Slim

“ No girl had ever called him handsome, but he suggested the sun and the wind, virility and friendliness, with eyes that could chill and a jaw that could jut upon occasion into a welded firmness and insistency that caused his fellow riders to speak of Slim as one who did to take along. ”

“ Sahwah and the Captain worked faithfully, taking out the books and replacing them, but Katherine would stop to read, and Slim soon fell asleep with his head against the seat of a chair. Justice spied Slim after a while and began to throw magazines at him. Slim wakened with an indignant grunt and returned the volley and then the two engaged in a good-natured wrestling bout.
“I know a new trick,” said Justice. “It’s for handling a fellow twice your size. ”

“ A bunch of brisk boys—believe me!
"A bunch of brisk boys—believe me!"
Nick Dalrymple, Tod Stone, Slim Barnes—say! do you remember Slim?
Travels for a clothing house in Cincinnati and they call him Slim because he's so fat that every time he turns around he meets himself coming back.
He's all to the good—that boy is!
And such a cut-up!
Slim knows more "look-out!—there's - a - lady - over - there!" stories than any other drummer in the business.
Nick goes after the gilt things for a hardware house in Columbus and he knows everybody in the world—bar no one living. ”

“ Slim lingered. I raised my eyebrows and pointed at Wag. Slim nodded.
“The fact is,” he said in a low voice, “he got us into rather a row yesterday and we're all stopped flying for three nights.”
“Oh,” said I. “I see: you must tell him I am very sorry for being so stupid. May I ask who stopped you?”
“Oh, just the old man, not the owls.”
“You do go to the owls for something, then?” I asked, trying to appear intelligent. ”

“ He was quite well aware that Slim was playing for time and that he was too bashful to plump out the desire that was in him. “Great the way cows are jumpin’, ain’t it?”
“Sure. Well, I’ll be movin’ along to Slauson’s. I just drapped in on my way. Thought mebbe y’u hadn’t heard tell of the dance.”
“Much obliged. Was it for old man Slauson y’u dug up all them togs, Slim? He’ll ce’tainly admire to see y’u in that silk tablecloth y’u got round your neck.”
Slim’s purple deepened again. “Y’u go to grass, Mac. I don’t aim to ask y’u to be my valley yet awhile.” ”

“ Price," laughed Slim. "We hain't got to the scalpin'-part yet, but we're fixin' to dance off Payson's scalp to-night."
Peering at him with near-sighted eyes, Mr. Price extended his hand, saying: "Ah, Mr. Hoover, our sheriff, is it not?"
Slim wrung the parson's hand until the preacher winced. Hiding his discomfort, he slowly straightened out his fingers with a painful grin. Slim had not noticed that he had hurt the parson by the heartiness of his greeting. With a gesture he lined up the cowboys for introduction. ”

“ The cow-punchers all started arguing at the same time, but Slim said:
"Aw, that's all right boys; I reckon the gent knows what he wants to do. We can find somebody else, I reckon. No hard feelin's. Have another drink." ”

“ I couldn’t believe until the last moment that Slim was actually going. His departure almost compensated for the loss of Harry and Jerry. But though gone, he is not forgotten. This morning a lad came into the canteen. He would like his watch please, he said. I looked blankly at him. He explained; several days ago, just as he was leaving on a long truck-trip, he had broken the strap of his wrist watch. Happening to be in front of the Y. just then, he had brought it in and left it for safe-keeping “with the Y. man in the office.” The Chief knew nothing of it.
“What did the Y. man look like?” ”

“ I’m just spoiling for something to practice on, anyway—and he’s such a beauty. If you can get him up, lead him to the stable while I go and tell J. G. and get some one to help.” She started away.
“Whom shall I get?” she called back.
“Weary, if you can—and Slim’s a good hand with horses, too.”
“Slim—is that the tall, lanky man?”
“No—he’s the short, fat one. That bean-pole is Shorty.” ”

“ Smiths were sacred in the old days. We know that they made a secret of their trade which overrode the bounds of district, tribe, and race. A smith was welcome in any village, his person safe on the road. In fact, the roads themselves were under the protection of the gods; there was peace on them for all wayfarers. The land was wide then, and it was empty. The tribes were few and small, and there was plenty of room for the hunter, the farmer, the trader. Life was not such a scramble of man against man, but rather of man against nature——"
"No wars?" ”

