response 37 of 98:

Jan 5 10:00 UTC 2001

Hm, I think R K Sawyer essentially has it in <resp:34>, although
he doesn't name the author.  Lucy Maud Montgomery.

response 39 of 98:

Jan 5 15:31 UTC 2001

Book was _Anne of Green Gables_ or the French title La Maison aux Pignons
Verts

response 41 of 98:

Jan 8 02:30 UTC 2001

Ok, here goes with a new quote:

        This house is back to its beginnings now.  Lonely
        boarders thumb through magazines in the kitchen while
        they wait for their canned soup to heat.  The
        television runs nearly all night, hissing its test
        pattern to a fat man asleep in an armchair.  There are
        yellowed newspapers stacked on the window seat and
        candy wrappers in the ashtrays, and this morning when I
        cam down to breakfast I removed a pair of dirty socks
        from the bottom stairstep and laid them on the newel
        post, where I suspect they will stay forever.

        The house is the same but the street is changing.
        Getting younger.  Old people are dwindling.  The few
        that are left pick their way down the sidewalk like
        shadows, whispering courage to themselves and clutching
        their string shopping bags full of treasure.  There
        goes the lame lady who lives above the grocery store in
        a room full of cats and birds and goldfish.  There goes
        our boarder Mr. Houck, who thins himself to a pencil
        line when passing a black harmonica player.  Miss
        Cohen, with her widowed mother.  The bald man with the
        ivory-handled cane.  All flinching beneath the cool
        eyes of the boy in dungarees who sits on a stoop
        fiddling with his ropes of colored beads.

response 43 of 98:

Jan 10 00:32 UTC 2001

Probably wrong, but I'll guess F. Scott Fitzgerald

response 45 of 98:

Jan 10 13:12 UTC 2001

Anne Tyler?

response 47 of 98:

Jan 11 14:44 UTC 2001

Okay - here it is.  I'll be out of town for a few days and won't be back
until sometime Monday.  I'll check the responses then so guess away.

        Arriving at the last house, my knock at the door was 
        answered by a bright, good natured, good looking little
        woman, who in reply to my request for a night's lodging
        and food, said, "Oh, I guess so.   I think you can stay.
        Come in and I'll call my husband."  But I must first 
        warn you," I said, "that I have nothing smaller to offer
        you than a five-dollar bill for my entertainment.  I don't
        want you to think that I am trying to impose on your hos-
        pitality."

        She then called her husband, a blacksmith, who was at work
        at his forge.  He came out, hammer in hand, bare-breasted,
        sweaty, begrimed, and covered with shaggy black hair.  In
        reply to his wife's statement, that this young man wished
        to stop over night, he quickly replied, "That's all right;
        tell him to go into the house."  He was turning to go back
        to his shop, when his wife added, "But he says he hasn't
        any change to pay.  He has nothing smaller than a five-
        dollar bill."  Hesitating only a moment, he turned on his
        heel and said, "Tell him to go into the house.  A man that
        comes right out like that beforehand is welcome to eat my
        bread."

        

response 49 of 98:

Jan 11 20:39 UTC 2001

Hmmm.  Not Spillane.  Perhaps another quote would be in order before
I leave:

        When he came in after his hard day's work and sat down to
        dinner, he solemnly asked a blessing on the frugal meal,
        consisting solely of corn bread and bacon.  Then, looking
        across the table at me, he said, "Young man, what are you
        doing down here?"  I replied that I was looking at plants.
        "Plants?  What kind of plants?"   I said, "Oh, all kinds;
        grass, weeds, flowers, trees, mosses, ferns -- almost 
        everything that grows is interesting to me."

response 51 of 98:

Jan 14 05:47 UTC 2001

  As a semi-related issue, for how long have their been five-dollar bills?
  (and where did we come up with the word "dollar", anyway?)

response 53 of 98:

Jan 15 01:24 UTC 2001

   Main Entry: dol7lar
   Pronunciation: 'dd-l&r
   Function: noun
   Usage: often attributive
   Etymology: Dutch or Low German daler, from German Taler, short for
   Joachimstaler, from Sankt Joachimsthal, Bohemia, where talers were
   first made
   Date: 1553

response 55 of 98:

Jan 16 00:34 UTC 2001

Hint:  Author is known for his journals and memoirs - not fiction.
remmers is sort of close on the time period.  Another quote:  

        About noon my road became dim and at last vanished among
        desolate fields.  Lost and hungry, I knew my direction 
        but could not keep it on account of the briers.  My path
        was indeed strewn with flowers, but as thorny, also, as
        mortal ever trod.  In trying to force a way through these
        cat-plants one is not simply clawed and pricked through 
        all one's clothing, but caught and held fast.  The toothed
        arching branches come down over and above you like cruel
        living arms, and the more you struggle the more desperately
        you are entangled, and your wounds deepened and multiplied.
        The South has plant fly-catchers.  It also has plant man-
        catchers.

        After a great deal of defensive fighting and strugggling I
        escaped to a road and a house, but failed to find food or 
        shelter.  Towards sundown, as I was walking rapidly along a
        straight stretch in the road, I suddenly came in sight of 
        ten mounted men riding abreast.  They undoubtedly had seen
        me before I discovered them, for they had stopped their horses
        and were evidently watching me.  I saw at once that it was
        useless to avoid them, for the ground thereabout was quite open.
        I knew that there was nothing for it but to face them fearlessly,
        without showing the slightest suspicion of foul play.  Therefore,
        without halting for a moment, I advanced rapidly with long strides
        as though I intended to walk through the midst of them.  When I
        got within a rod or so, I looked up to their faces and smilingly
        bade them "Howdy."  Stopping never an instant, I turned to one
        side and walked around them to get on the road again, and kept
`       on without venturing to look back or to betray the slightest
        fear of being robbed.  

        After I had gone about one hundred or one hundred and fifty 
        yards, I ventured a quick glance back, withot stopping, and
        saw in this flash of an eye that all the ten had turned their
        horses toward me and were evidently talking about me; supposedly,
        with reference to what my object was, where I was going, and
        whether it would be worth while to rob me.  They all were mounted
        on rather scrawny horses, and all wore long hair hanging down on
        their sholders.  Evidently they belonged to the most irreclaim-
        able of the guerilla bands who, long accustomed to plunder,
        deplored the coming of peace.  I was not followed, however, 
        probably because the plants projecting from my plant press made
        them believe that I was a poor herb doctor, a common occupation
        in these mountain regions.

response 57 of 98:

Jan 18 14:39 UTC 2001

OK, I'll bite.  Who is (was) John Muir?

response 59 of 98:

Jan 18 15:44 UTC 2001

I think Scott might have it.