One summer evening in the year 1848 ...

    

     "...three Cardinals and a missionary bishop from America were dining together in the gardens of a villa in the Sabine hills, overlooking Rome."

 Please come and find out which "masterpiece" opens with that line, then I hope you'll join in and read it with us.

Comments

[Dark Puss]

I'm not sure you will win me over with a quote from the infamous A.N. Wilson who said

"Yes, scientists do much good. But a country run by these arrogant gods of certainty would truly be hell on earth"

in one of most ill-informed (in my view and that of many who are in a better position to judge) articles on science I have ever come across in the national (UK nation) press (Daily Mail, 4th November 2009).

"The trouble with a ’scientific’ argument, of course, is that it is not made in the real world, but in a laboratory by an unimaginative academic relying solely on empirical facts."

Yes folks, that's poor old Dark Puss and his colleagues pushed firmly out through the cat flap into the darkness.

Despite the, for me, very off-putting source of the quote I'll be reading this book if I can get my dull, unimaginative, arrogant paws upon it!

[pamela]

Willa Cather. I knew I recognized that opening line.
Love her writing. Her selection of short stories, entitled The Troll Garden is amazing. And I've always adored Oh, Pioneers.