“ “Smith is notoriously hot-tempered, but the sight of some nondescript and miry creature sitting cross-legged amongst a lot of loose straw, and swinging itself to and fro like a bear in a cage, made him pause. Then this tramp stood up silently before him, one mass of mud and filth from head to foot. Smith, alone amongst his stacks with this apparition, in the stormy twilight ringing with the infuriated barking of the dog, felt the dread of an inexplicable strangeness. ”

“ In spite of his exceeding mental perturbation, Simpson struggled hard to detect its nature, and define it, but the ascertaining of an elusive scent, not recognized subconsciously and at once, is a very subtle operation of the mind. And he failed. It was gone before he could properly seize or name it. Approximate description, even, seems to have been difficult, for it was unlike any smell he knew. ”

“ “It was a good hanging,” said Syme reminiscently. “I think it spoils it when they tie their feet together. I like to see them kicking. And above all, at the end, the tongue sticking right out, and blue --a quite bright blue. That’s the detail that appeals to me.” ”

“ His father thought he had a wond'rous wise look when he was born, and so he named him Solomon, thinking that if indeed he turned out to be wise the name would fit him nicely, whereas, should he be mistaken, [90] and the boy grow up stupid, his name could be easily changed to Simon. ”

“ “I, José da Silvestra, who am now dying of hunger in the little cave where no snow is on the north side of the nipple of the southernmost of the two mountains I have named Sheba’s Breasts, write this in the year 1590 with a cleft bone upon a remnant of my raiment, my blood being the ink. ”

“ Here's a story: There was a documentary filmmaker who was making a documentary film about education in America. And he's shooting across this classroom with lots of people, kids, who are completely distracted at the television in the back of the classroom. When they get back to the editing room, they realize that on the television, you can barely make out the show for two seconds; it's "The Simpsons", Homer Simpson on the screen. So they call up Matt Groening, who was a friend of the documentary filmmaker, and say, you know, "Is this going to be a problem? It's only a couple seconds.". ”

“ One pitch-dark rainy night we landed about ten o'clock at the mouth of a salmon stream when the water was phosphorescent. The salmon were running, and the myriad fins of the onrushing multitude were churning all the stream into a silvery glow, wonderfully beautiful and impressive in the ebon darkness. ”

“ Corporal Trim, as I said, had made no such bargain either with himself—or with any one else,—the fidelity however of his heart not suffering him to go into a house which his master had forsaken with disgust,—he contented himself with turning his part of the siege into a blockade;—that is, he kept others off,—for though he never after went to the house, yet he never met Bridget in the village, but he would either nod or wink, or smile, or look kindly at her,—or ”

“ Suddenly the Professor started as if he had been electrified. “Why, I had nearly forgotten the most important part of the entertainment! The Other Professor is to recite a Tale of a Pig—I mean a Pig-Tale,” he corrected himself. “It has Introductory Verses at the beginning, and at the end.”
364
“It ca’n’t have Introductory Verses at the end, can it?” said Sylvie.
“Wait till you hear it,” said the Professor: “then you’ll see. I’m not sure it hasn’t some in the middle, as well.” ”

“ Ah, Jokanaan, thou wert the man that I loved alone among men. All other men were hateful to me. But thou wert beautiful! Thy body was a column of ivory set upon feet of silver. It was a garden full of doves and lilies of silver. It was a tower of silver decked with shields of ivory. There was nothing in the world so white as thy body. There was nothing in the world so black as thy hair. In the whole world there was nothing so red as thy mouth. Thy voice was a censer that scattered strange perfumes, and when I looked on thee I heard a strange music. Ah! ”

“ No one knew his first name, and in general he was known in the country as Beauty Smith. But he was anything save a beauty. To antithesis was due his naming. He was pre-eminently unbeautiful. Nature had been niggardly with him. ”

“ It was with much satisfaction that I recognized the wisdom of having told this candid gentleman, in the beginning, that my name was Smith. ”

“ and she’s the only sylph I ever saw, who could stand upon one leg, and play the tambourine on her other knee, like a sylph.’
‘When does she come down?’ asked Nicholas. ”

