Burleson

“ So Burleson rode on at a canter, presently slacking to a walk, arguing with himself in a low, calm voice:
“Poor devils—poor, half-starved devils! If I could afford to pay their prices I’d do it.... I’ll wink at anything short of destruction; I can’t let them cut the pine; I can’t let them clean out the grouse and deer and fish. As for law-suits, I simply won’t! There must be some decent way short of a shot-gun.” ”

“ Mr. Burleson. You have now, as of this moment, been informed by a newspaper and also by me about what Jack attempted to do today?
Mrs. Grant. Yes; I have.
Mr. Burleson. And you were informed and knew of what Jack had attempted to do about a month ago when he rammed his head up against the wall, were you not?
Mrs. Grant. Yes.
Mr. Burleson. What has Jack told you as to what you should do with and to yourself?
Mrs. Grant. He wants me to do away with myself.
Mr. Burleson. Does he give you a reason why? ”

“ Burleson; there is hunger, bodily hunger; there is sickness unsolaced by spiritual or bodily comfort—not even the comfort of death! Ah, you should see them—once! Once would be enough! And no physician, nobody that knows, I tell you—nobody through the long, dusty, stifling summers—nobody through the lengthening bitterness of the black winters—nobody except myself. Mr. Burleson, old man Storm died craving a taste of broth; and Abe Storm trapped a partridge for him, and Rolfe caught him and Grier jailed him—and confiscated the miserable, half-plucked bird! ”

“ Burleson?”
“I think so.”
“When a man wants to put up a skyscraper an’ gits all but the key-lot, an’ if the owner of the key-lot holds out for his price, do they call it blackmail?”
“No,” said Burleson; “I think I spoke hastily.”
Not a sound broke the stillness in the store. After a moment old man Santry opened his clasp-knife, leaned forward, and shaved off a thin slice from the cheese on the counter. This he ate, faded eyes fixed on space. Men all around him relaxed in their chairs, spat, recrossed their muddy boots, stretching and yawning. ”

“ Live wild critters ain’t for sale; they never was made to buy an’ sell. The spryest gits ’em—an’ that’s all about it, I guess, Mister Burleson.”
A hard-faced young man leaning against the counter, added significantly: “We talked some to Grier, an’ he sold out. He come here, too, just like you.”
The covert menace set two spots of color deepening in young Burleson’s lean cheeks; but he answered calmly:
“What a man believes to be his own he seldom abandons from fear of threats.”
“That’s kinder like our case,” observed old man Santry, chewing vigorously. ”

“ Burleson as a Republican for fifteen minutes and then as a Democrat for fifteen minutes, and in dealing as I am, in what might be called a nationally personal subject, a technique for self-criticism in all of us, I only hope my Democratic friends will give me credit for making use of Mr. Burleson not as a Democrat (it is just their luck that he's a Democrat) , but as a specimen human being I am trying to get hundreds of thousands of Republicans that are just like him, not to be like any longer. ”

“ I think that a change in the wind alone saved us from a bad fire.”
“Shall we ride over?” inquired the girl, moving forward with unconscious grace.
Burleson ranged his big horse alongside; she set her mount at a gallop, and away they went, wheeling into the swale, knee-deep in dry, silvery grasses, until the deputy fire-warden drew bridle with a side-flung caution: “Muskrats! Look out for a cropper!”
[132] Now, at a walk, the horses moved forward side by side through the pale, glistening sea of grass stretching out on every side. ”

“ Mr. Burleson. Come back up to his question.
Mr. Hubert. I just wanted to explore whether or not it had come to your knowledge whether the story was the truth or not?
Mrs. Grant. This all came to me—call me back on the word “communism” that I said later on, if you want?
Mr. Burleson. Do you know anything else about this alleged sale of the picture?
Mrs. Grant. Nothing, but Earl told me to get ahold of the men here and I did and I called the office and Elmer Moore came out and I told him.
Mr. Burleson. All right. ”

“ Burleson nodded. “I think,” he said, “that you had better go back to the lodge and get every spare man. Tell Rudolf to rig up a wagon and bring rations and water for the men. Put in something nice for Miss Elliott—see to that, Rolfe ”

