"That horse you see me riding has been hard used, but don't look down upon him. He's carried me into and out of much trouble, and time and again we've been to the wars. Let me put a loop over anything that walks, and that buckskin will hold it, whatever it is.
"In the saddle of that horse I'd not be afraid to rope a Texas cyclone, rope and hog-tie it, too. He'll climb where it will put scare into a mountain goat, and one time when a man holed me with a Winchester slug, he carried me fifteen miles through the snow, then pawed on the stoop until folks came to the door to take me down.
"You can call me a dog if you will, sir, but you speak ill of my horse and I'll put lead into you."
(from Ride the Dark Trail, by Louis L'Amour)
Rome, London, Paris - all of them sprang from river crossings, and usually there was some bright gent around who was charging toll to cross over. Any time you find a lot of people who have to have something you'll also find somebody there charging them for doing it. When people stop at a stream crossing they camp and look around, and you can bet somebody has set up store with things for them to want.
(from Ride the Dark Trail, by Louis L'Amour)
"Folks who have lived the cornered sort of life most scholars, teachers, and storekeepers live seldom realize what they've missed in the way of conversation. Some of the best talk and the wisest talk I've ever heard was around campfires, in saloons, bunkhouses, and the like. The idea that all the knowledge of the world is bound up in schools and schoolteachers is a mistaken one." (from Ride the Dark Trail, by Louis L'Amour)
This opinion is expressed by a character in a book of fiction, so we don't know whether or not it was the opinion of the author. However, I suspect that it was, since similar thoughts are expressed in other books of his. His point is well taken - up to a point. All useful knowledge is not to be found solely among academics, who frequently know little of life: that much certainly is true. However, wisdom would dictate that one should be careful as to where he looks for wisdom. Those who are engaged in unwise or immoral activities should not be considered founts of wisdom, and L'Amour seems to overlook that qualification.
L'Amour does make one very profound point, however, that much wisdom is communicated through conversation, and just because a person is not well-versed in a formal academic education does not mean that he has not imbibed much that is true. After all, mankind knew how to think before they knew how to read.
This was my kind of country. I'm a high-line man. I like the country up yonder where the trees are flagged by the wind, where there's sedge and wild flowers under foot and where the mountains gnaw the sky with gray hard teeth, flecked with a foam of snow gathered in the hollows
(from Ride the Dark Trail, by Louis L'Amour)
She was old now, and tired. The long, wakeful nights left her trembling, yet she was not afraid. When they came after her in the end she hoped but for one thing, that she would awaken in time to get off a shot. Nothing had frightened her in the old days, but then Pa had always been close by, and now Pa was gone.
Slowly her tired muscles relaxed. Thunder rumbled out there, and the heat lightning showed brief flashes through the cracks of the shutters. She must take another look soon. In a little while.
Her eyes closed . . . only for a minute, she told herself, only for one brief, wonderful minute.
(from Ride the Dark Trail, by Louis L'Amour)
Louis L'Amour seemed to use the term "talus" a great deal in his novels. One definition refers to an ankle bone, but the one that L'Amour no doubt intended was "a slope formed especially by an accumulation of rock debris," or "rock debris at the base of a cliff." It is synonymous with "scree."
Nothing in his life gave him reason for a sense of security, nor had he ever been a reckless man, nor one given to taking unnecessary chances. He had, even as a boy, often been accused by the more foolhardy of being afraid to take chances, and the very idea of taking a risk that was not demanded by circumstances was repugnant to him. Yet much of his life had been lived where caution was the price of survival, and being the man he was, he had survived. He did not take chances, but he had helped to bury men who did.
(from Radigan, by Louis L'Amour)
They went out, and the girl didn't look back. I felt sorry for her, but that might have been because she was pretty. She did not look like a crook, but then, who does?
(from "Stay Out of My Nightmare," by Louis L'Amour)
Toni glared sidewise at me. Weren't you kind of sweet on her?"
"Me?" I shrugged, and glanced at her with a lot of promissory notes in my eyes. "I like a smart dame!"
She took it big. I'm no Clark Gable or anything, but alongside of Caronna I'd look like Galahad beside a gorilla.
(from "The Impossible Murder," by Louis L'Amour)
One of the penalties for living a
long life is that those who are younger generally will ignore what you have gleaned
from those years, and now that I have passed my threescore and ten I suppose
that I will be no different in that regard from anyone else. Each new
generation tends to assume that it has arrived at all truth, but it may be
regarded as a truism that that man who refuses to learn from the lives of his
predecessors is among the biggest of fools, for that method of learning is
vastly less painful than trial and error. There is no need for us to be
insulted because of this neglect, however, for in that respect we are no
different from any other generation. What follows is merely a suggestion, but
it is one whose benefit I have personally experienced.
The biography of Washington is in
seven volumes (the final volume written by his associates). I own and have read
all fourteen volumes of Freeman’s major works. My copy of George Washington
is an original edition.
The Hills of Homicide is a special collection that I have put together of my detective and crime stories. They were written in the so-called "hard-boiled" style for magazines that also featured the work of writers like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Cornell Woolrich. Although I am best known for my fiction about the American frontier, there's no reason why a person who is known for stories about one area cannot write successful stories in another. Good storytelling can be applied to any area at any time.
(from the Foreword to The Hills of Homicide, by Louis L'Amour)
"Ah, Stilton," I said, and, what is more, I said it airily. The keenest ear could not have detected that the conscience was not as clean as a whistle. One prefers, of course, on all occasions to be stainless and above reproach, but, failing that, the next best thing is unquestionably to have got rid of the body.
(from Joy in the Morning, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"You didn't get his consent in writing?" I asked, as he concluded.
"Well, no," he admitted. "It never occurred to me. But if what is in your mind is that he may try to back out of it, don't worry. You have no conception, Bertie, literally no conception of the chumminess which exists between us. Hands were shaken, and backs slapped. He was all over me like a bedspread. Well, to give you some idea, he said he wished he had a son like me."
"Well, considering he's got a son like Edwin, that isn't saying much."
(from Joy in the Morning, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
There was a pause, during which he tried to catch my eye and I tried to avoid his. Stilton's eye, even in repose, is nothing to write home about, being the sort of hard blue and rather bulging. In moments of emotion, it tends to protrude even farther, like that of an irascible snail, the general effect being rather displeasing.
