Death Row Records Quotes

In The Garret Four little chests all in a row, Dim with dust, and worn by time, All fashioned and filled, long ago, By children now in their prime. Four little keys hung side by side, With faded ribbons, brave and gay When fastened there, with childish pride, Long ago, on a rainy day. Four little names, one on each lid, Carved out by a boyish hand, And underneath there lieth hid Histories of the happy band Once playing here, and pausing oft To hear the sweet refrain, That came and went on the roof aloft, In the falling summer rain. 'Meg' on the first lid, smooth and fair. I look in with loving eyes, For folded here, with well-known care, A goodly gathering lies, The record of a peaceful life-- Gifts to gentle child and girl, A bridal gown, lines to a wife, A tiny shoe, a baby curl. No toys in this first chest remain, For all are carried away, In their old age, to join again In another small Meg's play. Ah, happy mother! Well I know You hear, like a sweet refrain, Lullabies ever soft and low In the falling summer rain. 'Jo' on the next lid, scratched and worn, And within a motley store Of headless dolls, of schoolbooks torn, Birds and beasts that speak no more, Spoils brought home from the fairy ground Only trod by youthful feet, Dreams of a future never found, Memories of a past still sweet, Half-writ poems, stories wild, April letters, warm and cold, Diaries of a wilful child, Hints of a woman early old, A woman in a lonely home, Hearing, like a sad refrain-- 'Be worthy, love, and love will come,' In the falling summer rain. My Beth! the dust is always swept From the lid that bears your name, As if by loving eyes that wept, By careful hands that often came. Death canonized for us one saint, Ever less human than divine, And still we lay, with tender plaint, Relics in this household shrine-- The silver bell, so seldom rung, The little cap which last she wore, The fair, dead Catherine that hung By angels borne above her door. The songs she sang, without lament, In her prison-house of pain, Forever are they sweetly blent With the falling summer rain. Upon the last lid's polished field-- Legend now both fair and true A gallant knight bears on his shield, 'Amy' in letters gold and blue. Within lie snoods that bound her hair, Slippers that have danced their last, Faded flowers laid by with care, Fans whose airy toils are past, Gay valentines, all ardent flames, Trifles that have borne their part In girlish hopes and fears and shames, The record of a maiden heart Now learning fairer, truer spells, Hearing, like a blithe refrain, The silver sound of bridal bells In the falling summer rain. Four little chests all in a row, Dim with dust, and worn by time, Four women, taught by weal and woe To love and labor in their prime. Four sisters, parted for an hour, None lost, one only gone before, Made by love's immortal power, Nearest and dearest evermore. Oh, when these hidden stores of ours Lie open to the Father's sight, May they be rich in golden hours, Deeds that show fairer for the light, Lives whose brave music long shall ring, Like a spirit-stirring strain, Souls that shall gladly soar and sing In the long sunshine after rain

Nestor said to me. "A row of Hussars on horseback will come to take me. What will it be for you?" I remembered don Juan telling me once that death might be behind anything imaginable, even behind a dot on my writing pad. He gave me then the definitive metaphor of my death. I had told him that once while walking on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles I had heard the sound of a trumpet playing an old, idiotic popular tune. The music was coming from a record shop across the street. Never had I heard a more beautiful sound. I became enraptured by it. I had to sit down on the curb. The limpid brass sound of that trumpet was going directly to my brain. I felt it just above my right temple. It soothed me until I was drunk with it. When it concluded, I knew that there would be no way of ever repeating that experience, and I had enough detachment not to rush into the store and buy the record and a stereo set to play it on. Don Juan said that it had been a sign given to me by the powers that rule the destiny of men. When the time comes for me to leave the world, in whatever form, I will hear the same sound of that trumpet, the same idiotic tune, the same peerless trumpeter.

