Winter-Time
by Robert Louis Stevenson

Late lies the wintry sun a-bed,
A frosty, fiery sleepy-head;
Blinks but an hour or two; and then,
A blood-red orange, sets again.

Before the stars have left the skies,
At morning in the dark I rise;

And shivering in my nakedness,

By the cold candle, bathe and dress.

Close by the jolly fire I sit

To warm my frozen bones a bit;

Or with a reindeer-sled, explore

The colder countries round the door.

When to go out, my nurse doth wrap

Me in my comforter and cap:

The cold wind burns my face, and blows

Its frosty pepper up my nose.

Black are my steps on silver sod,

Thick blows my frosty breath abroad;

And tree and house, and hill and lake,

Are frosted like a wedding-cake.

~Scottish novelist, poet. (1850 - 1894)

A Child's Garden of Verses, Robert Louis Stevenson, The Platt and Munk Co, Inc., 1929

Closed Early Today ~
View on the Walk Home

Sorry for any inconvenience ~ lbw

"It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up."

~ W. Somerset Maugham

"You have to allow a certain amount of time in which you are doing nothing in order to have things occur to you, to let your mind think."

~ Mortimer J. Adler

"Happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you."

~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life."
~Mark Twain

"Time you enjoy wasting was not wasted."

~ John Lennon

Just Dogs ~

"Animals are such agreeable friends ~
they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms."
~ George Eliot

"The dog was created especially for children.
He is the god of frolic."
~ Henry Ward Beecher


"The good Lord in his ultimate wisdom gave us three things to make life bearable, hope, jokes and dogs,but the greatest of these was dogs."
~ Robyn Davidson

"I think we are drawn to dogs because they are the uninhibited creatures we might be if we weren't certain we knew better."
~ George Bird Evans

"To be without a dog is worse than being without a song."
~ Henry Beetle Hough
(Caption on a photograph of the British Beatles lounging with two dogs ~ one a very large long-haired breed; the other a small, perky-eared creature.)

"Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole."
~ Thomas McGuane

"Dogs' eyes speak a special language that comes directly from their souls."~Anonymous
(For larger image, click on photo)

"Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends."  ~ Alexander Pope

Source:  1000 DOGS, Raymond Merritt & Miles Barth, Taschen, 2002.

Cats & Dogs ~

"Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons."
~ Robertson Davies

"Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet."
~ Colette

"A boy can learn a lot from a dog; obedience, loyalty, and the importance of turning around three times before lying down."
~ Robert Benchley

"Cats are smarter than dogs.  You can't get eight cats to pull a sled through snow."
~ Jeff Valdez

"Dogs laugh, but they laugh with their tails."
~ Max Eastman

"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of."
~ Ogden Nash

"Did you ever walk into a room and forget why you walked in?  I think that's how dogs spend their lives."
~ Sue Murphy

~ 4,000 of the funniest, cleverest, most insightful things ever said,  Reader's Digest, 2006.

The book of beowulf

Anglo-Saxon Epic in Modern English ~

Michael Walton's 2007 book is arguably the "best translation" of the old English poem "Beowulf."

The Neat Little Bookshop is pleased to announce that we are planning an afternoon with the author.

A beautifully bound hardcover ~  Read in modern English the epic poem translated from a European vernacular language.

 Watch for date and details to be posted soon. 









Black History Month ~

In 1926, Historian Carter Woodson and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History announced the second week of February to be "Negro History Week."
The celebration of African-American history was a popular theme. Woodson hoped that someday black history would become fundamental to American history.

Martin Luther King said,"If you will protest courageously, and yet with dignity and Christian love, when the history books are written in future generations, the historians will have to pause and say, 'There lived a great people ~ a black people ~ who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization.' "