Admiral of the Navy

 You may not ever have heard of it, but there was once a rank of Admiral of the Navy, which was given to Admiral George Dewey after his victory at the Battle of Manila Bay in 1898. However, there was never a insignia created that had more stars than the standard one for Admiral. By 1955, the Navy had established that the rank was honorary, and when the rank of Fleet Admiral was created (with five stars), it was specified in a memo that "the rank of Fleet Admiral of the United States Navy shall be considered the senior most rank of the United States Navy."

Don't drop it!

 Some of us would go to the compound dump and root out old dry hard bread. If you scraped off the dirt etc. you could re-wet it, then squeeze out the excess water and eat it. I would scavenge the old discarded prune seeds, crack them open and eat the kernels. Bitter, but food. That potato bread was something else. As long as it wasn't sliced, it wasn't bad, but slice it or cut it and you had better eat it, because it would quickly get as hard as a brick. And whatever you do, don't drop a loaf on your foot.

(from Behind the Wire, by Philip Kaplan and Jack Currie)

Blurred line of distinction

     Miriam spoke suddenly. "Pete Shoyer has killed men for a few hundred dollars of reward money. Wouldn't such a man kill for what gold was on one of those mules?"

    Swante Taggart drew a long breath. It was this he had been considering. There were men he knew who would not kill except in the name of the law - but there were others who would. The distinction between the peace officers of the time and the outlaw was either sharply drawn or it was scarcely drawn at all.

(from Taggart, by Louis L'Amour)

There is always that one heretic

 Outside the door Taggart paused to let his eyes adjust to the darkness. It was true that Apaches rarely attacked by night, or they believed the soul of a warrior killed in darkness must wander forever, lost in the vast emptiness of a night without stars. But Swante Taggart was not inclined to be killed by the one Apache who might be willing to take a chance.

(from Taggart, by Louis L'Amour)

Hell afloat

 Prison ships, often called "death ships" for their deplorable conditions, were routinely used by the British during the war, and the Jersey had a reputation for being the worse, earning the nickname "Hell." Disease and vermin ran rampant among the starving prisoners. The bodies of inmates who died might not be recovered for a week or more, left to rot in the cramped, airless hulls in which the unfortunate passengers were forced to spend twenty-four hours a day. By the end of the war, approximately eight thousand people were estimated to have died aboard prison ships in New York alone.

(from George Washington's Secret Six, by Brian Kilmeade)

Vega

 Our next-door neighbor has a female Staffordshire Terrier named Vega. I get to take walks with her frequently. According to Wikipedia, "The Stafford is considered a family pet and companion dog, and is among the breeds recommended by the KC for families. Relative to the breed's ancestral progenitors, the AKC states: 'From his brawling past, the muscular but agile Staffordshire Bull Terrier retains the traits of courage and tenacity. Happily, good breeding transformed this former gladiator into a mild, playful companion with a special feel for kids.'"

Watchman, a Staffordshire Bull Terrier, is a military mascot of the now-disbanded Staffordshire Regiment, and continues his duties as part of the Staffordshire Regimental Association. There have been five Watchman since 1949, and the current mascot is LCpl Watchman VI, who took up his duties on 5 March 2019.

Always the silence

     The sky was faintly gray when Miriam Stark climbed the thread of a trail to the top of Rockinstraw Mountain, a single rose-tinted cloud above the horizon giving only a suggestion of the glory to come with sunrise. Yet there was enough light to see the web of faint trails, each leading to some vantage point from which the country could be observed.

    She loved this place, for even on the hottest day there was a faint stirring of wind, and always there was silence, an unbelievable silence that left the mind free to wander without interruption.

(from Taggart, by Louis L'Amour)

When everything goes wrong

 The jig was up. [Benedict] Arnold's worst fears had all been realized: The Americans were aware (or soon would be) of the depth of his treachery, but the British had yet to do anything to capture the fort and, without the plans, likely never would be able to do so. Thus, he was a traitor to one group, but hardly the hero he had anticipated becoming to the other. Now he would be nothing more than a failed turncoat - if he was even able to escape with his life, that is.

(from George Washington's Secret Six, by Brian Kilmeade)

Saltbox style

 In his book, George Washington's Secret Six, author Brian Kilmeade mentions a house constructed in "the saltbox style." According to Wikipedia, that is "a gable-roofed residential structure that is typically two stories in the front and one in the rear. It is a traditional New England style of home, originally timber framed, which takes its name from its resemblance to a wooden lidded box in which salt was once kept."

