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. . . HOOVER (J. EDGAR) see "CRIME & PUNISHMENT" for related links see "PEOPLE" for related links "Hoover's Institution" By Laurence H. Silberman _The Wall Street Journal_ [July 20, 2005] [. . . ] I became deputy attorney general in early 1974, after the "Saturday night massacre." Having seen printed rumors of the "secret and confidential files" of J. Edgar Hoover (who had died in 1972), I asked Clarence Kelly, the very straight and honorable director of the bureau, whether they existed. He assured me that they did not. If they ever did they must have been destroyed. I was shocked then, when on Jan. 19, 1975, as acting attorney general, I read a front page story in the Washington Post confirming the existence of the files. The story pointed out that the files contained embarrassing material collected on congressmen. When I confronted Kelly, he was initially mystified. He then realized the Post must be referring to files in his outer office, in plain sight, which he had inherited but never examined. Sure enough, they were the notorious secret and confidential files of J. Edgar Hoover. The House Judiciary Committee demanded I testify about those files, so I was obliged to read them. Accompanied by only one FBI official, I read virtually all these files in three weekends. It was the single worst experience of my long governmental service. Hoover had indeed tasked his agents with reporting privately to him any bits of dirt on figures such as Martin Luther King, or their families. Hoover sometimes used that information for subtle blackmail to ensure his and the bureau's power. I intend to take to my grave nasty bits of information on various political figures some still active. As bad as the dirt collection business was, perhaps even worse was the evidence that he had allowed even offered the bureau to be used by presidents for nakedly political purposes. I have always thought that the most heinous act in which a democratic government can engage is to use its law enforcement machinery for political ends. We attempted, without going into specifics, to explain to the committee the nature of Hoover's secret files. I intend now to be more specific because I see no reason why such matters should not be public. Indeed, from my subsequent vantage point as ambassador to Yugoslavia, I was rather surprised that the Church Committee, which had access to the files, largely ignored the FBI's misdeeds and concentrated instead on rather less objectionable CIA activities. We told the committee that the bureau had sought, at the direction of a political figure, to gather unfavorable information on his opponent during an election campaign. Rep. Herman Badillo of New York pressed me to admit that it was an investigation of Allard Lowenstein, an antiwar candidate running against Rep. John Rooney, the powerful chairman of an appropriations panel with jurisdiction over the FBI. I repeatedly denied that and finally said it involved the presidential campaign of 1964. Shortly thereafter, Don Edwards, the chairman, terminated the hearing. But reporters dug out more facts. Only a few weeks before the 1964 election, a powerful presidential assistant, Walter Jenkins, was arrested in a men's room in Washington. Evidently, the president was concerned that Barry Goldwater would use that against him in the election. Another assistant, Bill Moyers, was tasked to direct Hoover to do an investigation of Goldwater's staff to find similar evidence of homosexual activity. Mr. Moyers' memo to the FBI was in one of the files. When the press reported this, I received a call in my office from Mr. Moyers. Several of my assistants were with me. He was outraged; he claimed that this was another example of the Bureau salting its files with phony CIA memos. I was taken aback. I offered to conduct an investigation, which if his contention was correct, would lead me to publicly exonerate him. There was a pause on the line and then he said, "I was very young. How will I explain this to my children?" And then he rang off. I thought to myself that a number of the Watergate figures, some of whom the department was prosecuting, were very young, too. Other presidents, according to those files, misused the bureau, although never Truman and Eisenhower. But Johnson clearly was the most demanding. This discovery was particularly painful for me. Although I was a life-long Republican, I had not only voted for LBJ, I had signed an ad supporting him, which got me ejected from the Hawaii Young Republicans. In 1968 the FBI, at the president's direction, actually surveilled