(from Joy in the Morning, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"D'Arcy Cheesewright," she said, getting right off the mark without so much as a preliminary "What ho, there," "is an obstinate, mulish, pigheaded, overbearing, unimaginative, tyrannical jack in office."
Her words froze me to the core. I was conscious of a sense of frightful peril. Owing to young Edwin's infernal officiousness, this pancake had been in receipt only a few hours earlier of a handsome diamond brooch, ostensibly as a present from Bertram W., and now, right on top of it, she had had a falling out with Stilton, so substantial that it took her six distinct adjectives to describe him. When a girl uses six derogatory adjectives in her attempt to paint the portrait of the loved one, it means something. One may indicate a merely temporary tiff. Six if big stuff.
(from Joy in the Morning, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"How did it all end?"
"Oh, I got away with my life. Still, what's life?"
"Life's all right."
"Not if you've lost the girl you love."
"Have you lost the girl you love?"
"That's what I'm trying to figure out. I can't make up my mind. It all depends what construction you place on the words, 'I never want to see or speak to you again in this world or the next, you miserable fathead.'"
"Did she say that?"
"Among other things."
(from Joy in the Morning, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Listen, Nobby," I said.
"She didn't, of course. I've never met a girl yet who did. Say "listen" to any member of the delicately nurtured sex, and she takes it as a cue to start talking herself. However, as the subject she introduced proved to be the very one I had been planning to ventilate, the desire to beat her brains out with a brick was not so pronounced as it would otherwise have been.
(from Joy in the Morning, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
I groaned a hollow one. The heart had sunk. One has, of course, to make allowances for writers, all of them being more or less looney. Look at Shakespeare, for instance. Very unbalanced. Used to go about stealing ducks. Nevertheless, I couldn't help feeling that in springing Joke Goods on the guardian of the girl he loved Boko had carried an author's natural goofiness too far. Even Shakespeare might have hesitated to go to such lengths.
(from Joy in the Morning, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Well, I could readily understand Boko falling in love at first sight with Nobby, of course, for she is a girl liberally endowed with oomph. But how she could have fallen in love at first sight with Boko beat me. The first sight of Boko reveals to the beholder an object with a face like an intellectual parrot. Furthermore, as is the case with so many of the younger literati, he dresses like a tramp cyclist, affecting turtleneck sweaters and grey flannel bags with a patch on the knee and conveying a sort of general suggestion of having been left out in the rain overnight in an ash can. The only occasion on which I have ever seen Jeeves really rattled was when he met Boko for the first time. He winced visibly and tottered off to the kitchen, no doubt to pull himself together with cooking sherry.
(from Joy in the Morning, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"You don't mean Aunt Agatha's in London?"
"Merely passing through, sir," replied the honest fellow, calming my apprehensions. "Her ladyship is on her way to minister to Master Thomas, who has contracted mumps at his school."
His allusion was to the old relative's son by her first marriage, one of our vilest citizens. Many good judges rank him even higher in England's Rogue Gallery than her step-son Edwin. I was rejoiced to learn that he had got mumps, and toyed for a moment with a hope that Aunt Agatha would catch them from him.
(from Joy in the Morning, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
It is sad to reflect that a generation has arisen which does not know what spats were. I once wrote a book called Young Men in Spats. I could not use that title today.
Spatterdashes was, I believe, their full name, and they were made of white cloth and buttoned round the ankles, partly no doubt to protect the socks from getting dashed with spatter but principally because they lent a sort of gay diablerie to the wearer's appearance. The monocle might or might not be worn, according to taste, but spats, like the tightly rolled umbrella, were obligatory.
(from the Preface to Joy in the Morning, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Why can't I?" he said to his Countess as they sat one night trying to balance the budget.
"Why can't you what?" said the Countess.
"Let Algy starve."
"Algy who?"
"Our Algy."
"You mean our second son, the Hon. Algernon Blair Worthington ffinch-ffinch?"
"That's right. He's getting into my ribs to the tune of a cool thousand a year because I felt I couldn't let him starve. The point I'm making is why not let the young blighter starve?"
"It's a thought," the Countess agreed. "Yes, a very sound scheme. We all eat too much these days, anyway."
(from the Preface to Joy in the Morning, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
What generally happened was this. And Earl, let us say, begat an heir. So far, so good. One can always do with an heir. But then - these Earls never know when to stop - he absent-mindedly, as it were, begat a second son and this time was not any too pleased about the state of affairs. It was difficult to see how to fit him in. But there he was, requiring his calories just the same as if he had been first in succession. It made the Earl feel that he was up against something hard to handle.
(from the Preface to Joy in the Morning, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
The world of which I have been writing ever since I was so high, the world of the Drones Club and the lads who congregate there, was always a small world - one of the smallest I ever met, as Bertie Wooster would say. It was bounded on the east by St. James's Street, on the west by Hyde Park Corner, by Oxford Street on the north and by Piccadilly on the south. And now it is not even small, it is non-existent. It has gone with the wind and is one with Nineveh and Tyre. In a word, it has had it.
This is pointed out to me every time a new book of mine dealing with the Drones Club of Jeeves and Bertie is published in England. "Edwardian!" the critics hiss at me. (It is not easy to hiss the word Edwardian, containing as it does no sibilant, but they manage it.)
(from the Preface to Joy in the Morning, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
There were enough who remained, but any one of them might die, and that went for him as well. He was good - he knew that deep inside himself. He was resolute, he was fast, he was sure. Above all, at the moment of truth, that moment when it came time to draw and live, or draw and die, he was cool - or he always had been.
(from The Man Called Noon, by Louis L'Amour)
One of the main tests of a man's character is how he responds when he is in the minority opinion.
These men who were hunting him were outlaws, they were killers, and if they found him they would kill him, and they might kill Fan as well. Certainly they would terrorize her, bully her, keep her a prisoner. They were his enemies, enemies of society, beasts of prey. And yet he did not want to kill them.
Now his very lack of intent was a danger. In the situation he faced there could be no time for hesitation, no time for philosophical considerations. He must kill or be killed - and he did not want to die.
(from The Man Called Noon, by Louis L'Amour)
"You, and only you, know where the money is hidden. I do not know why Tom Davidge trusted you, but he did. We need each other, you and I."