“ Mrs. Grant. I have to sort of tell real lies, that I just got through talking with Sam and Earl and with Eileen and with Sam and everything is OK.
Mr. Burleson. Because he says that they have been doing this to them?
Mrs. Grant. He says many times he has seen Sam on the second floor and the rabbi was going—yesterday, they took the rabbi, sometimes they take Stanley.
Mr. Burleson. That’s Stanley Kaufman you are talking about?
Mrs. Grant. Stanley Kaufman.
Mr. Burleson. In other words. Jack just doesn’t make sense when you talk to him? ”

“ You see, “a creep” is a real low life to Jack and “what a creep he is,” he says, and he was sick—he went in the bathroom.
Mr. Burleson. Did he actually vomit?
Mrs. Grant. He did not—he was sick to his stomach and he cried, he looked terrible—he just wasn’t himself, and truthfully, so help me, I remember even my mother’s funeral—it just killed him. He said this, “Someone tore my heart out,” and he says, “I didn’t even feel so bad when pops died because pappa was an old man. He was close to 90.”
Mr. Burleson. What did Jack have to say about President Kennedy? ”

“ Mr. Burleson. Well, let’s refer to that—on this last sentence on page 1, it starts out with, “She stated that Jack Ruby told her that he was at the Dallas Morning News which ran his advertisements and asked them. ‘Where in the hell do you get off taking an ad like that? Are you money hungry?’”
What do you want to say about that? ”

“ I used her for the fountain I'm doing for Cardemon's sunken garden. I never saw a model put together as she is. And that's going some."
"She's a dream," said Ogilvy—"un pen sauvage—no inclination to socialism there, Annan. I know because I was considering the advisability of bestowing upon her one of those innocent, inadvertent, and fascinatingly chaste salutes—just to break the formality. She wouldn't have it. I'd taken her to the theatre, too. Girls are astonishing problems."
"You're a joyous beast, aren't you, Sam?" observed Burleson. ”

“ John Burley begins to warm. A yet quicker light begins to break from his Eye; his voice has a mellow luscious roll in it.
“He will be grand to-night,” whispered a thin man, who looked like a tailor, seated on the other side of Leonard. Time flies,—an hour. Look again at the Dutch clock. John Burley is grand, he is in his zenith, at his culminating point. What magnificent drollery! what luxuriant humour! How the Rabelais shakes in his easy-chair! Under the rush and the roar of this fun (what word else shall describe it?) the man’s intellect is as clear as gold sand under a river. ”

“ O Lord, sir, you do me too much honour.
Bayes. Nay, nay, come, come, Mr. Johnson, i'faith this must not be said amongst us that have it. I know you have wit, by the judgment you make of this play; for that's the measure we go by: my play is my touchstone. When a man tells me such a one is a person of parts: is he so? say I; what do I do, but bring him presently to see this play: if he likes it, I know what to think of him; if not, your most humble servant, sir ”

“ Burley, you have convinced me,” it was not with the modesty of a sincere reasoner, but the triumph of one who has gained his end. But so struck, meanwhile, was our unheeded and silent listener with Burley’s power of generalization and the wide surface over which his information extended, that when Randal left the room the boy looked at the slovenly, purposeless man, and said aloud, “True; knowledge is not power.”
“Certainly not,” said Burley, dryly,—“the weakest thing in the world.”
“Knowledge is power,” muttered Randal Leslie, as, with a smile on his lip, he drove from the door. ”

“ Sainte Lesse as yet knew nothing personally of the American mule or of Burley. Sainte Lesse heard both before it beheld either—Burley's loud, careless, swaggering voice above the hee-haw of his trampling herds:
"All I ask for is human food, Smith—not luxuries—just food!—and that of the commonest kind."
And now an immense volume of noise and [pg 161] dust enveloped the main street of Sainte Lesse, stilling the quiet noon gossip of the town, silencing the birds, awing the town dogs so that their impending barking died to amazed gurgles drowned in the din of the mules. ”

“ Rames reflected. "No," he said; "never." Then he added with a smile, "but I think I should now."
"I did," said Burrell. "There were times when I wanted to stop my speech in the middle and cry out, 'Don't look at me with such high hopes. It's no use! It's no use!' But I held my tongue. For there's always the little that governments can do. That's the consolation, isn't it?" Burrell was finding it easier to speak out his thoughts now. ”

