Camping Adventure Quotes

There cannot be light without darkness, nor darkness without light. You must have the contrast for both to exist.

Three words. A promise of hope. The words tingled in Will’s ear. They ignited his heart. ‘I love you.

Sometimes mortals are not aware of the threads that bind them. You could both be wrong about the first time you met, and yet the two of you have orbited each other for so long, like heavenly bodies in the sky.

But with Nico … It’s hard, Persephone. I want the best for him, and he seems to disappear into his darkness, like he’s hiding in a place where he doesn’t want my light.’ ‘Then why not offer him your darkness?

Will had kissed Nico for the first time in a moment of impulsiveness, something Nico didn’t know Will had in him. The kiss had been just like this one, short and sweet. Then Will had pulled away, worry on his face, an apology tumbling from his lips. Nico had stopped him. Then kissed him back. In a moment so full of grief and rage and sadness, Will had given him … Light.

Maybe it’s a quest for tartar sauce,” Percy said. “Something low-stakes and delicious.

It was a constant pattern for Nico: find some sort of solace and comfort, only to have it ripped away. Now here was Solace in his lap, sleeping like a baby. What would come and tear him away?

Well, that’s what this quest is all about, isn’t it?’ said Nico, facing forward. ‘We have to fix what’s been broken.’ ‘I love that about you, Nico di Angelo.

It's like staring into a dark and treacherous expanse, unsure of what awaits you but finding comfort in the fact that you won't have to face it alone. It was a son of Apollo falling for a son of Hades. It was this.

A story about what?’ he asked. ‘Tell me about the two of you,’ she said.

But remember: what belongs to the sea will always return to the sea. --Nereid

I got you,’ he breathed into Will’s ear. ‘I got you.

Bianca, camp is cool! It's got a pegasus stable and a sword-fighting arena and… I mean, what do you get by joining the Hunters?" To begin with," Zoe said, "immortality." I stared at her, then at Artemis. "She's kidding, right?" Zoe rarely kids about anything," Artemis said. "My Hunters follow me on my adventures. They are my maidservants, my companions, my sisters-in-arms. Once they swear loyalty to me, they are indeed immortal… unless they fall in battle, which is unlikely. Or break their oath." What oath?" I said. To foreswear romantic love forever," Artemis said. To never grow up, never get married. To be a maiden eternally." Like you?" The goddess nodded. I tried to imagine what she was saying. Being immortal. Hanging out with only middle-school girls forever. I couldn't get my mind around it.

Outside is the only place we can truly be inside the world.

(There is nothing more disconcerting than waking in the morning and finding a freshly incarnated zombie standing over you, ready to take your breakfast order.)

You are the ghost king, a voice said. I am, Nico thought. This is where you belong. But then Nico raised his head. Looked at the other two passengers. Will, whose face was strained as he reached down with a shaking hand to grab at him. Nico took it, gripped his boyfriend’s hand tight, and thought, No. This is where I belong.

Dam it,” said Nico.

Three words. A promise of hope. The words tingled in Will's ear. They ignited his heart. 'I love you.' And they fell.

Okay, okay, enough of your bisexual chaos for the moment.

Then he gave Nico one of his soul-warming smiles. ‘I can heal people. I can glow in the dark. And … well, I met you.’ ‘Oh, gods, groaned Nico. ‘No cheesiness! It’s too early in the day, Will!’ Will snuggled up to him. ‘But it’s true. I’m very thankful we’re in each other’s lives.’ ‘You cheated with that answer,’ said Nico, ‘but I’ll allow it.’ Will planted a kiss on Nico’s temple. ‘My grumpy ball of darkness.

Getting over Percy was easier than Nico expected. What was one straight boy when you spent your whole life longing for the impossible?

They were just nightmares – Epiales playing on his worst fears, just as they were now doing to Nico. And Will wasn’t going to lie there and let anyone hurt his boyfriend.

You’re cute when you’re nervous.

Either way, it made Nico a little annoyed. Why did Will have to be so beautiful all the time?