He was impelled to laugh at the irony of it, but he held his face still. Only he knew where the half-million dollars was hidden, and he had lost his memory! He could just imagine trying to convince the Judge of that.
(from The Man Called Noon, by Louis L'Amour)
He remembered that the old man, Hennecker, had said he was a bad one. Was he? Searching himself, he could find no such motivations. He felt no animosity toward anyone, nor any desire to do evil.
Yet, did evil men ever think of themselves as evil? Did they not find excuses for the wrong that they did?
(from The Man Called Noon, by Louis L'Amour)
Often our father, when in the woods with us, would suddenly stop and ask that we describe some area just passed or the tracks of animals or insects we had just glimpsed in the dust of the track. With time our awareness had grown until we missed very little.
In the wilderness attention to detail was the price of survival.
(from The Warrior's Path, by Louis L'Amour)
Yet who was I to talk of women? I knew less of them than of deer or beaver, and they were much more chancy things from all I had heard.
Noelle was but a child when she left for England, so the little I knew of women was by observing the wife of my brother or those of my friends, and they were not helpful. A woman who has trapped her game has a different way about her than one who is still on the stalk.
(from The Warrior's Path, by Louis L'Amour)
The old man was reaching for the end of his rope. He was worn out and in need of help, but I'd had dealings with redskins since I was knee-high to a short duck, and Indians could be mighty sly. That old Indian might be a decoy to get me to show myself so's I could be bow shot or lanced, and I was wishful for neither. (from The Warrior's Path, by Louis L'Amour)
One wonders if that expression was actually in use in the 1600s or if L'Amour merely applied a more recent colloquialism to an historic period.
Women are practical. They get right down to bedrock about things, and no woman is going to waste much time remembering a man who was fool enough to kill himself. Thing to do is live for love, not die for it.
(from Sackett, by Louis L'Amour)
Not that it was likely she could ever see me. Girl that pretty had her choice of men. Nobody ever said much about me being good-looking - except Ma - and even Ma, with the best intentions in the world, looked kind of doubtful when she said it.
(from Sackett, by Louis L'Amour)
"Of course, one can see it from Sir Watkyn's point of view," said Stinker, who, if he has a fault besides bumping into furniture and upsetting it, is always far too tolerant in his attitude toward the dregs of humanity. "He thinks that if I'd drilled the distinction between right and wrong more vigorously into the minds of the Infants Bible Class, the thing wouldn't have happened."
"I don't see why not," said Stiffy.
Nor did I. In my opinion, no amount of Sunday afternoon instruction would have been sufficient to teach a growing boy not to throw hard-boiled eggs at Sir Watkyn Bassett.
(from Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"But you can't marry Emerald Stoker."
"Why not? We're twin souls."
I thought for a moment of giving him a word-portrait of old Stoker, to show him the sort of father-in-law he would be getting if he carried through the project he had in mind, but I let it go. Reason told me that a fellow who for months had been expecting to draw Pop Bassett as a father-in-law was not going to be swayed by an argument like that. However frank my description of him, Stoker could scarcely seem anything but a change for the better.
(from Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
When he returned, he found me examining the photographs on the wall. The one on which my eye was resting at the moment was a school football group, and it was not difficult to spot the identity of the juvenile delinquent holding the ball and sitting in the middle.
"You?" I said.
"That's me," he replied. "My last year at school. I skippered the side that season. That's old Scrubby Willoughby sitting next to me. Fast wing threequarter, but never would learn to give the reverse pass."
"He wouldn't?" I said, shocked. I hadn't the remotest what he was talking about, but he had said enough to show me that this Willoughby must have been a pretty dubious character, and when he went on to tell me that poor old Scrubby had died of cirrhosis of the liver in the Federal Malay States, I wasn't really surprised. I imagine these fellows who won't learn to give the reverse pass generally come to a fairly sticky end.
(from Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
It was a moment fraught with embarrassment. It's bad enough to be caught by your host prowling about his house after hours even when said host is a warm admirer and close personal friend, and I have, I think, made it clear that Pop Bassett was not one of my fans. He could barely stand the sight of me by daylight, and I suppose I looked even worse to him at one o'clock in the morning.
My feeling of having been slapped between the eyes with a custard pie was deepened by the spectacle of his dressing gown. He was a small man - you got the impression, seeing him, that when they were making magistrates there wasn't enough material left over when they came to him - and for some reason not easy to explain it nearly always happens that the smaller the ex-magistrate, the louder the dressing gown. His was a bright purple number with yellow frogs, and I am not deceiving my public when I say that it smote me like a blow, rendering me speechless.
(from Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
I can well imagine that a casual observer, if I had confided to him my qualms at the idea of being married to this girl, would have raised his eyebrows and been at a loss to understand, for she was undeniably an eyeful, being slim, svelte and bountifully equipped with golden hair and all the fixings. But where the casual observer would have been making his bloomer was in overlooking that squashy soupiness of hers, that subtle air she had of being on the point of talking baby-talk. She was the sort of girl who puts her hands over a husband's eyes, as he is crawling in to breakfast with a morning head, and says, "Guess who?"
(from Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
It is no secret in the circles in which he moves that Bertram Wooster, though as glamorous as one could wish when night has fallen and the revels get under way, is seldom a ball of fire at the breakfast table. Confronted with the eggs and b., he tends to pick cautiously at them, as if afraid they may leap from the plate and snap at him. Listless, about sums it up. Not much bounce to the ounce.
(from Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
The Hon. Galahad frowned. He sensed a lack of iinterest and sympathy. "What's the matter with you?" he demanded.
"Nothing."
"Then why are you looking like that?"
"Like what?"
"Pale and tragic, as if you'd just gone into Tattersall's and met a bookie you owed money to."
"I am perfectly happy."
The Hon. Galahad snorted. "Yes, radiant. I've seen fogs that were cheerier."
(from Summer Lightning, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"Well, from now on there will be no more forbearance. Unless you restore that pig, I shall insert in my book every dashed thing I can remember about you - starting with our first meeting, when I came walking into Romano's and was introduced to you while you were walking round the supper-table with a soup tureen on your head and stick of celery in your hand, saying that you were a sentry outside Buckingham Palace. The world shall know you for what you are - the only man who was ever thrown out of the Cafe de l'Europe for trying to raise the price of a bottle of champagne by raffling his trousers at the main bar. And, what's more, I'll tell the full story of the prawns."