“ Poor, erring, glorious Burley. Take me to him. Did you say there was no hope?”
“I did not say that,” replied the Doctor. “But art can only assist nature; and, though nature is ever at work to repair the injuries we do to her, yet, when the coats of a stomach are all gone, she gets puzzled, and so do I. You must tell me another time how you came to know Burley, for here we are at the house, and I see him at the window looking out for me.”
The Doctor opened the garden gate to the quiet cottage to which poor Burley had fled from the pure presence of Leonard’s child-angel. ”

“ Burley hooked his arm within Leonard's, and led the boy passively away.
"That is a clever man," said Harley L'Estrange. "But I am sorry to see yon young student, with his bright earnest eyes, and his lip that has the quiver of passion and enthusiasm, leaning on the arm of a guide who seems disenchanted of all that gives purpose to learning and links philosophy with use to the world. Who, and what is this clever man whom you call Burley?"
"A man who might have been famous, if he had condescended to be respectable! ”

“ With brave and cheerful hearts, which the pioneer must maintain, or sink, they had gone to work, and cutting out a broad green patch from the vine-inwoven forest, had erelong, in the midst of the sunshine thus let in, built them a rustic home. Here, in the due course of nature, a playful little pioneer made his appearance, whom they bundled up in red flannel and christened Bushrod, and called Bushie—Burl's household idol.
Now, as a hunter and Indian fighter, Bushrod Reynolds had few equals, even in the Paradise—a land prolific beyond precedence of the heroic in that line. ”

“ The first English personage in burlesque, in point of historical order, is the legendary King Arthur, who was the chief figure in an "extravaganza" produced at the Haymarket in 1863. [33] Of this the author was William Brough, who owed considerably more to Malory than to Tennyson. There was a scene in which, as in the "Idylls," Vivien makes Merlin the victim of his own spell; but otherwise the laureate's withers were unwrung. Arthur (Miss Louise Keeley) becomes King of Britain by virtue of his power to draw the magic sword from the stone in which it is embedded. ”

“ Modern burlesque was fortunate indeed in its founders—all of them men of education and refinement, all of them men of letters as well as playwrights. To the literary merit of their products it is unnecessary to bear more than the briefest testimony, for it is everywhere, and by everybody, acknowledged. In the writings of these four men theatrical burlesque was seen at its best. They came fresh to the task, and made the most of their opportunities. They set themselves really to travestie and to parody, and were careful to present, amid their wildest comicalities, a definite, intelligible story. ”

“ One of them had started up the face of the cliff. It was Stark. Nadara seized a bit of rock and hurled it down upon him. He barely dodged the missile, but he desisted in his attempt to ascend to her. Now Burlinghame advanced, raising his hand, palm toward her in sign that she should not assault him. She recalled some of the language that Thandar had taught her—maybe they would understand it.
“Go-way!” she cried. “Go-way! Nadara kill bad-men.”
A look of pleasure overspread Burlinghame’s face—the girl spoke English.
“We are not bad men,” he called up to her. “We will not harm you.” ”

“ He laughed outright—a short, confident laugh which startled Burrill exceedingly.
When he went back to the library and lighted his pipe he began to stride up and down as he continued to think it over.
“I wish she was as sure as I am,” he said. “I wish she was as sure of me as I am of myself—and as I am of her.” He laughed the short, confident laugh again. “I wish she was as sure as I am of us both. We're all right. I've got to get through this, and find out what it's best to do, and I've got to show her. When I've had my chance good and plenty, us two for little old New York! Gee! ”

“ In spite of the man's unfriendliness, Burrell watched him with admiration. There were no heels to his tufted fur boots, and yet he stood a good six feet two, as straight as a pine sapling, and it needed no second glance to tell of what metal he was made. His spirit showed in his whole body, in the set of his head, and, above all, in his dark, warm face, which glowed with eagerness when he talked, and that was ever—when he was not singing.
"I never see so many people since I lef Quebec," he was saying. "She's jus' lak' beeg city—mus' be t'ree, four t'ousan' people. ”