A man of action

 I would not sit waiting for some vague tomorrow, nor for something to happen. One could wait a lifetime, and find nothing at the end of the waiting. I would begin here, I would make something happen.

(from Sackett's Land, by Louis L'Amour)

John Leland

     I remembered then that my father had once told of a man who devoted much of his life to wandering about compiling notes for a history of England. He had walked the cart roads and lanes, roamed along the seashore, and explored many ruins left unnoticed before his time. My father had traveled with him a time or two for a few days. His name, I recalled, was John Leland. (from Sackett's Land, by Louis L'Amour)

    Anyone who is at all acquainted with the history of Baptists in America knows the name John Leland, whose influence played a large part in the insertion of the Bill of Rights into our constitution. The John Leland (1503-1552) whom L'Amour mentions in this book was a real person, also. He has been described as "the father of English local history and bibliography." He served as the tutor to the son of the 2nd Duke of Norfolk.

    In 1533, Leland apparently was granted a commission by the King, which authorized him to examine and use the libraries of all religious houses in England. He spent years compiling lists of important volumes and taking measures to encourage their preservation.

Why people stayed home

     Roads were mere cart tracks or trails, wandering by the easiest routes through the forests and across the land. All were infested with thieves and highwaymen.

    These things my father had told me. There were scattered farms, a few great estates. A few old Roman roads were still in use. New roads were often knee-deep in mud.

    Waterways would offer the easiest route across country, but any travel was a hardship. Most who travel understood why the word "travel" had once been "travail."

(from Sackett's Land, by Louis L'Amour)

Nowhere to hide from hate

     "We will lie quiet and fish for a few days," I told Jublain. "Then off for London."

    "London? Are you daft, man? That is where Genester will be, and where he is strongest."

    "It is a vast city," I said complacently. "Folk say more than one hundred thousand people live there. How could I be found among so many?"

    "You are a child," Jublain said angrily. "It is too small a place in which to hide from hate."

(from Sackett's Land, by Louis L'Amour)

The fens

     There was a goodly chance none of those who had witnessed my deed had seen me before, or my village. Yet if such there was, once I reached the fens I was lost to them.

    For the fens were a vast area of low-lying ground, of shallow lakes and winding waterways, impassable swamps with here and there limestone outcroppings that created small islands, often with clumps of birch or ancient oaks.

(from Sackett's Land, by Louis L'Amour)

Stay alert!

     "And Chesney hasn't got here yet? Something must have happened to him."

    Wilbur's surmise was right. Headed in his car for Shropshire and his thousand dollars, Howard Chesney had won through only as far as Worcestershire. He was lying with a broken leg in the cottage hospital of the village of Wibley-in-the-vale in that county, a salutary object lesson to the inhabitants of the hamlet not to go to sleep at the wheel of a car when on the wrong side of the road with a truck laden with mineral water bottles coming the other way.

(from A Pelican At Blandings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

Violent awakening

 Wilbur's room was the one in which, according to legend, an Emsworth of the fifteenth century had dismembered his wife with a battle axe, as husbands in those days were so apt to do when the strain of married life became too much for them. The unfortunate woman must have experienced a good deal of apprehension when she heard him at the door, but not much more than did Wilbur when Vanessa's knock sounded in the silent night. Not even Lord Emsworth at the top of his table-upsetting form could have produced a deeper impression. After lying awake for several hours he had at last fallen into a doze, and the knock had coincided with the point in his nightmare when a bomb had exploded under his feet.

(from A Pelican At Blandings, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)