Americans' lack of passion for history is well known. History may not quite be bunk, as Henry Ford suggested, but there's no denying that, as a people, we sustain a passionate concentration on the present and the future.

Live through it," Call said. "That's all we can do.

Most young dealers of the Silicon Chip Era regard a reference library as merely a waste of space. Old Timers on the West Coast seem to retain a fondness for reference books that goes beyond the practical. Everything there is to know about a given volume may be only a click away, but there are still a few of us who'd rather have the book than the click. A bookman's love of books is a love of books, not merely of the information in them.

Listening to women ain't the fashion in this part of the country.

I don't see how being married could be any worse than listening to you talk for twenty years, but that still ain't much of a recommendation for it.

Only a rank degenerate would drive 1,500 miles across Texas without eating a chicken fried steak.

I'm sure partial to the evening,' Augustus said. 'The evening and the morning. If we just didn't have to have the rest of the dern day I'd be a lot happier.