Huckleberry was always dressed in the cast-off clothes of full-grown men, and they were in perennial bloom and fluttering with rags. His hat was a vast ruin with a wide crescent lopped out of its brim; his coat, when he wore one, hung nearly to his heels and had the rearward buttons far down the back; but one suspender supported his trousers; the seat of the trousers bagged low and contained nothing, the fringed legs dragging in the dirt when not rolled up.
– Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
My love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep
As it is lasting, so be deep!
Soft may the worms about her creep!
– Edgar Allan Poe, “The Sleeper”
“Upon her face there was the tint of grief,
The settled shadow of an inward strife,
And an unquiet drooping of the eye,
As if its lids were charged with unshed tears.”
For an instant the buried tenderness of early youth and the fluttering hopes which accompanied it, seemed to have revived in his bosom, and the idea to have flashed upon his mind that his image might be connected with her secret woes–but he rejected the thought almost as soon as formed.
– Washington Irving, Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey
Soon to embark (aerially) for Florida.
I see that I recorded the following, a bit more than a year ago:
I may be at an advantage [in the United States], living in a society where being able to earn one’s living by composition, and by composition alone, has throughout this nation’s history been the exception. What are the principal lessons?
1. There is, in fact, no correlation (direct or inverse) between whether I can earn my living as a composer, and the quality of my work.
2. Some motivation other than monetary success is required for me to pursue my work. If instead, my motivation is the desire to do the best work I am capable of, then this actually may prove an artistic advantage.
Damn the torpedoes.
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