Pain is a part of all lives, mortal and immortal,’ said the nymph. ‘It is inescapable. We all must navigate this river to get where we want to be.’ ‘Shouldn’t we aim to avoid pain?’ Will asked. ‘Or at least mitigate it?’ Nico shook his head. ‘You know it’s not that simple.’ ‘Pain helps us learn,’ said Gorgyra. ‘It is unfortunate, but we rarely forget the lessons taught to us in moments of pain.

Piper, dear, how should I describe your relationship?' 'Well, Father, I am a big ole queer mess.

Don’t let go of me,” he said, holding his Stygian iron sword before him. “No matter what happens.” Will clutched him tightly. “I got you.

What do you remember?’ Gorgyra asked. ‘I remember how sad I was when you left to go find Percy,’ Will said to Nico. ‘When he disappeared.’ ‘You were sad? But … did we even know each other then?’ ‘Maybe not as close friends or anything, but … but I was drawn to you.

Please, Nico. Look at me.’ The voice had changed. It was warm, like honey, like a late-summer sunset, like the first rush of heat from a campfire. It was Cupid. No. It was love. Nico turned slowly, and there stood Will Solace, his golden hair lit oh-so- perfectly in the dreamlike daylight of Salona.

... we are in this boot camp to learn, that if we don't persevere through all this world's obstacles and all its wounds, we won't earn our next life of great adventure.

You did,’ confirmed Nico. ‘But it was the way you did it. You made it clear that you wanted me around. You said you wanted me to come to the infirmary and help, because … because you could use a “friendly face”.’ ‘It was true. And you did help.’ ‘You brought me closer instead of rejecting me,’ Nico said, his voice cracking. ‘I’d never been called a friendly face. Ever. You made me rethink everything – my place in camp, my crush on Percy, my future. It took you scolding me like you were the camp director to make me realize that I was … wanted.

I remember when I realized … when I knew that this was more than a friendship.’ That made Nico smile despite himself. ‘I remember my moment, too.’ Will’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I think mine is different than yours.’ ‘But I know mine happened first,’ Nico said. ‘Tell me,’ Gorgyra said, moving closer to Nico and Will. ‘Tell me one more story.’ And Nico felt another string start to unravel.

In case of emergency, eat chocolate

Hey, don’t do that.’ Will touched Nico’s face, stared into his dark eyes. ‘You survived. You continue to survive. You’ve been through more in your fifteen years than most people will endure in an entire lifetime.’ Nico looked away, but Will knew this grumpy ball of darkness – his grumpy ball of darkness – and he refused to let Nico off the hook. ‘I don’t always understand you, Nico,’ he said, ‘but I do know that you’re resilient. And in that sense you are just like this garden.

Now, wait a second,’ said Annabeth. ‘That’s not what either of us said. In fact, I would say that you and Nico have one big advantage.’ Percy nodded. ‘You two have each other.’ Nico squinted at him. ‘Um … okay? What does that mean? Besides sounding like a cheesy Hallmark card.’ ‘It’s exactly what it sounds like,’ said Annabeth. ‘Because that cheesiness is what’s going to make the journey survivable.

It seems you two have a complicated and labyrinthine connection.

He’d been listening to too many of Will’s beloved true-crime podcasts. (Another thing Nico didn’t understand about his sunny-natured boyfriend.)

And no light was brighter than Noco di Angelo.

You’re cute when you’re nervous.” Will came to a stop, and Nico reached out to bring him into a hug.

Will had heard love described in so many dramatic, bizarre ways over the years, but no one had described it like this: It's like drifting through a river of pain and knowing you are safe. It's like holding a person in your arms and realizing they are an interlocking piece of a puzzle you hadn't known how to assemble. It's like staring into a dark and treacherous expanse, unsure of awaits you but finding comfort in the fact that you won't have to face it alone. It was a son of Apollo falling for a son of Hades. It was this.

What would make Nico realize they were simply, irreconcilably too different. ‘Yes?’ Nico didn’t seem able to talk at first. Then: ‘You are a legitimate demigod Care Bear.’ Will’s top lip trembled. He fell to his knees. Then he bent over in loud, raucous laughter until tears poured from his eyes. ‘You’re so weird.’ Nico crawled over, pulled Will to him and silenced his laughter with a tender kiss. ‘Please keep being my own personal Care Bear, though.’ ‘Always,’ said Will.

