Rebecca H. Davis
Rebecca H. Davis
breath parts
The sun, the earth, love, friends, our very breath are parts of the banquet.
glad laborer patriotic truly
You were only truly patriotic if you had a laborer for a grandfather and were glad of it.
closely glow good helped luminous man path rule shines summer talk ugly whose wise words worm
It is a good rule never to see or talk to the man whose words have wrung your heart, or helped it, just as it is wise not to look down too closely at the luminous glow which sometimes shines on your path on a summer night, if you would not see the ugly worm below.
chimney corner days difference driving grow meanings moving sitting slow
Sitting by the chimney corner as we grow old, the commonest things around us take on live meanings and hint at the difference between these driving times and the calm, slow moving days when we were young.
blue details gray great man philip prefer unpleasant wore
We don't often look into these unpleasant details of our great struggle. We all prefer to think that every man who wore the blue or gray was a Philip Sidney at heart.
fault vanity
But, after all, we are a young nation, and vanity is a fault of youth.
alien man monstrous
Crime, to the man of the forties, was an alien monstrous terror.
bargain captain driving foremost heart poet
You will find the poet who wrings the heart of the world, or the foremost captain of his time, driving a bargain or paring a potato, just as you would do.
america great poets
America may have great poets and novelists, but she never will have more than one necromancer.
agent american-celebrity chief child cradle flesh money taught
Every child was taught from his cradle that money was Mammon, the chief agent of the flesh and the devil.
childhood henry hero known
The only hero known to my childhood was Henry Clay.
business chief grown increase life
We have grown used to money. The handling, the increase of it, is the chief business of life now with most of us.
agreed call happened meet men whom
It has happened to me to meet many of the men of my day whom the world agreed to call great.
man memory short surely
No man surely has so short a memory as the American.