Spiro Agnew, the Republican vice-presidential candidate. To be sure, as subsequent events revealed, Agnew might well have been under surveillance when, as governor of Maryland, he was taking bribes; but in 1968 it was for the purpose of determining whether he was in contact with South Vietnamese leaders. It was not for law- enforcement purposes. Incidentally, the FBI never determined that he was in contact with the South Vietnamese. It was not only Republicans that Johnson targeted with the FBI. He must have been obsessed with the Kennedy political threat because he used the bureau to determine whether officials in his administration were too close to Robert Kennedy after Kennedy left the administration. Ironically, one of his White House assistants, whom he inherited from JFK and was a particular subject of this sort of surveillance, is now married to LBJ's biographer. I refer to Richard Goodwin, the husband of Doris Kearns Goodwin. Some of Johnson's suspicions of the Kennedys were rather amusing. He became convinced that the Washington Star was secretly owned by the Kennedy family and that is why he received less favorable coverage from the Star than from the Post. He insisted that Hoover unearth those connections. Hoover plaintively tried to explain that the Star was owned by the Kauffmann family and that they were Republicans. But surely the most bizarre episode that I discovered (and can reveal) involves the investigation and trial of Bobby Baker, who had been LBJ's top Senate aide. To say that the president was apprehensive about this episode would be a dramatic understatement. The investigation and trial took place when Bobby Kennedy was attorney general and Jack Miller the assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division. During the investigation of Baker's Senate activities, Miller asked the FBI to wire a potential witness. To his astonishment Hoover responded with the ridiculous assertion that it would be improper. Of course, Hoover promptly reported this to LBJ as he had many activities of the Kennedy Justice Department. However, Miller was not to be deterred. With Kennedy's approval he called a special assistant to Treasury Secretary Henry Fowler to gain help from Treasury agents. The assistant arranged the help and Baker was convicted. Much later, toward the end of the Johnson administration, Hoover discovered Miller's end-around and duly reported it to LBJ, who, furious, demanded that Fowler fire the assistant. Fowler refused. That assistant was Robert Jordan, my Harvard Law School classmate, subsequently general counsel of the Army and later my partner at Steptoe & Johnson. Hoover's shenanigans may well be the genesis of Watergate. I noted in the files that he had an early private meeting with the new President Nixon. I surmised that he must have let Nixon know something of what he had done for prior presidents; it would have been too dangerous not to. I further suspect that Nixon, whose ethical standards were quite relative, would have concluded he should have the same services that were available to his predecessors. But he didn't trust Hoover totally, so he set up his own political intelligence gathering network outside the FBI the plumbers. During Watergate, Nixon would occasionally mutter that prior presidents were culpable of secret political intelligence investigations. He even suggested that the Justice Department should substantiate that claim. We ignored him, but I am sure he would have seized on the Post's revelations of the secret files if they had appeared earlier. [. . . ]  ;void(0)) HOPE . . see: "WISHING" see "EMOTIONS & FEELINGS" for other related links He who has health, has hope; and he who has hope, has everything. --Arab proverb Hope is a waking dream. --Aristotle (384322 B.C.) Greek philosopher. In Diogenes Laertius _Lives of Eminent Philosophers_. Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper. --Francis Bacon (15611626) English philosopher and essayist. Happy season of virtuous youth, when shame is still an impassable barrier, and the sacred air-cities of hope have not shrunk into the mean clay hamlets of reality; and man, by his nature, is yet infinite and free. --Thomas Carlyle (17951881) Scottish historian and political philosopher Whether you believe or disbelieve, it is a wicked thing to take away Man's hope. --Winston Churchill (18741965) British Conservative statesman and Prime Minister [19401945, 19511955]. If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars. --Arthur Hugh Clough (18191861) English poet. "Say Not the Struggle Nought Availeth" [1855] Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate! (All