Funny how the older Nico got, the more he saw things about Percy differently.

He reached inside the collar of his shirt and pulled out his gold chain. On it glinted Nico’s ring.

You are a legitimate demigod Care Bear.

You show new ways through the dark,’ Clack-Jones added. ‘You see the trogs,’ said Screech-Bling. ‘You see Bob the Titan.’ Will smiled and squeezed his hand. ‘Nyx hates what you represent – change.’ Howl-Smith nodded wisely. ‘Or at least the potential for it.

You came," he said. "My sun and star.

My whole life is a disorder!

To all the Nicos, Wills, Pipers, and everyone in between: this is for you. May you shine as bright as the sun and the stars.

Wait. Like a saber-toothed tiger. “Small Bob?” Will said, rising.

I’m the demon of nightmares, silly,’ said Epiales. ‘And the dead can dream just like everyone else.

The dead wanted to be heard, and who better to listen to them than the son of Hades?

For your mind to heal, your body must also.

Sometimes mortals are not aware of the threads that bind them. You could both be wrong about the first time you met, and yet the two of you have orbited each other for so long, like heavenly bodies in the sky." Will squeezed Nico's hand. "I like how that sounds." Nico studied Will's broken fingernails, the cuts on his knuckles. He certainly felt like he was spinning through space...like he would go shooting off into the void if it weren't for Will's gravity.

Will frowned. "If you eat one of Persephone's pomegranates, aren't you stuck in the Underworld forever?" "Pretty sure that doesn't apply to creatures who are from the Underworld," Nico said. "But even if it did, it might be kind of romantic. Like sending a message: You're stuck with me." "I think we need to work on your definition of romantic, my love.

Will had heard love described in so many dramatic, bizarre ways over the years, but no one had described it like this: It’s like drifting down a river of pain and knowing you are safe. It’s like holding a person in your arms and realizing they are an interlocking piece of a puzzle you hadn’t known how to assemble. It’s like staring into a dark and treacherous expanse, unsure of what awaits you but finding comfort in the fact that you won’t have to face it alone. It was a son of Apollo falling for a son of Hades. It was this.

Nico fought against the darkness, against the fear and the cold that wanted to paralyze him. Turning his head took every bit of his energy, but he put his mouth next to Will's ear, took a measured breath, and then said the words he hoped Will would hear. Three words. A promise of hope. The words tingled in Will's ear. They ignited his heart. "I love you." And they fell.

I find this fascinating. Sometimes mortals are not aware of the threads that bind them. You could both be wrong about the first time you met, and yet the two of you have orbited each other for so long, like heavenly bodies in the sky.

You need to be outdoors. Away from here. You need a holiday.

Oh, no magic,” Mr. D said. “I watched some videos on that YouTube thing. Some fellow named Alton Brown taught me the perfect recipe.

In fifteen minutes most of the camp was there, including the Texan who, Lord save his soul forever, had brought along a bottle of bonded Kentucky Drain Opener.

Nico laid his hand over his heart. ‘Imagine Darth Vader removing his helmet over dinner and then staring longingly into your eyes over the table. Now that is romance.

Will smiled, and warmth washed over Nico. ‘Can I hold you? Would that be okay with you?

Nico,’ said Chiron. ‘You’re ... You’re hugging me. Are we hugging now? Is that a thing we do?’ ‘Shut up, Chiron,’ he said. ‘Just hug me back.’ The centaur did. It felt wonderful.

He nodded. ‘Yeah. This is gonna sound cheesy, but I think I remember Annabeth and Percy saying cheesy stuff helps.’ ‘Lay it on me, Will. I’m your grilled cheese.

Will was curled up on the bottom of the boat, surrounded by Cocoa Puffs, who also snoozed soundlessly.

We often don’t see the effects we have on others, In the moment, all that matters is ourselves.

All things can change, if given the opportunity.

