A Whole Street of Houses, Stirred With A Spoon

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“ And by this time they were come up to the great iron gates in front of the house; and Tom stared through them at the rhododendrons and azaleas, which were all in flower; and then at the house itself, and wondered how many chimneys there were in it, and how long ago it was built, and what was the man’s name that built it, and whether he got much money for his job? These last were very difficult questions to answer. For Harthover had been built at ninety different times, and in nineteen different styles, and looked as if somebody had built a whole street of houses of every imaginable shape, and then stirred them together with a spoon.” —The Water-Babies, by Charles Kingsley. Ch.1 (1863)

How Wide Your Horizons?

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Travels with Charley: In Search of America"Charley is a tall dog. As he sat in the seat beside me, he head was almost as high as mine. He put his nose close to my ear and said, 'Ftt.' He is the only dog I ever knew who could pronounce the consonant F. This is because his front teeth are crooked, a tragedy which keeps him out of dog shows; because his upper front teeth slightly engage his lower lip Charley can pronounce F. The word 'Ftt" usually means he would like to salute a bush or a tree. I opened the cab door and let him out, and he went about his ceremony. He doesn't have to think about it to do it well. It my experience that in some areas Charley is more intelligent than I am, but in others he is abysmally ignorant. He can't read, can't drive a car, and has no grasp of mathematics. But in his own field of endeavor, which he was now practicing, the slow, imperial smelling over and anointing of an area, he has no peer. Of course his horizons are limited, but how wide are mine?"

(Steinbeck, "Travels With Charley," p. 24)



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