It is my heart-warmed and world-embracing Christmas hope and aspiration that all of us, the high, the low, the rich, the poor, the admired, the despised, the loved, the hated, the civilized, the savage (every man and brother of us all throughout the whole earth), may eventually be gathered together in a heaven of everlasting rest and peace and bliss, except the inventor of the telephone.
I was warned to stop smoking, which I did, for two or three days, but it was too lonesome, and I have resumed - in a modified way - 4 smokes a day instead of 40. This will have a good effect. On the bank balance.
[I] shall never use profanity except in discussing house rent and taxes. Indeed, upon second thought, I will not use it then, for it is unchristian, inelegant, and degrading--though to speak truly I do not see how house rent and taxes are going to be discussed worth a cent without it.
When I'm playful I use the meridians of longitude and parallels of latitude for a seine, and drag the Atlantic Ocean for whales. I scratch my head with the lightning and purr myself to sleep with the thunder.
We teach them to take their patriotism at second-hand; to shout with the largest crowd without examining into the right or wrong of the matter -- exactly as boys under monarchies are taught and have always been taught. We teach them to regard as traitors, and hold in aversion and contempt, such as do not shout with the crowd, and so here in our democracy we are cheering a thing which of all things is most foreign to it and out of place -- the delivery of our political conscience into somebody else's keeping. This is patriotism on the Russian plan.
I cannot see the short, white curls Upon the forehead of an Ox, But what I see them dripping with That poor thing's blood, and hear the ax; When I see calves and lambs, I see Them led to death; I see no bird Or rabbit cross the open field But what a sudden shot is heard; A shout that tells me men aim true, For death or wound, doth chill me through. W.H. Davies I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me.