I have been corrupted as much as anyone else by the vast number of menial services which our society has grown to expect and depend on. We should do for ourselves or let the machines do for us, the glorious technology that is supposed to be the new light of the world. We are like a man who has bought a great amount of equipment for a camping trip, who has the canoe and the tent and the fishing lines and the axe and the guns, the mackinaw and the blankets, but who now, when all the preparations and the provisions are piled expertly together, is suddenly too timid to set out on the journey but remains where he was yesterday and the day before and the day before that, looking suspiciously through the white lace curtains at the clear sky he distrusts. Our great technology is a God-given chance for adventure and for progress which we are afraid to attempt. Our ideas and our ideals remain exactly what they were and where they were three centuries ago. No. I beg your pardon. It is no longer safe for a man to even declare them!

The best thing I can say to you is that we are not only one thing forever. We’re allowed to change at any point in our lives. We don’t have to be stuck with a label someone else assigns us. Gods, we don’t even have to stick to a label we give ourselves. So, you can be bi or pan or a lesbian or queer, and tomorrow you may have a better sense of who you are, or tomorrow you can be a big ole queer mess and figure it out fifty years from now.

Ilsa approached the office of Dr. Dr. Bradford M. Bradford armed with her thesis. But she hesitated a moment before opening the outer door. Habit made her tremble before the awful majesty of the dean. Still, her recent adventures changed things. Had the dean ever hijacked a Spanish ship of the line? Run a British blockade at sea? Had he ever trudged over hill and dale to a Revolutionary army camp? Had he ever shaken hands with George Washington or flown a kite with Benjamin Franklin? Did he have an actual duke staying in his spare bedroom? She was pretty sure the dean would fail all these simple tests.

You know,’ Mr D said, breaking the silence, ‘I’ve changed my mind. You’ve earned my respect, Nico di Angelo.’ He handed over his nearly empty bowl of popcorn. ‘It’s not hot any more. But knock yourself out.

You know love is a choice, right?" His hands fell. "What?" "Oh, certainly, there are people in this world for whom love comes easily or abundantly. It is instantaneous, like it was for Narcissus." "Sure," said Will. "But I-" "And there are, of course, those who experience no romantic feelings whatsoever." "Right, but-" "But no matter what form love takes, no matter how much or how little you have, you must still choose to cultivate it. In friendships, in romantic relationships, in life.

My two favourite demigods have returned,’ he said, and he held his arms open and embraced both of them at the same time. ‘Favourite?’ Will said into Mr D’s armpit. ‘I thought you didn’t even like demigods.’ ‘Oh, I don’t,’ he said. ‘All of you could fall to the bottom of the sea and I wouldn’t care. But I’d prefer if you two were the last to drown.

Will had heard love described in so many dramatic, bizarre ways over the years, but no one had described it like this: It's like drifting down a river of pain and knowing you are safe. It's like holding a person in your arms and realizing they are an interlocking piece of a puzzle you hadn't known how to assemble. It's like staring into a dark and treacherous expanse, unsure of what awaits you but finding comfort in the fact that you won't have to face it alone. It was a son of Apollo falling for a son of Hades. It was this.

My tent doesn’t look like much but, as an estate agent might say, “It is air-conditioned and has exceptional location.

And so we continued to live in fear, hoping that we would not get caught. Fear had become our constant companion at this dreadful Lashkar-e-Taiba camp.

And Will wasn’t going to lie there and let anyone hurt his boyfriend.

I didn’t want to do it at first, not until he turned to the forest and screamed at a tree.’ ‘It was a very big tree,’ said Will. ‘I was sure it could take it.

As the native drum kept rhythm with the nighttime symphony of the African bush, the cry of a hyrax (a small, furry animal that sounded a lot scarier than it looked) pierced the night. A hyena howled. A warthog ran through our camp. What was he running from? Sitting in front of my tent, I tried to figure everything out. I wouldn’t have called what I did prayer but maybe wonder.    Night after night, I’d listened to the rush of a river or watched my own personal light show as lightning spider-webbed across the heavens, danced in the distance, and serenaded me with a muffled growl. Until a crash—so loud it seemed to break the sky—caused me to twitch as a shiver ran up my spine.    “You know how it is when you feel someone staring at you from across the room?” I said to Truth. “You turn to meet the gaze. It was like that, but I saw no one. I just felt a comforting presence as we sat together in silence.”    “You think it was God?” she asked.    “Yeah, but I called him Fred. Not so overwhelming, more personal.” 