A sharp cry escaped Sir Gregory. His face had turned a deep magenta. In these affluent days of his middle age, he always looked rather like a Regency buck who has done himself well for years among the flesh-pots. He now resembled a Regency buck who, in addition to being on the verge of apoplexy, has been stung in the leg by a hornet.
(from Summer Lightning, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Matters now began to move briskly. Waiter C, who rashly clutched the sleeve of Ronnie's coat, reeled back with a hand pressed to his right eye. Waiter D, a married man, contented himself with standing on the outskirts and talking Italian. But Waiter E, made of sterner stuff, hit Ronnie rather hard with a dish containing omelette aux champignons, and it was as the latter reeled beneath this buffet that there suddenly appeared in the forefront of the battle a figure wearing a gay uniform and almost completely concealed behind a vast moustache, waxed at the ends. It was the commissionaire from the street-door; and anybody who has ever been bounced from a restaurant knows that commissionaires are heavy metal.
This one, whose name was McTeague, and who had spent many lively years in the army before retiring to take up his present duties, had a grim face made of some hard kind of wood and the muscles of a village blacksmith. A man of action rather than words, he clove his way through the press in silence. Only when he reached the centre of the maelstrom did he speak. This was when Ronnie, leaping upon a chair the better to perform the operation, hit him on the nose. On receipt of this blow, he uttered the brief monosyllable "Ho!" and then, without more delay, scooped Ronnie into an embrace of steel and bore him towards the door, through which was now moving a long, large, leisurely policeman.
(from Summer Lightning, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"You know that pig of your uncle's?"
"What about it?"
"It's gone."
"Gone?"
"Gone! said Hugo, rolling the word round his tongue. "I met the old boy half a minute ago, and he told me. It seems he went down to the pig-bin for a before-breakfast look at the animal and it wasn't there."
"Wasn't there?"
"Wasn't there."
"How do you mean, wasn't there?"
"Well, it wasn't. Wasn't there at all. It had gone.
"Gone?"
"Gone! It's room was empty and its bed had not been slept in."
"Well, I'm dashed!" said Ronnie.
(from Summer Lightning, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
[This story is referred to several times in the Hon. Galahad Threepwood stories of Sir Pelham Wodehouse. I thought you might like to hear the full version, as found in Summer Lightning.]
"Let me tell you a little story about young Parsloe. One or two of us used to meet at the Black Footman in Gossiter Street in the old days - they've pulled it down now - and match our dogs against rats in the room behind the door. Well, I put my Towser, an admirable beast, up against young Parsloe's Banjo on one occasion for a hundred pounds a side. And when the night came and he was shown the rats, I'm dashed if he didn't just give a long yawn and roll over and go to sleep. I whistled him, called him - Towser, Towser. No good, fast asleep. And my firm belief has always been that young Parsloe took him aside just before the contest was to start and gave him about six pounds of steak and onions. Couldn't prove anything, of course, but I sniffed the dog's breath and it was like opening the kitchen door of a Soho chophouse on a summer night. That's the sort of man young Parsloe is."
"So that's it, is it? Parsloe's pig-man going about offering three to one - against the form-book, I take it?"
"Most decidedly. Pride of Matchingham was awarded second prize last year, but it is a quite inferior animal to the Empress."
"Then you look after that pig of yours, Clarence," The Hon. Galahad spoke earnestly. "I see what this means. Parsloe's up to his old games and intends to queer the Empress somehow?"
"Queer her?"
"Nobble her. Or, if he can't do that, steal her."
"You don't mean that."
"I do mean it. The man's as slippery as a greased eel. He would nobble his grandmother if it suited his book. Let me tell you I've known young Parsloe for thirty years and I solemnly state that if his grandmother was entered in a competition for fat pigs and his commitments made it desirable for him to get her out of the way, he would dope her bran-mash and acorns without a moment's hesitation."
(from Summer Lightning, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Brennan put his cigar on the edge of the bar, carefully, so as not to disturb the ash. "I should like to open a bottle of wine," he said.
"'Of the first grape only,'" Fallon quoted.
Brennan glanced up from the bottle he had taken from under the bar. "'A vine bears three grapes,'" he said, "'the first of pleasure, the second of drunkenness, and the third of repentance.'" He filled two glasses two-thirds full. "I believe it was Anacharsis who said that."
(from Fallon, by Louis L'Amour)
Yet even as he spoke, he knew he probably was wasting his time. To those who have lived a sheltered life, exposed to no danger or brutality, only the actual sight of something of the kind will convince. Each person views the world in the light of his own experience.
(from Fallon, by Louis L'Amour)
"There's something out there," he said in a minute, and he gestured toward the brush along the creek. "I figure it's a varmint of some kind. The critters can smell it, and they're spooky."
When I was in the saddle, he added, "You watch that ol' blaze-face mossy-horn on the far side. He's got it in his head to run."
"I know him," I said. "He's a trouble-maker. Next time the Indians come around hunting beef they're going to get him."
(from Chancy, by Louis L'Amour)
We followed the marshal out the door and he pointed to indicate the Doc's ffice. Nothing in this town was very far away. If you walked a hundred yards in any direction you'd be out on the prairie.
(from Chancy, by Louis L'Amour)
A man ramrodding a herd of mixed stuff has got to be a worrier. He has to worry about what might happen, so he will be ready for it if it does happen; and the only thing he can be downright sure of is that if what he was afraid of doesn't happen, something else will.
(from Chancy, by Louis L'Amour)
I had come among them a stranger. I had bargained when they were desperate and afraid, and they hated me because I had not been afraid, and because their fear had driven them to surrender. But my willingness to fight had been my only stock in trade. It was all I had to sell, and had I been killed not one of them would have wasted a thought on me.
(from Chancy, by Louis L'Amour)
"It has been said that the guilty flee when no man pursueth, Mr. Talon, but the guilty often suspect others of knowing more than they do."
(from Rivers West, by Louis L'Amour)
"I happened to be taking a caravan holiday in this neighborhood, Lady Constance, and finding myself near Market Blandings last night, I thought I would . . . ."
"Why, of course! We should never have orgiven you if you had not come to see us. Should we Clarence?"
"Eh?
"I said, should we?"
"Should we what?" said Lord Emsworth, who was still adjusting his mind.
