A Book-Lover’s Holidays in the Open quotes

He must long greatly for the lonely winds that blow across the wilderness, and for sunrise and sunset over the rim of the empty world.

His heart must thrill for the saddle and not for the hearthstone.

He must be helmsman and chief, the cragsman, the rifleman, the boat steerer. He must be the wielder of axe and of paddle, the rider of fiery horses, the master of the craft that leaps through white water.

He can journey through the northern forests, the home of the giant moose, the forests of fragrant and murmuring life in summer, the iron-bound and melancholy forests of winter.

The joy of living is his who has the heart to demand it.

Sagamore Hill, January 1, 1916.

On July 14, 1913, our party gathered at the comfortable El Tovar Hotel, on the edge of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, and therefore overlooking the most wonderful scenery in the world. The moon was full.

Dim, vast, mysterious, the canyon lay in the shimmering radiance.

To all else that is strange and beautiful in nature the Canyon stands as Karnak and Baalbec, seen by moonlight, stand to all other ruined temples and palaces of the bygone ages.

Uncle Jim hunted his hounds excellently. He had neither horn nor whip; instead, he threw pebbles, with much accuracy of aim, at any recalcitrant dog—and several showed a tendency to hunt deer or coyote.

“They think they know best and needn’t obey me unless I have a nosebag full of rocks,” observed Uncle Jim.

Twice we had lucky days. On the first occasion we all seven left camp by sunrise with the hounds.

It was a wild sight. The maddened hounds bayed at the foot of the pine.

Above them, in the lower branches, stood the big horse-killing cat, the destroyer of the deer, the lord of stealthy murder, facing his doom with a heart both craven and cruel.

Almost beneath him the vermilion cliffs fell sheer a thousand feet without a break. Behind him lay the Grand Canyon in its awful and desolate majesty.

All were ruins—ruins vaster than those of any structures ever reared by the hands of men—as if some magic city, built by warlocks and sorcerers, had been wrecked by the wrath of the elder gods.

Evil dwelt in the silent places; from battlement to lonely battlement fiends’ voices might have raved

; in the utter desolation of each empty valley the squat blind tower might have stood, and giants lolled at length to see the death of a soul at bay.

In one place a little stream trickled forth at the bottom of a ravine, but even here no grass grew—only little clusters of a coarse weed with flaring white flowers that looked as if it throve on poisoned soil.

In the still heat “we saw the silences move by and beckon.”

The cliffs were channelled into myriad forms—battlements, spires, pillars, buttressed towers, flying arches; they looked like the ruined castles and temples of the monstrous devil-deities of some vanished race.

They showed us every courtesy. Mentioning the abandoned trading-post in the desert to the wife of the trader, she told us that it was there she had gone as a bride.

The women who live in the outposts of civilization have brave souls!

We rested the horses for a day, and then started northward, toward the trading-station of John Wetherill, near Navajo Mountain and the Natural Bridge. The first day’s travel was through heavy sand and very tiring to the teams.

Next morning the red dawn and the flushed clouds that heralded the sunrise were very lovely.

Only those who live and sleep in the open fully realize the beauty of dawn and moonlight and starlight.

As we journeyed southward the land grew more arid; and the water was scarce and bad. In the afternoon we camped on a dry mud-flat, not far from a Navajo sheep-farmer, who soon visited us. Two Navajos were travelling with us; merry, pleasant fellows.

It is mere tyranny, for instance, to stop all Indian dances. Some which are obscene, or which are dangerous on other grounds, must be prohibited. Others should be permitted, and many of them encouraged.

Nothing that tells for the joy of life, in any community, should be lightly touched.

A few Indians may be able to turn themselves into ordinary citizens in a dozen years. Give these exceptional Indians every chance; but remember that the majority must change gradually, and that it will take generations to make the change complete.

With frowning majesty. Tell Gouvimali he knows that I have treated him very, very well; besides his wages, I have given him tea and sugar and tobacco and a red blanket.

Ali translates with the thunderous eloquence of Cicero against Verres; Verres writhes.

Eith hands raised at the thought of such magnificent generosity. Oh, what a good Bwana!

and during the hunt I saw elephant, giraffe, buffalo, straw-colored Nile hartebeest, and roan antelope, as big as horses, with shining coats which melted in ghostly fashion into the shimmering heat haze of the dry landscape.

In short, for months my companions and I travelled and hunted in the Pleistocene.

Man and beasts alike were of types our own world knew only in an incalculably remote past. My gun-bearers were really men such as those of later Palaeolithic times.

The equation of personal taste is as powerful in reading as in eating; and within certain broad limits the matter is merely one of individual preference, having nothing to do with the quality either of the book or of the reader’s mind.

I like apples, pears, oranges, pineapples, and peaches. I dislike bananas, alligator-pears, and prunes.

The first fact is certainly not to my credit, although it is to my advantage; and the second at least does not show moral turpitude.

It is only a very exceptional novel which I will read if He does not marry Her; and even in exceptional novels I much prefer this consummation.

I am not defending my attitude. I am merely stating it.

Therefore it would be quite useless for me to try to explain why I read certain books. As to how and when, my answers must be only less vague. I almost always read a good deal in the evening;

To me the heading employed by some reviewers when they speak of “books of the week” comprehensively damns both the books themselves and the reviewer who is willing to notice them.

I would much rather see the heading “books of the year before last.”

A book of the year before last which is still worth noticing would probably be worth reading; but one only entitled to be called a book of the week had better be tossed into the wastebasket at once.

it is illuminating.

If any man feels too gloomy about the degeneracy of our people from the standards of their forefathers, let him read Martin Chuzzlewit; it will be consoling.

If the attitude of this nation toward foreign affairs and military preparedness at the present day seems disheartening, a study of the first fifteen years of the nineteenth century will at any rate give us whatever comfort we can extract from the fact that our …

The Audubon societies, and all similar organizations, are doing a great work for the future of our country. Birds should be saved because of utilitarian reasons; and, moreover, they should be saved because of reasons unconnected with any return in dollars and cents.

A grove of giant redwoods or sequoias should be kept just as we keep a great and beautiful cathedral.

The extermination of the passenger-pigeon meant that mankind was just so much poorer; exactly as in the case of the destruction of the cathedral at Rheims.

Birds should be saved because of utilitarian reasons; and, moreover, they should be saved because of reasons unconnected with any return in dollars and cents. A grove of giant redwoods or sequoias should be kept just as we keep a great and beautiful cathedral.

The extermination of the passenger-pigeon meant that mankind was just so much poorer; exactly as in the case of the destruction of the cathedral at Rheims.

And to lose the chance to see frigate-birds soaring in circles above the storm, or a file of pelicans winging their way homeward across the crimson afterglow of the sunset, or a myriad terns flashing in the bright light of midday as they hover in …

Beyond question many of the faunas which seem to us contemporary when their remains are found associated with those of prehistoric man were really successive and may have alternated again and again before one or both finally disappeared.

Life is rarely static, rarely in a state of stable equilibrium.

Often it is in a condition of unstable equilibrium, with continual oscillations one way and the other. More often still, while there are many shifts to and fro, the general tendency of change is with slow steadiness in one direction.

Gentle-voiced Arthur, in his delightful habitant’s French, said that the incident was “pas mal curieux.” He used “pas mal” as a superlative. The first time he used it I was completely bewildered. It was hot and sultry, and

Arthur remarked that the day was “pas mal mort.”

How the day could be “not badly dead” I could not imagine, but the proper translation turned out to be “a very lifeless day,” which was true.