Will had heard love described in so many dramatic, bizarre ways over the years, but no one had described it like this: It's like drifting down a river of pain and knowing you are safe. It's like holding a person in your arms and realizing they are an interlocking piece of a puzzle you hadn't known how to assemble. It's like staring into a dark and treacherous expanse, unsure of what awaits you but finding comfort in the fact that you won't have to face it alone.

I really hate dream logic!” he screamed. “Choose,” said Bianca. “Message received!” Bianca pulled an arrow from her quiver. “Choose, Nico.” “Leave a message at the tone!” he snarled. “BEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!

But if there is any future in which you survive – in which you and your little demigod friends aren’t destroyed – then we will continue this conversation, Nico di Angelo …’ She rose and spread her smoky wings to their full span. ‘I will make you choose your true nature. You won’t be able to escape it.

All those summer drives, no matter where I was going, to a person, a project, an adventure, or home, alone in the car with my social life all before and behind me, I was suspended in the beautiful solitude of the open road, in a kind of introspection that only outdoor space generates, for inside and outside are more intertwined than the usual distinctions allow. The emotion stirred by the landscape is piercing, a joy close to pain when the blue is deepest on the horizon or the clouds are doing those spectacular fleeting things so much easier to recall than to describe. Sometimes I thought of my apartment in San Francisco as only a winter camp and home as the whole circuit around the West I travel a few times a year and myself as something of a nomad (nomads, contrary to current popular imagination, have fixed circuits and stable relationships to places; they are far from beign the drifters and dharma bums that the word nomad often connotes nowadays). This meant that it was all home, and certainly the intense emotion that, for example, the sequence of mesas alongside the highway for perhaps fifty miles west of Gallup, N.M., and a hundred miles east has the power even as I write to move me deeply, as do dozens of other places, and I have come to long not to see new places but to return and know the old ones more deeply, to see them again. But if this was home, then I was both possessor of an enchanted vastness and profoundly alienated.

Exploration, however, no longer seemed aimed at some outward discovery; rather, it was directed inward, to what guidebooks and brochures called “camping and wilderness therapy” and “personal growth through adventure.

Miggy sees me watching the approaching wave of dark clouds. "Maybe it will slow him down." The guy who's been outfitted by Survivalists "R" Us? No, he probably has some waterproof supersuit that repels lightning. I hate him so much.

It takes an enormous amount of internal security to begin with the spirit of adventure, the spirit of discovery, the spirit of creativity. Without doubt, you have to leave the comfort zone of base camp and confront an entirely new and unknown wilderness. You become a trailblazer, a pathfinder. You open new possibilities, new territories, new continents, so that others can follow.

So off had gone John to the wars again. But he had not remained for long in the position of a humble volunteer. Colonel Clifton, commanding the 1st Regiment of Dragoons, no sooner heard that Crazy Jack was back then he enrolled him as an extra aide-de-camp.

People who have never canoed a wild river, or who have done so only with a guide in the stern, are apt to assume that novelty, plus healthful exercise, account for the value of the trip. I thought so too, until I met the two college boys on the Flambeau. Supper dishes washed, we sat on the bank watching a buck dunking for water plants on the far shore. Soon the buck raised his head, cocked his ears upstream, and then bounded for cover. Around the bend now came the cause of his alarm: two boys in a canoe. Spying us, they edged in to pass the time of day. ‘What time is it?’ was their first question. They explained that their watches had run down, and for the first time in their lives there was no clock, whistle, or radio to set watches by. For two days they had lived by ‘sun-time,’ and were getting a thrill out of it. No servant brought them meals: they got their meat out of the river, or went without. No traffic cop whistled them off the hidden rock in the next rapids. No friendly roof kept them dry when they misguessed whether or not to pitch the tent. No guide showed them which camping spots offered a nightlong breeze, and which a nightlong misery of mosquitoes; which firewood made clean coals, and which only smoke. Before our young adventurers pushed off downstream, we learned that both were slated for the Army upon the conclusion of their trip. Now the motif was clear. This trip was their first and last taste of freedom, an interlude between two regimentations: the campus and the barracks. The elemental simplicities of wilderness travel were thrills not only because of their novelty, but because they represented complete freedom to make mistakes. The wilderness gave them their first taste of those rewards and penalties for wise and foolish acts which every woodsman faces daily, but against which civilization has built a thousand buffers. These boys were ‘on their own’ in this particular sense. Perhaps every youth needs an occasional wilderness trip, in order to learn the meaning of this particular freedom.

