Monthly Archives: August 2010

“Old Bill” Suggests— In quiet English villages a few hundred years ago, where character was judged by critics on the basis of lifelong observation in the terrifying intimacy of a small community, the gossips used to say, of some dynamic soul, … Continue reading →

“Old Bill” Suggests— In the lifetime of Robert South (1634-1716) most of the things which are commonplace today were still impossible outside of witchcraft. All modern science, the automobile, bicycle, electric light, railroad, stocks, bonds, washing machines, were even beyond imagination. … Continue reading →

“Old Bill” Suggests— There is a line between faith and gullibility that resembles the decision of a surgeon as to bearing the disease or risking an operation. Most accomplishments have been based on faith that was well founded. When belief was … Continue reading →

“Old Bill” Suggests— An ounce of specific example is sometimes worth a ton of preaching based on theory. One of the reasons that the present generation looks favorably on drinking—just the other day, revisiting a little town of 1,200 inhabitants, … Continue reading →

“Old Bill” Suggests— A gentle and courteous man, with a fine character under his courtesy, wrote 200 years ago: “Let no complaisance, no gentleness of temper, no weak desire of pleasing on your part, no wheedling, coaxing or flattery on other … Continue reading →

“Old Bill” Suggests— Modern science has traced life of this earth back through at least 5,000,000 years of forests, mammals and flowering plants; 10,000,000 years of reptiles, ferns and warm, shallow seas, and another 25,000,000 years to the first abundant fossils, mostly … Continue reading →

“Old Bill” Suggests— . . . . “Every life has pages vacant still. Whereon a man may write the thing he will.” From a padded armchair, that would be tosh. From Henry Van Dyke it was not. Stern, spare, with … Continue reading →

“Old Bill” Suggests— Erich Von Falkenhayn, in many ways one of the best of the German generals, is described as “tall, slim, with a particularly youthful face, in which were a pair of very sharp and clever but sarcastic eyes, … Continue reading →

“Old Bill” Suggests— Many years ago George Thomas Lanigan, author or immortal verses on the Akhoond of Swat (a real person dwelling adjaacent to the Persian gulf), also wrote some eastern fables. A kind-hearted she-elephant, he said, was walking through … Continue reading →

“Old Bill” Suggests— The famous “public be dammed” phrase of William E. Vanderbilt two generations ago is said in some financial circles to have been misquoted. As that is the usual claim of a man who lost his temper and said … Continue reading →