“ One could mention many lovable traits in Smee. For instance, after killing, it was his spectacles he wiped instead of his weapon. ”

“ But between the busy heads and over-reaching arms he could see Charley and Sylvia, sitting close together, talking and listening more than eating. She was in a new strange state of happiness not to be reasoned about, or accounted for, but in a state of more exquisite feeling than she had ever experienced before; ”

“ Then it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ ‘Tommy, ’ow’s yer soul?’
But it’s ‘Thin red line of ’eroes’ when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it’s ‘Thin red line of ’eroes’ when the drums begin to roll. ”

“ said Bruno. “It begins miserably, and it ends miserablier. I think I shall cry. Sylvie, please lend me your handkerchief.”
374
“I haven’t got it with me,” Sylvie whispered.
“Then I won’t cry,” said Bruno manfully. ”

“ "You are not listening to a word I am saying, Jim," cried Sibyl, "and I am making the most delightful plans for your future. ”

“ It was Silver's voice, and before I had heard a dozen words, I would not have shown myself for all the world, but lay there, trembling and listening, in the extreme of fear and curiosity, for from these dozen words I understood that the lives of all the honest men aboard depended upon me alone. ”

“ "Tommy, you're a good little man, but you can't gamble worth a cent. Don't try it over again." He then handed him his money back, pushed him gently from the room, and so made a devoted slave of Tom Simson. ”

“ One late winter afternoon in Oxford Street, amid the noise of vehicles and voices that filled that dusky thoroughfare, as I was borne onward with the crowd past the great electric-lighted shops, a holy Indifference filled my thoughts. Illusion had faded from me; I was not touched by any desire for the goods displayed in those golden windows, nor had I the smallest share in the appetites and fears of all those moving and anxious faces. ”

“ Simpson, the student of divinity, it was who arranged his conclusions probably with the best, though not most scientific, appearance of order. Out there, in the heart of unreclaimed wilderness, they had surely witnessed something crudely and essentially primitive. Something that had survived somehow the advance of humanity had emerged terrifically, betraying a scale of life still monstrous and immature. He envisaged it rather as a glimpse into prehistoric ages, when superstitions, gigantic and uncouth, still oppressed the hearts of men; ”

“ It was good to go galloping over the hushed range- land with the stars just beginning to glow faintly in the darkening sky; to watch the line of hills draw back into the shadows, and to listen to the creeping wind whisper mysterious things to the grasses. ”

“ After marriage came elation, and then, gradually, the growth of weariness. Responsibility descended upon Merlin, the responsibility of making his thirty dollars a week and her twenty suffice to keep them respectably fat and to hide with decent garments the evidence that they were. ”

“ In short, Beauty Smith was a monstrosity, and the blame of it lay elsewhere. He was not responsible. The clay of him had been so moulded in the making. ”

“ To quote a dictum of Simon, what a horse does under compulsion he does blindly, and his performance is no more beautiful than would be that of a ballet-dancer taught by whip and goad. ”

“ ‘Wery good power o’ suction, Sammy,’ said Mr. Weller the elder, looking into the pot, when his first-born had set it down half empty. ‘You’d ha’ made an uncommon fine oyster, Sammy, if you’d been born in that station o’ life.’
‘Yes, I des-say, I should ha’ managed to pick up a respectable livin’,’ replied Sam applying himself to the cold beef, with considerable vigour. ”

“ You could lay that down for a rule—if you met a man who was rising in Packingtown, you met a knave. That man who had been sent to Jurgis's father by the boss, he would rise; the man who told tales and spied upon his fellows would rise; but the man who minded his own business and did his work—why, they would "speed him up" till they had worn him out, and then they would throw him into the gutter. ”

“ Every social occurrence as such, consists of an interaction between individuals. In other words, each individual is at the same time an active and a passive agent in a transaction. In case of superiority and inferiority, however, the relation assumes the appearance of a one-sided operation; the one party appears to exert, while the other seems merely to receive an influence. ”

“ To ask the master for a knife, or skillet, or any small convenience of the kind, would be answered with a kick, or laughed at as a joke. Whatever necessary article of this nature is found in a cabin has been purchased with Sunday money. ”