Stormy believed that we are in this boot camp to learn, that if we don’t persevere through all this world’s obstacles and all its wounds, we won’t earn our next life of great adventure. To be with her again, I will have the perseverance of a bulldog, but it seems to me that the training is unnecessarily hard.

Through the clouds of smoke I seemed to see all old Asia before me, and the adventures of past years behind me. A carnival of old camp-scenes danced before my mind’s eye, expiring like shooting-stars in the night—merry songs which came to an end among other mountains and the dying sound of strings and flutes. And I was surprised that I had not had enough of these things and that I was not tired of the light of camp-fires.

He watched in horror as something very much alive crawled out of the goo pit. It shook its sticky wet hair, which began to smolder and then caught fire. Its form was human, but with mismatched back legs: one shaggy and hooved like a donkey’s, the other constructed of bronze. An empousa. Nico’s grip tightened on his sword. He’d been kidnapped by one of these vampiric spirits after foolishly following Minos into the Labyrinth, and he was in no mood to be charmspoken to death. Taking advantage of the creature’s disorientation, he scrambled forward and drove his blade through its chest. The creature wailed. “I just regenerated!” she screamed. “Come on!

Will had heard love described in so many dramatic, bizarre ways over the years, but no one had described it like this: It’s like drifting down a river of pain and knowing you are safe. It’s like holding a person in your arms and realizing they are an interlocking piece of a puzzle you hadn’t known how to assemble. It’s like staring into a dark and treacherous expanse, unsure of what awaits you but finding comfort in the fact that you won’t have to face it alone.

It’s the same feeling we get when we realize the summer is gone and now it is winter again and we didn’t go to the beach and the gym and camping and all the other things we promised ourselves we would do, any more often than we did the summer before. And now we have no choice—our birthday is here again whether we like it or not—so we gamely celebrate it, making the most of it, hiding our dread of mortality behind a cake and a card. Here is something amazing: When you fill every day with the best memories you can possibly make, when you visualize the life you want to live and then move toward it no matter what the cost, that twinge of regret is forever gone. You are aligned. You are exactly where you need to be. You can’t see the future, but that’s okay. You just take another step forward into the mystery, the unknown, knowing that your foot will always hit something. It is a wonderful thing to be free of the feeling of the marching of time; to have the ability to welcome it; to know that all your adventures, small and great, are creating you, a glorious you; to discover that when you love and celebrate your life, others will love and celebrate your life, too.

In the history of the intelligence, with the exception of Marx, Nietzsche's adventure has no equivalent; we shall never finish making reparation for the injustice done to him. Of course history records other philosophies that have been misconstrued and betrayed. But up to the time of Nietzsche and National Socialism, it was quite without parallel that a process of thought—brilliantly illuminated by the nobility and by the sufferings of an exceptional mind—should have been demonstrated to the eyes of the world by a parade of lies and by the hideous accumulation of corpses in concentration camps. The doctrine of the superman led to the methodical creation of sub-men—a fact that doubtless should be denounced, but which also demands interpretation. If the final result of the great movement of rebellion in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was to be this ruthless bondage, then surely rebellion should be rejected and Nietzsche's desperate cry to his contemporaries taken up: "My conscience and yours are no longer the same conscience.