The Stinking City

What destruction and politics didn't drive out, filth did. Nicholas Cresswell, an Englishman visiting New York, recorded his disgust with the state of the city following the winter thaw in the spring of 1777. He complained about the sheer number of people crowded into the city's confines, "almost like herrings in a barrel, most of them very dirty and not a small number sick of some disease, the Itch, Pox, Fever, or Flux." He further opined, "If any author had an inclination to write a treatise upon stinks and ill smells, he never could meet with more subject matter than in New York."

(from George Washington's Secret Six, by Brian Kilmeade)

The family rebel

 He had never consiered himself cut from the same fabric as the rest of the prominent landowners, and had gone to some pains to distinguish himself from their upright and uptight behavior. Abraham Woodhull was proud of being the black sheep of his straitlaced family, and he assumed the burden of familial duty with reluctance; it smacked of Old World thinking. If he was to reject King George's authority on the basis that the monarch had simply been born into his position, why could he not also reject his own family's expectations for him to pick up the mantle of Woodhull respectability simply because he was the sole surviving son-of-a-son-of-a-son-of-a-son?

(from George Washington's Secret Six, by Brian Kilmeade)

Washington's dilemma

 "You can form no idea of the perplexity of my situation. No man, I believe, ever had a greater choice of difficulties and less means to extricate himself from them."

(General George Washington, writing to his brother Samuel in 1776)

But no fear

 He was mad now - I could see that plain as anything. I could also see that he thought well of himself and liked folks to fear him. Kill me he might before this was over, but make me fear him he couldn't. He was just another man with a gun, and I'd seen a-plenty of them.

(from Galloway, by Louis L'Amour)

Wrong Tennyson

 We sat there, sipping coffee and eating those cakes and talking. She started in about the weather just like we hadn't had those other words at all. I asked her about her Pa, and she asked me about Parmalee and Logan, and then somehow she got started telling me about a poem she'd been reading called the Idylls of the King, by somebody named Tennyson. I knew a puncher back in the Cherokee nation by that name but it couldn't be the same one. The last time I saw him I don't think he could even read a book, let alone write one.

(from Galloway, by Louis L'Amour)

Just take a nap

 Galloway was no doubt eating his belly full in some fine resturant or house, filling up on beef and frijoles whilst I starved in the woods. It is rare enough that I feel sorry for myself but that night I did, but what is the old saying the Irish have? "The beginning of a ship is a board; of a kiln, a stone; and the beginning of health is sleep."

(from Galloway, by Louis L'Amour)

The real deal

 I had Shore pegged now. He was a good steady man, a fighter by trade, with no pretense to being a real gunman. He was no fast-draw artist, but his kind could kill a lot who thought they were.

(from The Sky-Liners, by Louis L'Amour)

A woman will do that to you

     Judith, she slept - slept like a baby. But she worried me some, looking at her. She didn't look much like a little girl any more, and looking at a girl thataway can confuse a man's thinking.

    My fingers touched my jaw. It had been some time since I'd shaved, and I'd best be about it before we got to riding westward again.

(from The Sky-Liners, by Louis L'Amour)

Stuff to leave alone

 "I found some Jimson weed and cut a few leaves to put in my moccasins. I'd used it for saddle sores and knew it eased the pain and seemed to help them heal, but it was dangerus stuff to fool around with and many Indians won't touch it." (from Galloway, by Louis L'Amour. Image from Franz Eugen Köhler, Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen)

"It has also been used as a hallucinogen (of the anticholinergic/antimuscarinic, deliriant type), taken entheogenically to cause intense, sacred or occult visions. It is unlikely ever to become a major drug of abuse owing to effects upon both mind and body frequently perceived as being highly unpleasant, giving rise to a state of profound and long-lasting disorientation or delirium (anticholinergic syndrome) with a potentially fatal outcome." (from Wikipedia)

One nervy man

    Galloway whipped the dust from his clothes with his hat, then started for the door. A glance at a powerful black horse stopped him. He looked at the brand and whistled softly.

    Originally the brand must have been a Clover Three, but now it was a Flower. A reverse 3 had been faced to each of the other 3's, then another set had been added, a stem and tendrils to join the petals to the stem. The job was beautifully done, obviously by a rewrite man who knew his business and enjoyed it.

    "That's a man I've got to see," Galloway muttered. "He'd wear a Sherman button to a Georgia picnic!"

(from Galloway, by Louis L'Amour)