Among these have been an unhealthy number of near-death moments, many of which I look back on now and wince. But I guess our training in life never really ends--and experience is always the best tutor of all. Then there are the most bizarre: like jet-skiing around Britain in aid of the UK lifeboats. Day after day, hour after hour, pounding the seas like little ants battling around the wild coast of Scotland and Irish Sea. (I developed a weird bulging muscle in my forearm that popped out and has stayed with me ever since after that one!) Or hosting the highest open-air dinner party, suspended under a high-altitude hot-air balloon, in support of the Duke of Edinburgh’s kids awards scheme. That mission also became a little hairy, rappelling down to this tiny metal table suspended fifty feet underneath the basket in minus forty degrees, some twenty-five thousand feet over the UK. Dressed in full naval mess kit, as required by the Guinness Book of World Records--along with having to eat three courses and toast the Queen, and breathing from small supplementary oxygen canisters--we almost tipped the table over in the early dawn, stratosphere dark. Everything froze, of course, but finally we achieved the mission and skydived off to earth--followed by plates of potatoes and duck à l-orange falling at terminal velocity. Or the time Charlie Mackesy and I rowed the Thames naked in a bathtub to raise funds for a friend’s new prosthetic legs. The list goes on and on, and I am proud to say, it continues. But I will tell all those stories properly some other place, some other time. They vary from the tough to the ridiculous, the dangerous to the embarrassing. But in this book I wanted to show my roots: the early, bigger missions that shaped me, and the even earlier, smaller moments that steered me.

History records that there was only one Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo — and that he was too small for his job. The fact is there were two Napoleons at Waterloo, and the second one was big enough for his job, with some to spare. The second Napoleon was Nathan Rothschild — the emperor of finance. During the trying months that came before the crash Nathan Rothschild had plunged on England until his own fortunes, no less than those of the warring nations, were staked on the issue. He had lent money direct. He had discounted Wellington's paper. He had risked millions by sending chests of gold through war-swept territory where the slightest failure of plans might have caused its capture. He was extended to the limit when the fateful hour struck, and the future seemed none too certain. The English, in characteristic fashion, believed that all had been lost before anything was lost -— before the first gun bellowed out its challenge over the Belgian plains. The London stock market was in a panic. Consols were falling, slipping, sliding, tumbling. If the telegraph had been invented, the suspense would have been less, even if the wires had told that all was lost. But there was no telegraph. There were only rumors and fears. As the armies drew toward Waterloo Nathan Rothschild was like a man aflame. All of his instincts were crying out for news — good news, bad news, any kind of news, but news — something to end his suspense. News could be had immediately only by going to the front. He did not want to go to the front. A biographer of the family, Mr. Ignatius Balla, 1 declares that Nathan had " always shrunk from the sight of blood." From this it may be presumed that, to put it delicately, he was not a martial figure. But, as events came to a focus, his mingled hopes and fears overcame his inborn instincts. He must know the best or the worst and that at once. So he posted off for Belgium. He drew near to the gathering armies. From a safe post on a hill he saw the puffs of smoke from the opening guns. He saw Napoleon hurl his human missiles at Wellington's advancing walls of red. He did not see the final crash of the French, because he saw enough to convince him that it was coming, and therefore did not wait to witness the actual event. He had no time to wait. He hungered and thirsted for London as a few days before he had hungered and thirsted for the sight of Waterloo. Wellington having saved the day for him as well as for England, Nathan Rothschild saw an opportunity to reap colossal gains by beating the news of Napoleon's 1 The Romance of the Rothschilds, p. 88. 126 OUR DISHONEST CONSTITUTION defeat to London and buying the depressed securities of his adopted country before the news of victory should send them skyward with the hats of those whose brains were still whirling with fear. So he left the field of Waterloo while the guns were still booming out the requiem of all of Napoleon's great hopes of empire. He raced to Brussels upon the back of a horse whose sides were dripping with spur-drawn blood. At Brussels he paid an exorbitant price to be whirled in a carriage to Ostend. At Ostend he found the sea in the grip of a storm that shook the shores even as Wellington was still shaking the luck-worn hope of France. " He was certainly no hero," says Balla, " but at the present moment he feared nothing." Who would take him in a boat and row him to England? Not a boatman spoke. No one likes to speak when Death calls his name, and Rothschild's words were like words from Death. But Rothschild continued to speak. He must have a boatman and a boat. He must beat the news of Waterloo to England. Who would make the trip for 500 francs? Who would go for 800, 1,000? Who would go for 2,000? A courageous sailor would go. His name should be here if it had not been lost to the world. His name should be here and wherever this story is printed, because he said he would go if Rothschild would pay the 2,000 francs to the sailor's wife before