The land seemed to stretch on forever. Nico was thankful that Nemesis had given him some guidance, because if he hadn’t kept himself to the left of the River Phlegethon, he would’ve had no idea where to go. After hours of walking on the strange marshy ground, Nico was exhausted. Hungry. His feet ached, and his lungs burned from the sooty air. Something else was happening to him, too. The world around him... It seemed to be shifting. That was the only way he could describe it. He’d be staring into the distance, where mist clung to a dark expanse of forest, and for the briefest of moments, the horizon would leap backward like a mirage. The landscape before him took on sharper edges, with colors so terrifyingly intense that they hurt his eyes. The land itself seemed to be rising and falling, as if it were breathing. Or was Nico imagining that?

Evenings were peaceful, smoke settling in the quiet air to soften the dusk, lights twinkling on the ridge we would camp on tomorrow, clouds dimming the outline of our pass for the day after. Growing excitement lured my thoughts again and again to the West Ridge…. There was loneliness, too, as the sun set, but only rarely now did doubts return. Then I felt sinkingly as if my whole life lay behind me. Once on the mountain I knew (or trusted) that this would give way to total absorption with the task at hand. But at times I wondered if I had not come a long way only to find what I really sought was something I had left behind.

Not a wonder you are out camping with us princess,” Rizz said dryly. Falita gave a clearing snort of her opposite nostril and looked up. “Why's that?” “One can't go snorting and blowing snot all over a castle. It would ruin the décor!” Falita ignored the comment. “A bath would certainly freshen things up.” “You've bathed three times in five days. How many more baths do you need?” Artamos asked. “Enough to stay clean, and I don't recall either of you bathing on this trip.” “I don't need to Princess,” Rizz replied. “I have my own naturally sweet odor.” Falita scrunched up her nose, “I'm aware of that, and it is not pleasing in camp.

So the king went all through the crowd with his hat swabbing his eyes, and blessing the people and praising them and thanking them for being so good to the poor pirates away off there; and every little while the prettiest kind of girls, with the tears running down their cheeks, would up and ask him would he let them kiss him for to remember him by; and he always done it; and some of them he hugged and kissed as many as five or six times—and he was invited to stay a week; and everybody wanted him to live in their houses, and said they’d think it was an honor; but he said as this was the last day of the camp-meeting he couldn’t do no good, and besides he was in a sweat to get to the Indian Ocean right off and go to work on the pirates. When

Later bad things will be said about Stalin; he’ll be called a tyrant and his reign of terror will be denounced. But for the people of Eduard’s generation he will remain the supreme leader of the people of the Union at the most tragic moment in their history; the man who defeated the Nazis and proved himself capable of a sacrifice worthy of the ancient Romans: the Germans had captured his son, Lieutenant Yakov Dzhugashvili, while the Russians had captured Field Marshal Paulus, one of the top military leaders of the Reich, at Stalingrad. When the German High Command proposed an exchange, Stalin responded with disdain that he didn’t exchange field marshals for simple lieutenants. Yakov committed suicide by throwing himself on the electrified barbed wire fence of his prison camp. *

Well, the first I knowed the king got a-going, and you could hear him over everybody; and next he went a-charging up on to the platform, and the preacher he begged him to speak to the people, and he done it. He told them he was a pirate— been a pirate for thirty years out in the Indian Ocean—and his crew was thinned out considerable last spring in a fight, and he was home now to take out some fresh men, and thanks to goodness he’d been robbed last night and put ashore off of a steamboat without a cent, and he was glad of it; it was the blessedest thing that ever happened to him, because he was a changed man now, and happy for the first time in his life; and, poor as he was, he was going to start right off and work his way back to the Indian Ocean, and put in the rest of his life trying to turn the pirates into the true path; for he could do it better than anybody else, being acquainted with all pirate crews in that ocean; and though it would take him a long time to get there without money, he would get there anyway, and every time he convinced a pirate he would say to him, “Don’t you thank me, don’t you give me no credit; it all belongs to them dear people in Pokeville camp-meeting, natural brothers and benefactors of the race, and that dear preacher there, the truest friend a pirate ever had!” And then he busted into tears, and so did everybody. Then somebody sings out, “Take up a collection for him, take up a collection!” Well, a half a dozen made a jump to do it, but somebody sings out, “Let HIM pass the hat around!” Then everybody said it, the preacher too. So