The New Yorker, 2005-01-16

[fiefoe]

"Here to There: Municipal Velvet" / Lauren Collins

• The world of the urban horse-drawn carriage, it turns out, is an almost completely seamless anachronism.
• A glance at the index attested to the manual's scope: 'teeth, temperature, Tetanus, Theater District, Thrush.'
• 'One of the things horses are most afraid of is garbage trucks,' he said. 'They have an odor to them and a noise to them and a size to them.'
  

"Here Below" / Roger Angell

• inscriptions had become indistinct, with some words missing. It was like a half-heard conversation.
• with a closing "Who died of epilespy* in her sixty-first year." At first glance, the asterisk looked decorative or accidental, but at the bottom of the stone it was repeated, in footnote fashion, and the medical slur correct: *apoplexy.
• Nancy Frankin... wrote, "It's funny; as an editor she was maternal but as a mother she was editorial."
• 'In the absence of faith, indicision is the mind's great stay against death.' [Benjamin Constant]
  

"Prairie Fire" / Eric Konigsberg
    Linda looked at me helpfully. "You see, we don't know how to explain hese kids - not scientifically." <> "Scientifically!" Hilton scoffed.

'in the fall of a sparrow', Boss Tweed

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