hope abandon, ye who enter here!) --Dante Alighieri (12651321) Italian poet, literary theorist, and moral philosopher. _La dinina commedia_ (The Divine Comedy) [c. 1310-1321] canto 3, l. 9 [Words written over the entrance to Hell.] Totally without hope one cannot live. To live without hope is to cease to live. Hell is hopelessness. It is no accident that above the entrance to Dante's hell is the inscription: 'Leave behind all hope, you who enter here.' --Fyodor Dostoyevsky (18211881), Russian novelist, journalist, and short story writer. If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us; for no age is so apt as youth to think its emotions, partings, and resolves are the last of their kind. --George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans] (18191880) English novelist. _Middlemarch_ [1871-1872] He that lives upon hope will die fasting. --Benjamin Franklin (17061790) American politician, inventor, and scientist. _Poor Richard's Almanack_ [1758] Hope, the best comfort of our imperfect condition. --Edward Gibbon (17371794) English historian. _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire _ [1776-1788] Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart, And you'll never walk alone. --Oscar Hammerstein II (18951960) American songwriter. "You'll Never Walk Alone" [1945 song] Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. --Vaclav Havel (1936 ) First President of the Czech Republic. _Disturbing the Peace_ [1986] Nil desperandum. Never despair. --Horace [Quintus Horatius Flaccus] (658 BC) Roman poet. _Odes_ Hope is the universal liar who never loses his reputation for veracity. --Robert Green Ingersoll (18331899) American politician and orator know as "the great agnostic." Speaking at the Manhattan Liberal Club [February 1892]. - Where there is no hope, there can be no endeavor. --Samuel Johnson (17091784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. In "The Rambler" (English journal), 110 [6 April 1751]. The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope. --Samuel Johnson (17091784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. "The Rambler" (English journal), [24 March 1750] - Hope is the feeling you have that the feeling you have isn't permanent. --Jean Kerr (19232003) American writer, [wife of Walter Kerr]. _Finishing Touches_, ch. 3, [1974] We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope. --Martin Luther King, Jr. (19291968) American civil rights leader. 'Tis always morning somewhere. --Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (18071882) American poet. "The Birds of Killingworth" in _Tales of a Wayside Inn_ [1886]. For where no hope is left, is left no fear. --John Milton (16081674) English poet. _Paradise Regained_ [1671], bk.3. l. 206 After all, tomorrow is another day. --Margaret Mitchell (19001949) American novelist. _Gone with the WInd_ [1936] When Abraham Lincoln was murdered The one thing that interested Matthew Arnold Was that the assassin shouted in Latin As he lept on the stage. This convinced Matthew That there was still hope for America. --Christopher Morley (18901957) American journalist, novelist, and poet. _Points of View_ Since I gave up hope, I feel so much better. --John Osborne (19291994) English playwright. Sign displayed in home _Independent_ [26 April 1994]. Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always to be blest. The soul, uneasy and confined from home, Rests and expatiates in a life to come. --Alexander Pope (16881744) English poet. "Essay on Man" Epistle 1 [1733] l. 95 If it were not for *hope* the heart would break. --John Ray (16271705) English naturalist and botanist. _A Collection of English Proverbs_ p. 156 [1678] What makes old age so sad is, not that our joys, but that our hopes cease. --Jean Paul Richter (17631825) German novelist. Anticipation and Hope are born twins. --Jean Jacques Rousseau (17121778) French philosopher and novelist. While there's life, there's hope. --Terence [Publius Terentius Afer] (c. 190159 BC) Roman comic dramatist. _Heuton timoroumenos_, 1, 981 As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left us in a bad time. --E.B. [Elwyn Brooks] White (18991985) American essayist and literary stylist. _Letter to Mr. Nadeau_ [30 March 1973]. Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful. If we could only be miserable all the time, if there could be no such thing as love or beauty or faith or hope, if I could be absolutely certain that my love would never be returned: how much more simple life would be. One could plod to the Siberian salt mines of existence without being bothered about happiness. Unfortunately the happiness is there. There is always the chance that another heart will come to mine. I can't help hoping and keeping faith, and loving beauty. Quite frequently I am not so miserable as it would be wise to be. --T. H. [Terence Hanbury] White (19061964) English novelist. _The Troll_ Behind the cloud the starlight lurks, Through showers the sunbeams fall; For God, who loveth all His works, Has left His hope with all. --John Greenleaf Whittier (18071892) American poet. "A Dream of Summer" [1847] - It's not the despair, Laura. I can take the despair. It's the hope. --Brian Stimpson (John Cleese), in the movie _Clockwise_.  . . Photograph: Bob Hope in Vietnam. Bob [Leslie Townes] Hope (19032003) British-born American entertainer and actor. see "HUMOR" for related links see "PEOPLE" for related links ON TURNING 70 "You still chase women, but only downhill". ON TURNING 80 "That's the time of your life when even your birthday suit needs pressing." ON TURNING 90 "You know you're getting old when the candles cost more than the cake." ON TURNING 100 " I don't feel old. In fact I don't feel anything until noon. Then it's time for my nap." ON GIVING UP HIS EARLY CAREER, BOXING "I ruined my hands in the ring ... the referee kept stepping on them." ON SAILORS "They spend the first six days of each week sowing their wild oats, then they go to church on Sunday and pray for crop failure." ON NEVER WINNING AN OSCAR "Welcome to the Academy Awards or, as it's called at my home, 'Passover'." ON HIS FAMILY'S EARLY POVERTY "Four of us slept in the one bed. When it got cold, mother threw on another brother." ON HIS SIX BROTHERS "That's how I learned to dance. Waiting for the bathroom." ON HIS EARLY FAILURES "I would not have had anything to eat if it wasn't for the stuff the audience threw at me." ON GOING TO HEAVEN "I've done benefits for ALL religions. I'd hate to blow the hereafter on a technicality." - If you only remember one thing about him, it's this: Bob Hope has made more people laugh than anyone in human history. He's the only comedian to have been, over the years, the Number One star in radio, in film, and then television, at a time when each of those media was at its highpoint. --Mark Steyn (1959 ) Canadian journalist. "Comedy, Inc." Younger comics who for 30 years have despised Hope as a pro-war establishment suck-up forget that he more or less invented the form they work in: the relaxed guy who strolls on and does topical observational gags about the world we live in. When he started eight decades ago, there were no "stand-ups"; it was an age of clowns weird-looking guys in goofy costumes taking frenzied pratfalls and telling ethnic gags in stage dialects German, Irish, Negro. --ibid Over the decades, vaudeville died, and so did Broadway revue, radio comedy, Hollywood musicals and TV variety, but Hope never died with them. By the time NBC let him go in 1997, the world's only 94-year old stand-up act could barely see the cue cards and hardly hear his co-stars. But he could hear the laughter. --ibid The old Broadway saw - "Nobody likes it but the public" could be made for Hope. He'll never be intellectualized or taught in college, which is as it should be: he worked hard at being breezy, and it paid off. --ibid He only put his foot wrong once. He was the American everyman and he wanted to be every man's American, fun for young and old alike. But Vietnam placed huge strains on that notion of a universal popular culture. For the first time in his career, Hope had to choose sides ... Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon can complain about the way "speaking out" on Iraq is hurting their careers, but Hope's a sharper example of how taking sides can change public perception: In a late Sixties poll of American high schools' favorite entertainers, he came second to the Beatles. By the time the war ended, he'd lost that generation forever. --ibid And strictly entre nous Darling, how are you? And how are all those funny dreams that never did come true? Awf'lly glad I met you Cheerio and toodle-oo And thank you so much. --"Thanks for the Memories" quoted ibid - ;void(0)) . . Photograph: Secretariat winning the 1973 Belmont Stakes by 31 lengths. In doing so he became the first horse in 25 years to win the Triple Crown. ps: I was there....wearing a red shirt...can you see me? see "ANIMALS" for related links see "ENTERTAINMENT, HOBBIES, & LEISURE ACTIVITIES" for related links see "SPORTS" for related links Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people. --W. C. Fields [William Claude