I could get a job of work, or I could step into a saloon I’d been running Red, my big sorrel gelding, for I don’t know how long, glancing over my shoulder every minute, expecting to see somebody. I glanced again and didn’t see nobody. So, I slowed Red to…

An old baker looks at his life and tries to find some value in it Theophilus Jones leaned forward, peered into an oven in his bakery, and saw a loaf of bread. “A minute more,” he said. He closed the oven and straightened, then grimaced and grabbed his back. …

Why does anyone speak and write in terms of something else? — In Modern American Usage, Wilson Follett says that the construction “in terms of” has become extremely popular: “The rage for expressing everything in terms of something else is a disease traceable to college-catalogue English. From 1900 on a college course was hardly respectable if it did not offer to present…

Both make you feel bad — In The Careful Writer, Theodore M. Bernstein offers this observation about the words envy and jealousy: “One might almost say that these two words are used as if they were interchangeable.” But, he continues, “the words are scarcely synonymous.” Envy, according to Bernstein, means “discontented longing for someone else’s advantages.”…

How precise do we want to be? — When we say or write something like “All people aren’t selfish,” everyone understands us — even though we’ve said or written the opposite of what we mean. What we mean is that some people are not selfish; what we’ve said or written is that no one is selfish: literally, “All…

Two old prospectors discover a treasure in a mountain range way to hell and gone from anywhere — Wearing packs and carrying picks, Barnabas Mills and Malachi Murray trudged along a trail on a mountain range way to hell and gone from anywhere. Barnabas scratched his gray beard, then rubbed his red nose. “Smell something?” he asked. Malachi sniffed. “No,” he answered. “You?” “If I had, I wouldn’ta…

Do UFOs and space aliens really exist? — This morning, I came home from my job as a night security guard at the local bank. I usually can’t go to sleep right away, so I did what I often do: I grabbed a beer, turned on the television, and plopped down in my favorite chair. On the television…

What’s the difference? — For years, I’d heard and read about writers with talent and writers of genius. I had a vague notion of the difference between them: writers with talent were very good, and writers of genius were better. Then, in Don Fernando; or, Variations on Some Spanish Themes, by W. …

Two statesmen meet in Washington, D.C., and show us two ways of dealing with antagonists — Henry Clay despised John Randolph. He despised his boorish manner, his idiotic policies, and his sunny disposition — especially his sunny disposition. According to Randolph, everything was fine with everything; according to Clay, nothing was fine with anything. Unsurprisingly, then, when Clay stood on Pennsylvania Avenue at high noon on…