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be3b5e1
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You mean..." Billy exclaimed at last, "you mean..." - his voice rose high and clear - "you mean..." - and he jumped to his feet, and standing there under the giant trees, pointed at himself, a small outraged boy named William Martin Quarrier, aged eight: "You mean I just came crashing down into Ma's under-pants?"
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Peter Matthiessen |
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ebada1b
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O, how incomprehensible everything was, and actually sad, although it was also beautiful. One knew nothing. One lived and ran about the earth and rode through forests, and certain things looked so challenging and promising and nostalgic: a star in the evening, a blue harebell, a reed-green pond, the eye of a person or a cow. And sometimes it seemed that something never seen yet long desired was about to happen, that a veil would drop from i..
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Peter Matthiessen |
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fbe1bb9
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Just goes to show how life leaks away when you ain't paying attention. One day you look up, look around, and the world is empty. Not empty exactly but something is wrong, there ain't no color left to life." outraged, he glared at Lucius. "Watsons long gone and Coxes moved away, Burdetts and Betheas, too. Ain't none of them good old families left. Died out or gone off to the cities, gone away like they was never here at all."
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Peter Matthiessen |
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4ed700c
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Before my eyes daily as we sailed way down upon the Suwannee River were visions of spring furrows at Clouds Creek, the warmed earth opened up behind the plow; of wildflowered meadows, cool and verdant, and airy open woods along the shaded creeks, winding southeast to the Edisto. That spring landscape turned forever and away in my mind's eye, changing softly into gold greens of upland summer in that lost land where I was born, the country of..
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Peter Matthiessen |
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ef40b58
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This bold energetic man of rare intelligence and enterprise must also be understood as a man undone by his own deep flaws. He was known to drink to grievous excess, for example, which often turned him volatile and violent. On the other hand, his evil repute has been wildly exaggerated by careless journalists and their local informants, who seek to embellish their limited acquaintance with a "desperado"; with the result that the real man has..
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Peter Matthiessen |
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2d2241d
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Watson loved them sour kind of jokes, which I enjoyed myself. I mean, ain't life some kind of a sour joke? Might's well laugh, that's the way him and me seen it, whether nice folks seen the joke or not. One time when Watson caught me grinning along with him, he give a wink and lifted up his hat.
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Peter Matthiessen |
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d662c6d
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Man wants the truth about Ed Watson," Daniels jeered. "Where you aim to find it? Smallwoods'll tell you their truth, Hardens'll tell you theirs. Fat-ass guard out there, he'll tell you his and I'll give you another. Which one you aim to settle for and make your peace with?"
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Peter Matthiessen |