Dukenfield] (18801946) American vaudeville star and film actor. Gwine to run all night! Gwine to run all day! I bet my money on de bob-tail nag, Somebody bet on de bay. --Stephen Collins Foster (18261864) American composer. "Camptown Races" [1850] The only man who makes money following the races is the one who does so with a broom and shovel. --Elbert Hubbard (18591915) American editor, publisher, and author who died in the sinking of the "Lusitania." _The Roycroft Dictionary and Book of Epigrams_ [1923] ^ In a thoroughbred-industry poll a few years ago naming the 100 greatest racehorses of the 20th century, the immortal Man o' War emerged the runaway winner, followed by two renowned holders of the Triple Crown, Secretariat and Citation. In fourth place came a scrawny little gelding that had more starts, won more races, won more money, set more track records, carried heavier weights and won over a greater variety of distances -- on dirt and grass -- than any of the illustrious trio of racehorses ahead of him in the voting. He was Kelso, whose dazzling exploits won him the title Horse of the Year five years in succession, an unprecedented feat, and enshrined him as one of the enduring legends of the turf. Today, nearly a quarter of a century after his death, Kelso finally has his own biography, written by a fan, Linda Kennedy, who first saw Kelso win the Whitney Stakes at Saratoga in 1963 when she was 15. It was the start of a lifelong fascination. [. . . ] Bred in 1957 by Allaire du Pont and reared on her Maryland farm, Kelso was a most unpromising foal at birth. He was "unusually small, painfully thin and outwardly fragile." His handlers called him a runt. Worse, he was downright ornery. He was so intractable, kicking, biting and tossing his riders, that the decision was made to geld him. His esteemed trainer, Carl Hanford, would say later that Kelso was so lightly regarded that no one bothered even to enter him in the Kentucky Derby or the other Triple Crown classics. His owner wanted nothing more than to sell him. But Kelso quickly set them right when he was unleashed on the racetrack. From his first race, at Atlantic City, N.J., on Sept. 4, 1959, which he won easily, Kelso went on a winning binge that stopped only when he was retired in 1966. In his second start as a three-year-old at New York's Aqueduct racetrack, Kelso ran the fastest mile ever recorded by a three-year-old in 295 years of racing. And that was only the beginning. Everywhere he went he seemed to set or equal track records, from nine furlongs to two miles. He did it on fast tracks and muddy tracks, dirt and grass. Kelso achieved all this while carrying staggeringly high weights, conceding 15 pounds and more to some of the fastest young horses in the country, horses of such memorable star quality as Carry Back, Beau Purple, Gun Bow, Crimson Satan and Never Bend. [ . . . ] At the end, Eddie Arcaro, the prince of all American jockeys, would say of him: "Kelso was the greatest horse I ever rode." Statistics tell much of the story. Kelso had 63 starts for 39 wins, 12 seconds and 2 thirds. His record, someone said, "reads as if it was made up." In 50 stakes races, only one horse ever passed him in the stretch. Kelso was, said the venerable turf columnist Joe Hirsch, "a champion of champions." Kelso died of colic on Oct. 16, 1983, the day after he had paraded at Belmont Park with two other great geldings, Forego and John Henry, and 18 years after his last race. He was buried on Mrs. du Pont's Maryland farm. On his tombstone are inscribed just six words: "Where He Gallops, The Earth Sings." --Ray Kerrison "The Golden Gelding" reviewing Linda Kennedy Westholme _Kelso_ _The Wall Street Journal_ [2 June 2007] ^ - Ladies and Gentlemen: Ev'ry duke and earl and peer is here, Ev'ryone who should be here is here. What a smashing, positively dashing Spectacle: the Ascot op'ning day. At the gate are all the horses Waiting for the cue to fly away. What a gripping, absolutely ripping Moment at the Ascot op'ning day. --Alan Jay Lerner (19181986) American playwright and lyricist. (music by Frederick Loewe) "Ascot Gavotte" from the 1956 play "My Fair Lady" - One of the worst things that can happen in life is to win a bet on a horse at an early age. --Danny McGoorty Eclipse first, the rest nowhere. {comment on a horse race at Epsom [3 May 1769]} --Dennis O'Kelly (c. 17201787) Irish racehorse owner. In _Annals of Sporting_ [1822]. ...Bismarck asked whether horse-racing was still popular in England. More than ever, replied his guest. "Then there never will be Socialism in England," cried Bismarck. "You are a happy country. You