Lady Constance's lips tightened, and a moment passed during which it seemed always a fifty-fifty chance that a handsome silver ink-pot would fly through the air in the direction of her brother's head. But she was a strong woman. She fought down the impulse.
(from Summer Lightning, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
The advance guard of the company appeared, in the shape of a flock of musicians. They passed out of the stage door, first a couple of thirsty-looking flutes, then a group of violins, finally an oboe by himself with a scowl on his face. Oboes are always savage in captivity.
(from Summer Lightning, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
When he was gone, Devereaux considered the possibilities for a few moments, then he lay down, pulled his blankets around him, and fell promptly to sleep. A good soldier eats when there is food, never stands when he can sit, and never stays awake when he can sleep - as long as it doesn't interfere with his duty.
(from Under the Sweetwater Rim, by Louis L'Amour)
It was too bad, he reflected, that so much of a recruit's time was wasted on close-order drill, of use only for parade formations and in moving a command in an organized area. Such training was useless in combat; a recruit was taught everything except how to fight. The only way the army offered training in combat was by survival. If one survived in combat one was wiser and a better fighter next time.
(from Under the Sweetwater Rim, by Louis L'Amour)
He rode with guns now, many guns, but the guns no longer reminded him of their presence, for in these days they had become part of him, ready to his hand. Men in this land could own guns, not to threaten their neighbor, but to ensure themselves of liberty. The man who shaped this land were men who had lately fought a war for their freedom and they did not wish it to be lost, and so they must keep close to their hands the weapons with which they had won that freedom.
(from The Man From Skibbereen, by Louis L'Amour)
Fort Sanders was a frontier settlement, formerly known as Fort John Buford, established to protect the tie-cutters and grading crws working west of Cheyenne. A few squatters had appeared before the railroad, but by the time the rails reached the site there were several hundred buildings, shacks and cabins of logs, sod, canvas, railroad ties and old wagon boxes, near the fort, and within hours Laramie, as it now called itself, was a booming town.
Crispin Mayo and Reppato Pratt stood on the narrow platform at what passed for the station. "Seen towns like this before," Rep said; "if'n you got money you can git yourself trouble. Without it you cain't git the time of day."
(from The Man From Skibbereen, by Louis L'Amour)
He looked over at Chris. "You done pretty good with that weapon. You used it much?"
"No, never. I just shoot where I look."
"Ain't no better way. You point your finger at something an' you're pointin' right at it. You been doin' it for years. It's the same with a six-gun. You just point an' shoot. The more you study on it, the more likely you are to miss."
(from The Man From Skibbereen, by Louis L'Amour)
That was the trouble with being poor: a man could not make a move without thinking of the consequences. A man who had another suit or more than one extra pair of pants need only go to the closet or the wardrobe and pick and choose; but a man who had no more than he owned now could never cease from worry that he'd be left without any. This eternal riding was playing hob with his pants, and soon he'd be out at the knees and seat, with only one extra pair to his name and them maybe lost or stolen at the end of track.
(from The Man From Skibbereen, by Louis L'Amour)
Barda after a long time said, despairingly, "Will we ever find them?"
"We will. I just hope it isn't too late."
"What can we do?"
"You just let that be, until we find them What we do will be depending on the situation." That was one of the things his uncle used to say. It all depended on the situation. You learned that in the Army.
(from The Man From Skibbereen, by Louis L'Amour)
She swung her mare away and he went up into the saddle and down the ramp with a thunder of hoofs that brought a shout from the guard. She was off across the dark prairie and he after her, and behind him more shouts and much fearful swearing. He would pray for their souls, in good time; they were likely lads but they certainly knew a lot of the King's English of the back-alley kind.
(from The Man From Skibbereen, by Louis L'Amour)
He walked in, leaving the door standing, but nobody was there, the room was empty. It looked empty, it felt empty, it was empty. The second room, for sleeping: also empty. The bed was unmade. How his old grandmother would have gone on about that, the middle of the day and the bed not made! A shocking thing, not to be believed.
(from The Man From Skibbereen, by Louis L'Amour)
Hardy realized that he had learned some good things from Pa; one was to do one thing at a time; not to cross bridges until he came to them, but at the same time to try to imagine how he could cross them when the time came. Though he was scared now, he was scared less for himself than for Betty Sue, for it was always in his mind how helpless she would be if anything happened to him.
He knew she trusted in him, and believed in him completely. And that made him remember something else Pa had told him: that a body never knew how strong he could be until somebody expected it of him.
(from Down the Long Hills, by Louis L'Amour)
Scott Collins knew this land, and loved it, but he knew every danger it offered. He knew, too, the ways to avoid trouble and the ways to survive. You could not war against the wilderness; to live in it one must become a part of it, make oneself one with the trees and the wind, the streams and the plants, the cold and the heat, yielding a little always, but never too much.
(from Down the Long Hills, by Louis L'Amour)
Old Three-Paws weighed about nine hundred pounds. He was not quite as quick as he used to be, but he was still quick, and he could crush the skull of an ox with one blow of his good paw. He had lumbered past a mountain lion. It spat and snarled, then darted past him on the narrow trail, turning to snarl after him. Old Three-Paws ignored the cat as something beneath his notice.
(from Down the Long Hills, by Louis L'Amour)
He was trying to think. What was it his pa had said so often? "Remember, son, the only thing that makes a man able to get along in this world is his brain. A man doesn't have the claws a bear has, nor the strength of a bull. He doesn't have the nose of a wolf, nor the wings of a hawk, but he has a brain. You're going to get along in this world as long as you use it."
(from Down the Long Hills, by Louis L'Amour)
"They're out there somewhere, Bill. We've got to find them."
"If they're alive, we'll find them."
The dancing fire brought no comfort, but the food was good, and the strong black coffee helped to lift their spirits a little.
"We'd better stand watch," Squires suggested. "Me and Frank will stand the first two. Get yourself some sleep."
And Scott Collins did sleep, and while he slept he dreamed of a great red stallion and two childen, who rode on and on through endless nights of cold.
(from Down the Long Hills, by Louis L'Amour)
"I'll holster my gun, an' then you can try, all three of you. Of course," Mooney smiled a pleasant Irish smile, "you get my first shot, right through the belly."
