#edabbey

When the situation is hopeless, there's nothing to worry about.

Them people'll do anything for money. You'd be surprised. They ain't like us, Doc. They're Christians.

'Doc, are you going to sit there like a lump of lard and let that hairy swine insult me?' 'Well... yes,' Doc said after due consideration.  'You better. I'm a full-grown woman, and I can take care of myself.'

They run things as best they can for God and Jesus, and what them two don't want why fellas like Bishop Love pick up. They say it's a mighty convenient arrangement all around. Jesus Saves at eight and a half percent compounded daily, and when they makes that last deposit they go straight to heaven. Them and all the ancestors they can dig out of the genealogical libraries. It's enough to make a man want to live forever.

The ladies [departed] first. Not because they were the weaker sex - they were not - but simply because they had more sense. Men on an outing feel obliged to stay up drinking to the vile and bilious end, jabbering, mumbling and maundering through the blear, to end up finally on hands and knees, puking on innocent san, befouling God's sweet earth. The manly tradition.

The wilderness once offered men a plausible way of life. Now it functions as a psychiatric refuge. Soon there will be no wilderness. Soon there will be no place to go. Then the madness becomes universal. And the universe goes mad.