are safe, as long as the people are devoted to racing. Here a gentleman cannot ride down the street without twenty persons saying to themselves or each other, 'Why has that fellow a horse, and I have not one?' In England the more horses a nobleman has, the more popular he is. So long as the English are devoted to racing, Socialism has no chance with you." --Hesketh Pearson (18871964) English actor and biographer. _Dizzy, the Life and Personality of Benjamin Disraeli_ [1951] If Bill Shoemaker were six-feet tall and weighed 200 pounds, he could beat anybody in any sport. Standing less than five feet and weighing around 100 pounds, he beats everybody at what he does. Pound for pound, he's got to be the greatest living athlete. --Red [Walter] Smith (19051982) American sports columnist and broadcaster. ----- nobble (verb) [nahb-κl] To disable (especially a racehorse) by drugging or laming; to win someone over; to steal; to kidnap; most broadly, to outdo or win someone to one's side by devious means. . . see "ANIMALS" for related links I'd call him a sadistic, hippophilic necrophile, but that would be beating a dead horse. --Woody Allen [Allen Stewart Konigsberg] (1935 ) American actor, screenwriter, and director. Lady Godiva put everything she had on a horse. --W. C. Fields [William Claude Dukenfield] (18801946) American vaudeville star and film actor. In _The Manager's Book of Quotations_ by Lewis D. Eigen and Jonathan P. Siegel [1989]. I'd horsewhip you if I had a horse. --Bert Kalmar (18841947) American lyricist and screenwriter. & S.J. Perelman (19041979) American humorist and author, & Harry Ruby (18951974) American songwriter and screenwriter, {in _Horse Feathers_ [1932 film], spoken by Groucho Marx}. Large increases in cost with questionable increases in performance can be tolerated only in race horses and women. --Lord Kelvin (18241907) British scientist. Lord Ronald said nothing. He flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse, and rode off in all directions. --Stephen Butler Leacock (18691944) Canadian humorist. - Listen, my children, and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year [ . . . ] One if by land, and two if by sea; And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through every Middlesex village and farm, --Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (18071882) American poet. _Tales of a Wayside Inn_ [1863-1874], pt. 1 "The Landlord's Tale: Paul Revere's Ride" - From the city of Kanbalu [Beijing] there are many roads leading to the different provinces, and upon each of these, that is to say, upon every great road, at the distance of twenty-five or thirty miles, accordingly as the towns happen to be situated, there are stations, with houses of accommodation for travellers, called yamb or posthouses. These are large and handsome buildings, having several well-furnished apartments, hung with silk, and provided with everything suitable to persons of rank ... At each station four hundred good horses are kept in constant readiness, in order that all messengers going and coming upon the business of the grand khan and all ambassadors may have relays, and leaving their jaded horses, be supplied with fresh ones. --Marco Polo (c.12541324) Venetian merchant, adventurer, and traveler. _The Travels of Marco Polo_ [1298; 1908 edn] pp. 207-208 A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse! --William Shakespeare (15641616) English dramatist. _King Richard III_ [1592-1593] Act 5, sc. 4 (According to Shakespeare, these are the last words of Richard at the Battle of Bosworth Field [22 August 1485].) Some of my best leading men have been dogs and horses. --Elizabeth Taylor (1932 ) American motion-picture actress. - A historian named Herodotus, tells of a thief who was to be executed. As he was taken away he made a bargain with the king: in one year he would teach the king's favorite horse to sing hymns. The other prisoners watched the thief singing to the horse and laughed. "You will not succeed," they told him. "No one can." To which the thief replied, "I have a year, and who knows what might happen in that time. The king might die. The horse might die. I might die. And perhaps the horse will learn to sing. -- "Wanted: Young, skinny, wirey fellows not over 18. Must be expert riders willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred. Wages $25 per week." --Pony Express Advertisement [1860] -- TRIVIA: President Ulysses S. Grant was once arrested during his term of office. He was convicted of exceeding the Washington speed limit on his horse and was fined $20. -- PHOTOGRAPHS OF COWBOYS/HORSES: http://animals.timduru.org/dirlist/horses/ --- It has long been known that birds will occasionally build nests in the manes of horses. The only known solution to this problem is to sprinkle baker's yeast in the mane, for, as we all know, yeast is yeast and nest is nest, and never the mane shall tweet. No horse can go as fast as the money you bet on him. One way to stop a runaway horse is to bet on him. The two things that can get you into trouble quicker than anything else are fast women and slow horses. Why did the horse go behind the tree? To change his jockeys. ----- cavalcade (noun) ['kζ-vκl-keyd] A mounted procession of horseback riders, horse-drawn carriages or both. . . see "CIVILITY" for related links see "HOME & FAMILY" for related links Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it. --Bible, Hebrews 13:2 NIV You must come again when you have less time. --Walter Sickert (18601942) German-born British artist. - The art of hospitality is to make guests feel at home when you wish they were. --anon. Never mistake endurance for hospitality. --anon. . . see "HEALTH" for related links After two days in hospital, I took a turn for the nurse --W. C. Fields [William Claude Dukenfield] (18801946) American vaudeville star and film actor. Jails and hospitals have one thing in common: they can be very hard to get out of. --Robert A(nson) Heinlein (19071988) American science-fiction writer. _Stranger In A Strange Land_ [1961] - It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a Hospital that it should do the sick no harm. --Florence Nightingale (18201910) English nurse. _Notes on Hospitals_ [1863 ed.], preface Apprehension, uncertainty, waiting, expectation, fear of surprise, do a patient more harm than any exertion. --Florence Nightingale (18201910) English nurse. - I hope you're all Republicans. --Ronald Reagan (19112004) American President [19811989] and former Hollywood actor. Remark to physicians who were about to operate on him after being shot in an assassination attempt by John W. Hinckley, Jr., Washington D.C. [30 March 1981]. ^ Frank Sinatra (19151998) American singer and film actor. Sinatra often traveled many miles out of his way to visit hospitalized friends and sing to them. It was said that the more serious the illness, the more punctilious he was in visiting. One friend, who was suffering from a minor complaint but was afraid the doctors were not telling him the truth, awoke suddenly in his hospital room to find Sinatra at his bedside. The singer had been in the neighborhood and had just called in. The patient was appaled. 'I knew it,' he yelled. 'They've been lying to me!' --_Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes_ edited by Clifton Fadiman and Andrι Bernard [2000 ed.] ^ --- An older gentleman was on the operating table awaiting surgery and he insisted that his son, a renowned surgeon, perform the operation. As he was about to get the anesthesia, he asked to speak to his son. "Yes, Dad, what is it? " "Don't be nervous, son; do your best and just remember, if it doesn't go well, if something happens to me, your mother is going to come and live with you and your wife...." - A woman, calling a local hospital, said, "Hello, I'd like to talk with the person who gives the information regarding your patients. I'd like to find out if the patient is getting better, or doing as expected, or is getting worse." The voice on the other end of the line said, "What is the patient's name and room number?" She said, "Sarah Finkel, in Room 302." "I will connect you with the nursing station." "3-A Nursing Station. How can I help you?" "I would like to know the condition of Sarah Finkel in Room 302" "Just a moment. Let me look at her records. Oh, yes. Mrs. Finkel is doing very well. In fact, she's had two full meals, her blood pressure is fine, her blood work just came back as normal, she's going to be taken off the heart monitor in a couple of hours and if she continues this improvement, Dr. Cohen is going to send her home Tuesday at twelve o'clock." The woman said, "Thank heaven! That's wonderful! Oh! that's fantastic that's wonderful news!" The nurse said, "From your enthusiasm, I take it you must be a close family member or a very close friend!" "Not exactly, I'm Sarah Finkel in 302! Nobody here tells me nothing!" . . see "TRAVEL" for related links ^^ Anthony Burgess was taking a bath in a Leningrad hotel when the floor concierge yelled that she had a cable for him. "Put it under the door," he cried. "I can't!" she shouted. "It's on a tray." --Anthony Burgess, Preface, in _Modern Irish Short Stories_, [ed. Ben Forkner] ^^ The Baron [Hotel, in Aleppo, Syria] is a legendary place. Everyone from Agatha Christie to Mustafa Kemal Atatόrk has stayed here, while Monsieur T. E. Lawrence's unpaid bill of 8 June 1914 is still displayed in a glass cabinet in the sitting room. Downstairs, the decor, untouched since the 1920s, is so redolent of the Levant between the wars that you can almost hear the swish of flapper-dresses and baggy tropical suits echoing from the now chipped and silent dance-floor. [...] Yet for all its charm, it would be dishonest to pretend that the Baron has not seen better days. [...] Nevertheless, it is still easy to see why this hotel appealed so much to a former generation of English travellers. [...] The inexplicably horrible food, the decaying neo-Gothic architecture, the deep baths and the uncomfortable beds: no wonder Lawrence and his contemporaries felt so much at home here--the Baron is the perfect replica of some particularly Spartan English public school, strangely displaced to the deserts of the Middle East. And yet, despite its best efforts, I feel this place growing on me. I have always loved the fact that in Syria you can still walk on Roman roads that have not been resurfaced since the time of Diocletian, or stand on castle walls that have not been restored since Saladin stormed them. In the same way, perhaps I should be pleased that in the Baron you can sleep in sheets that have not been washed since T. E. Lawrence slept there, and even be bitten by the same colonies of bedbugs that once nibbled the great Ataturk. --William Dalrymple Scottish writer and historian. _From the Holy Mountain: A Journey Among Christians of the Middle East_ [1997] ^ Phil Esposito was one of the North American ice-hockey players who went to Moscow to play the Soviet team in the early 1970s. Assigned a hotel room, they suspected that it might be bugged. Esposito recalls, 'We searched the room for microphones. In the center of the room, we found a funny-looking, round piece of metal imbedded in the floor, under the rug. We figured we had found the bug. We dug it out of the floor. And we heard a crash beneath us. We had released the anchor to the chandelier in the ceiling below. _The Folio Book of Humorous Anecdotes_ Introduced by Edward Leeson [2005], "Sport and Show Business" ^ Oliver Herford (18631935) American humorist, illustrator, and writer of light verse. Herford was short of money in the early days of his career. The manager of his hotel, aware of his guest's precarious financial situation, did not insist on immediate payment, but simply added any money owing at the end of a week to the bill for the following week. One day, as the two men passed in the hotel foyer, the manager asked Herford if he had received his latest bill. Herford simply replied, 'Yes.' 'Is that all you have to say?' 'At the moment, yes,' said the humorist. 'But if the bill gets any larger, I'll have to ask you for a larger room.' --_Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes_ edited by Clifton Fadiman and Andrι Bernard [2000 ed.] ^ Room service? Send up a larger room. --Groucho [Julius Henry] Marx (18951977) American film comedian. There are a number of Beirut hotels still operating. The best is the Commodore in West Beirut's El Hamra district. This is the headquarters for the international press corps. There are plenty of rooms available during lulls in the fighting. If combat is intense, telex Beirut 20595 for reservations. The Commodore's basement is an excellent bomb shelter. The staff is cheerful, efficient and will try to get you back if you're kidnapped. --P.J. O'Rourke (1947 ) American political satirist. _Holidays in Hell_ [1988], "A Ramble Through Lebanon, October, 1984." It used to be a good hotel, but that proves nothing - I used to be a good boy, for that matter. --Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910) American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot. _The Innocents Abroad_ [1869] - This ain't the Waldorf; if it was you wouldn't be here. --Notice found in U.S. country hotels [c. 1900] ----- commodious (adj.) Spacious; roomy. Synonyms: convenient end page | HABIT - HANGOVER | HAPPINESS | HAPPY BIRTHDAY - HATE | HATS - HEAT | HEALTH | HEAVEN - HIPPOS | HISTORIANS & HISTORY | HITCHCOCK - HOLOCAUST | HOME - HOMETOWNS | HONESTY & HONOR | HOOVER - HOTELS | HOUSE - HUMAN NATURE | HUMAN RACE - HUMANITY | HUMILIATION - HURT | HUMOR | HURTING (SOMEONE) | HUSBANDS - HYPOCRISY | | H | I - J | K - L | M | N - O | P - Q | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The End | The Reviews | Photos | |
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