Don Pedro was no fool. It was obvious to him that even if they did kill the gringo that it would do nothing for Don Pedro, for the scion of an ancient house would be cold clay upon the Sonora desert. It was a most uncomfortable thought, for Don Pedro had a most high opinion of the necessity for Don Pedro's continued existence.
(from "Long Ride Home," by Louis L'Amour)
"Did Tollefson actually see those skeletons?"
"He sure did." Fulton's voice was dry, emotionless. "And from what he said, if that was Tandy Meadows who walked into that shack after the Alvarez boys, he's got nerve enough to crawl down a hole after a nest full of rattlers, believe me!"
(from "Ride or Start Shootin'," by Louis L'Amour)
"She was with them on the boat," the Kid explained. "She even got into the poker game when they tried to rook me. She's good, too," he added, "but she must have been the one who tipped them off. It had to be somebody who knew I'd be carrying the money. Who is she?"
"She's been working for me!" MacIntosh said angrily. "Working until just now. I never did put no truck in women folks workin' around offices but she convinced me she could help me and she didn't cost me no more'n a third what a man cost!"
"With a woman," the Cactus Kid said, "it ain't the original cost. It's the upkeep!"
(from "The Cactus Kid Pays a Debt," by Louis L'Amour)
On the Walking YY and in its vicinity the Kid was a living legend, and the only person in his home country who did not tremble at the Kid's step was Jenny Simms - or if she did, it was in another sense.
(from "The Cactus Kid Pays a Debt," by Louis L'Amour)
Mesquite Jenkins had long been a disciple of the idea that once the point of battle is reached, no good can result from continued conversation or argument. The guard had told him what to do. He turned on his heel with a shrug, but suddenly, as he turned, his right hand shot up, grasped the man's rifle by the middle, and shoved. The guard staggered, the bench caught him behind the knees, and his heels flew up, his head down. His head tunked dully on the butt end of a log, and the guard blanked out.
(from The Riders of High Rock, by Louis L'Amour)
He turned to Sue. "You're riding - were you going to look over the ground?"
"Yes. I don't want Frank to go. He'd keep on going and maybe get killed for his pains. After all, he's the only friend we have here now."
Bolt looked offended. "Now, Miss Sue, I don't take that kindly. I've always thought myself a friend of yours, and there's nothing I wouldn't do for you."
Sue was contrite. "I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking."
Gillespie turned away with disgust written in every line of him. He watched them ride off with narrowed eyes. Maybe, he reflected, he was a fool, but if Jack Bolt was an honest man, he was next in line to be Emperor of China!
(from The Riders of High Rock, by Louis L'Amour)
Jack Bolt rode on, following the winding trail towards the wide range of the 3TL. The farther he rode, the more he wondered if this was not the best way after all. He did not hesitate to admit the truth to himself. The gunfire and the hum of lead had done something to him. Four years or so of absence from gunfighting and killing had changed his thinking. Cowering on the floor, hearing the bullets punch through the walls of his cabin, knowing that any one of them could mean death had put something into him that had gone clear to the bottom of his mind and his stomach. He did not like being shot at. When he was younger he had been heedless. He had believed the bullet had not been made that would kill him. Death had seemed fantastically far away.
It was always that way when you were young. Well, he was older now and knew that death was no respecter of persons. There had to be an easier way.
(from The Riders of High Rock, by Louis L'Amour)
High on the slope of Copper Mountain, Red Connors was feeling better. Plenty to eat and drink, the high, pure air, and rest had done marvels for him. His wound was healing rapidly, and he was growing restless with inactivity. Somewhere down below, Hopalong was busy and might be needing him. There was still plenty of grub and his horse was in fine shape, but Red was growing restless. Moreover, he had been shot at too often without a chance to return the courtesy.
"That Hoppy!" he growled half-aloud. "He's stealin' all the fun!"
(from The Riders of High Rock, by Louis L'Amour)
"Red," Orrin said, "there's a fair land up north, a wide and beautiful land. It's a land with running water, clear streams, and grass hip-high to a tall elk. I tell you, Red, that's a country."
"And you know something, Red?" I put in my two-bits worth. "We think you should see it."
"We surely do." Orrin was dead serious. "We're going to miss you if you go, Red. But Red, you stay and we won't miss you."
(from The Daybreakers, by Louis L'Amour)
Politics was a high card up in the hills. A political speech would bring out the whole country. Folks would pack their picnic lunches and you'd see people at a speech you'd never see elsewhere. Back in those days' most every boy grew up knowing as much about local politics as about coon dogs, which was about equal as to interest.
(from The Daybreakers, by Louis L'Amour)
It was dry - the grass was brown, parched and sun-hot when we fetched up to Owl Creek and found it bone-dry. Little and Big Cow Creeks, also dry.
This last was twenty miles from our last night's camp and no sign of water, with another twenty to go before we reached the Bend of the Arkansas.
"There'll be water," Rountree said in his rasping voice, "there's always water in the Arkansas."
By that time I wasn't sure if there was any water left in Kansas. We took a breather at Big Cow Creek and I rinsed out Dapple's mouth with my handkerchief a couple of times. My lips were cracked and even Dapple seemed to have lost his bounce. That heat and the dry air, with no water, it was enough to take the spry out of a camel.
(from The Daybreakers, by Louis L'Amour)
Suddenly, I knew I didn't have to kill him. Mayhap that was the moment when I changed from a boy into a man. Somewhere I'd begun to learn things about myself and about gunfights and gunfighters. Reading men is the biggest part; drawing fast, even shooting straight, they come later. And some of the fastest drawing men with guns were among the first to die. That fast draw didn't mean a thing - not a thing.
(from The Daybreakers, by Louis L'Amour)
Anybody expecting Abilene to be a metropolis would have been some put out, but to Orrin and me, who had never seen anything bigger than Baxter Springs, it looked right smart of a town. Why, Abilene was quite a place, even if you did have to look mighty fast to see what there was of it.
(from The Daybreakers, by Louis L'Amour)
Again and again he delayed to study their trail, and he felt growing within him an old fierceness, a feeling he had had only once or twice since the end of the war.
He had felt it on that awful night when he had come to find his house in flames, flames already dying down as day was coming. He had felt it during those months of search when he had thought of nothing but finding the men responsible.
Now he knew they were behind him. They were back there, coming along his trail.
