Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Overview
 
Thomas Bailey Aldrich was an American poet, novelist, travel writer and editor.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich was born in Portsmouth
Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Portsmouth is a city in Rockingham County, New Hampshire in the United States. It is the largest city but only the fourth-largest community in the county, with a population of 21,233 at the 2010 census...

, New Hampshire
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...

 on November 11, 1836. When Aldrich was a child, his father moved to New Orleans. After 10 years, Aldrich was sent back to Portsmouth to prepare for college. This period of his life is partly described in his semi-autobiographical novel The Story of a Bad Boy (1870), in which "Tom Bailey" is the juvenile hero.
Quotations

All the best sands of my life are somehow getting into the wrong end of the hourglass. If I could only reverse it! Were it in my power to do so, would I?

Leaves From a Notebook, Ponkapog Papers (1903)

Somewhere—in desolate wind-swept space— In Twilight-land—in No-man’s land—Two hurrying Shapes met face to face, And bade each other stand.“And who are you?” cried one, agape, Shuddering in the gloaming light.“I know not,” said the second Shape, “I only died last night.”

Identity.

So precious life is! Even to the old The hours are as a miser’s coins!

Broken Music.

Here is woe, a self and not the mask of woe.

Andromeda.

That was indeed to live— At one bold swoop to wrest From darkling death the bestThat Death to Life can give!

Shaw. Memorial Ode.

What is more cheerful, now, in the fall of the year, than an open-wood-fire? Do you hear those little chirps and twitters coming out of that piece of apple-wood? Those are the ghosts of the robins and blue-birds that sang upon the bough when it was in blossom last Spring. In Summer whole flocks of them come fluttering about the fruit-trees under the window: so I have singing birds all the year round.

Miss Mehitabel’s Son.

 
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