have a universal appeal in a young country, it is intensely appreciated by a small and select body of the intelligentsia."
And if that was not the stuff to give them, he reflected with not a little complacency, he was dashed.
(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Miss Peavey often had this effect on the less soulful type of man, especially in the mornings, when such men are not at their strongest and best. When she came into the breakfast-room of a country house, brave men who had been up a bit late the night before quailed and tried to hide behind newspapers. She was the sort of woman who tells a man who is propping his eyes open with his fingers and endeavoring to correct a headache with strong tea that she was up at six watching the dew fade off the grass, and didn't he think that those wisps of morning mist were the elves' bridal veils.
(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Aesthetically, he admired Lady Constance's appearance, but he could not conceal from himself that in the peculiar circumstances he would have preferred something rather more fragile and drooping. Lady Constance conveyed the impression that anybody who had the choice between stealing anything from her and stirring up a nest of hornets with a short walking-stick would do well t choose the hornets.
(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
This is a phrase taken from the collection of poems written by Ralston McTodd and entitled "Songs of Squalor." The characters in the story (especially Psmith) spend a great deal of time trying to figure out what it means. The book which contains the story is entitled Leave It To Psmith, authored by Sir Pelham Wodehouse.
"But, Eve, were you only joking when you asked Clarkie to find you something to do? She took you quite seriously."
"No, I wasn't joking. There's a drawback to my going to Blandings. I suppose you know the place pretty well?"
"I've often stayed there. It's beautiful."
"Then you know Lord Emsworth's second son, Freddie Threepwood?"
"Of course."
"Well, he's the drawback. He wants to marry me, and I certainly don't want to marry him. And what I've been wondering is whether a nice easy job wlike that, which would tide me over beautifully till September, is attractive enough to make up for the nuisance of having to be always squelching poor Freddie. I ought to have thought of it right at the beginning, of course, but when he wrote and told me to apply for the position, but I was so delighted at the idea of regular work that it didn't occur to me. Then I began to wonder. He's such a persevering young man. He proposes early and often."
(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