Dutton Mowry had told him what he had suspected, and now once more that deep and terrible rage, never quite extinguished, was mounting within him. There was in him something of the old Viking berserker, who threw all caution to the winds and charged, blade in hand, thinking only to cut down his enemy.
Devine had known that quality was in him, and feared for him. So had Grant.
(from Brionne, by Louis L'Amour)
Mike's succssor, a youth of the name of Bristow, was causing Psmith a great deal of pensive melancholy. His worst defect - which he could not help - was that he was not Mike. His others - which he could - were numerous. His clothes were cut in a way that harrowed Psmith's sensitive soul every time he looked at them. The fact that he wore detachable cuffs, which he took off on beginning work and stacked in a glistening pile on the desk in front of him, was no proof of innate viciousness of disposition, but it prejudiced the Old Etonian against him. It was part of Psmith's philosophy that a man who wore detachable cuffs had passed beyond the limit of human toleration.
(from Psmith In the City, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"My dear chap," said Mike, "it's all rot. I can't sponge on you."
"You pain me, Comrade Jackson. I was not suggesting such a thing. We are business men, hard-headed young bankers. I make you a business proposition. I offer you the post of confidential secretary and adviser to me in exchange for a comfortable home. The duties will be light. You will be required to refuse invitations to dinner from crowned heads, and to listen attentively to my views on Life. Apart from this, there is little to do."
(from Psmith In the City, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
London was too big to be angry with. It took no notice of him. It did not care whether he was glad to be there or sorry, and there was no means of making it care. That was the peculiarity of London. There is a sort of cold unfriendliness about it. A city like New York makes the new arrival feel at home in half an hour; but London is a specialist in what Psmith in his letter had called the Distant Stare. You have to buy London's good-will.
(from Psmith In the City, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
"I suppose you're going to the 'Varsity?" he said.
"Rather," said Mike, lacing his boots. "You are, of course? Cambridge, I hope. I'm going to King's."
"Between ourselves," confided Psmith, "I'm dashed if I know what's going to happen to me. I am the thingummy of what's-its-name."
"You look it," said Mike, brushing his hair.
(from Psmith In the City, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
He glanced at the two guards. "You two want to help? We'll pay you."
One man shook his head. "Mister, I've got a family back in St. Louis. I wouldn't stick my head out of that door with a sack of gold for anything on earth."
"Not me," said the other. "Guarding inside of this car is one thing. The Colonel here, he's got steel plates in the sides of this car. He's ready for anything that happens. From in here we could stand off an army, but outside there in the dark? Mister, maybe I'm not very bright, but I'm not crazy, either."
(from North To the Rails, by Louis L'Amour)
His father had never seemed to be teaching, and yet when he thought of it now he realized that Borden Chantry had said things that counted. "If you want to live easy in your mind, son," he used to say, "be sure folks respect you. Saves a lot of trouble."
(from North To the Rails, by Lois L'Amour)
"I'll kind of set around and keep an eye on things."
"You don't even know me."
Mobile shrugged. "I don't have to. I used to punch cows for Sparrow. I came up the trail with him from Texas, decided that was too rugged a life for a man, and settled down here to deal cards. Contrary to what you might figure, I don't make much more than I would punchin' cows, but I sleep in a bed at night and I don't have to ride drag."
(from North To the Rails, by Louis L'Amour)
"We've got your husband," Hyle said, turning to Susanna. "You put down that shotgun or I'll have Doc start cuttin' fingers off. Every time I count, he'll lose anoher finger. Now you goin' to drop it or not?"
Susanna's shotgun was steady. "Mister," she spoke quietly, "if you say one, you will never say two. By the time you open your mouth I will have blown you apart with both barrels of this shotgun. You know, Mr. Hyle, or whatever your name is, you make a big, wide target, and I don't think I like you, Mr. Hyle."
(from The Quick and the Dead, by Louis L'Amour)
He knew all about Red Hyle. He was a brute, and if he possessed any human feelings at all they had not made themselves obvious. His attitude was one of contempt for everyone but his sheer physical power and harsh manner allowed no room for opposition. Just nobody wanted any part of Red Hyle.
(from The Quick and the Dead, by Louis L'Amour. This reminds me of the phrase "cruel and bloodthirsty men" from one of our hymns.)
She was alone. More than a thousand miles from friends, relatives, all that was familiar. She was sitting alone in the forest, knowing only that her husband might be injured or dead and that she had let her son go off into the night, and that he might be killed.
She had the shotgun. She looked at the charges, still in place - unfired.
She snapped the gun together again and waited. She forced herself to be strong, forced herself to be calm. Panic, someone had once said - had it been Vallian? - only enters an empty mind, and panic was what she must fear now - only panic. She steeled herself for what might lie ahead, and slowly the loneliness and fear left her. Although she was still alone, she was prepared for what might come.
(from The Quick and the Dead, by Louis L'Amour)
His father had been a man who talked of his work and his life, and he was a man who had known men and stock, who had pioneered in wild country. Had he been trying even then, to instruct his son? After all, what did a father have to pass on to his childen but his own presonal reaction to the world? Of what use was experience if one could not pass on at least a little of what one had learned?
(from North To the Rails, by Louis L'Amour)
He held his rifle easy in his hands, prepared for whatever might come. Nothing in his life had prepared him for things to turn out right. When they did, he was pleased; when they did not, he was ready.
(from The Quick and the Dead, by Louis L'Amour)
Booster stopped. "Now, ma'am, you be careful. That thing might be loaded."
"It is," she replied quietly, "and my husband tells me this will be very destructive at this range. I will hope I do not have to find out. I do not like the sight of blood, gentlemen."
Booster stared at her. He was angry but he was also scared. Would she shoot? She sounded very cool, and although she might be too frightened to shoot, he was not at all sure he wanted to make the test. A shotgun, at that range, could rip a man in two.
(from The Quick and the Dead, by Louis L'Amour)
Red Hyle had said nothing. He was slouched in the saddle, just letting them talk. Purdy glanced at him. What about that now? Was he as fast as Red? Sure. He'd never seen anybody he couldn't out-draw. But supposing, just supposing, that he was not? Supposing it came to a showdown and Red was faster.
He'd be dead.
(from The Quick and the Dead, by Louis L'Amour)
He had seen Hyle shoot, and he had seen only one man he thought was as good - just one. He'd seen Con Vallian down in the Bald Knob country that time, and Con was quick. He was almighty quick at a time when a man was either quick or he was dead.
(from The Quick and the Dead, by Louis L'Amour)
"Nothing stays the same," Kilkenny said. "A man has to go with the times. No man can put a rope on the past and hope to snub it down. The best thing is to learn to ride the new trails."
(from Kilkenny, by Louis L'Amour)
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)
"Well, what has become of Rollo? You seem to have mislaid him. Did you break off the engagement?"
"Well, it - sort of broke itself off. I mean, you see, I went and married Mike."
"Eloped with him, do you mean?"
"Yes."
"Good heavens."
"I'm awfully ashamed about that, Eve. I suppose I treated Rollo awfully badly."
"Never mind. A man with a name like that was made for suffering."
(from Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Wodehouse's artistic mechanism was set in motion by the need to exclude unpleasantness. He was a quiet, lonely boy and became a quiet, lonely man who escaped into joy at his desk. By all accounts, he was a friendly and obliging fellow; but no less an admirer than Evelyn Waugh described him privately as the dullest man he ever met. And socially he was famous for fleeing the kind of jolly scenes he wrote about to walk his dog. Generations of visitors were astounded that this taciturn blob could have produced usch streams of liveliness. In true Victorian fashion, Wodehouse had grown a second soul back in his workshop, while the first one remained as shy and unformed as a bank clerk's.
(by Wilfred Sheed, from the Introduction to Leave It To Psmith, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Perhaps the greatest hardship in being an invalid is the fact that people come and see you and keep your spirits up. The Hon. Freddie Threepwood suffered extremely from this. His was not a gregarious nature, and it fatigued his limited brainpowers to have to find conversation for his numerous visitors. All he wanted was to be left alone to read the Adventures of Gridley Quayle and when tired of doing that, to lie on his back, and look at the ceiling and think of nothing. It is your dynamic person, your energetic World's Worker, who chafes at being laid up with a sprained ankle. The Hon. Freddie enjoyed it. From boyhood up he had loved lying in bed, and now that fate had allowed him to do this without incurring rebuke, he objected to having his reveries broken in upon by officious relatives.
(from Something Fresh, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
Having bought his tobacco and observed the life and thought of the town for half an hour - it was market day and the normal stagnation of the place was temporarily relieved and brightened by pigs that eluded their keeper and a bull calf which caught a stout farmer at the psychological moment when he was tying his shoelace and lifted him six feet - he made his way to the Emsworth Arms, the most respectable of the eleven inns which the citizens of Market Blandings contrived in some miraculous way to support. In most English country towns, if the public houses do not actually outnumber the inhabitants, they all do an excellent trade. It is only when they are two to one that hard times hit them and set the innkeepers blaming the Government.
(from Something Fresh, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)
CANDID COMMENTS CONCERNING AGE AND POLITICS
In
the first place, the President does not “run” the United States. In the
Department of Defense alone there are (according to the internet) 3.4 million military
and civilian employees. Even that small slice of the government is vastly too
big to be “run” by one person. At best the President lays out the broad strokes
that he intends to guide the country within his sphere of authority, and
appoints capable people to run the different departments, and then reviews
their performance from time to time, just as the CEO of any company would do.
One
of the most admired companies in the world is Berkshire Hathaway, which has
396,000 employees. The CEO of Berkshire is Warren Buffett, who currently is 93
years old. Now, I don’t know the man personally, and he may be completely
senile by now, but people are still investing in Berkshire, so the public has
that much confidence in his ability, at least. Keep in mind that executives
really do not DO anything; their job is to see to it that things get done, and
even most of that “seeing to” is delegated to other people.
I
am old enough that I can remember clearly the presidency of Ronald Reagan, and
I consider him to have been one of the better Presidents during my lifetime.
However, Reagan left office in January of 1989, and it was generally
acknowledged that he was by that time largely a figurehead and that Mrs. Reagan
and the cabinet were playing a vastly larger role than was the case in his first
term in office. But the Republic survived, and in fact, did fairly well. I have
seen nothing in either of the major candidates that indicates they are less
functional than Mr. Reagan appeared to be by the end of his second term in
office.
The
reason that I said that I wish neither of the major party candidates had run
for office is that, while they may be functionally able do their job, statistically
they are much closer to NOT being able to continue in office due to death or
disability, and whether it be in business or government, uncertainty is one of
the principal villains. Watch what happens to the stock market when it is not sure what the Fed is going to do. No matter what the Fed does, if investors are
fairly sure about it, they can adjust their responses and make do, but if they
have no idea what the Fed will do, they are left hanging, and investors very
quickly get cold feet if they are unsure of the future.
Anytime a President is removed from office for whatever reason, the nation is thrown into a state of flux and uncertainty, and not just in the stock markets. Vast departments of the government must function temporarily without a leader. Foreign powers may be able to make bold moves during the vacuum in leadership, before the new President can get his people and policies into place. Imagine being in the shoes of President Harry Truman on April 25, 1945, when he first learned the full details of the atomic bomb and had to take over the command of the U. S. military in the middle of a World War. By that time the victory was largely won, but what if President Roosevelt had died two years earlier?
I
will turn 71 years old in August, and my cognitive skills are definitely
declining, as they generally are in anyone my age. (Just ask my wife for
confirmation of that fact.) Still, I do have enough mental acuity remaining to
write an article of this nature, and to continue my responsibility of setting
the standards and moral guidelines of my household.
Yes, I certainly wish that the major party candidates for President were younger, and any deficiencies they may have mentally are indeed a problem. I have a problem remembering certain things, but that usually is not a crisis because I have a wife who takes care of reminding me about things. (I try to return the favor, and we have managed to survive.) My declining memory IS a problem, but it is not yet such a problem that I intend to abdicate my household responsibilities. The President of the United States has access to a vast array of talent to help him in whatever capacity he needs, in matters both great and small. President Franklin Roosevelt’s health was failing during World War II, but he had as his personal Chief of Staff the most senior military official to have served during that War, that being Fleet Admiral William Leahy, so things did not fall apart as the President declined.
Yes, if he lives
long enough any person’s capabilities will reach a point at which he does not need
to be in a position of large responsibility, but I see no evidence that we are
to that point in this election. Whatever reservations I have regarding the two major candidates
fall under headings other than Cognitive Ability.
