A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

by Norman Maclean

“Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.”

Unlike many Presbyterians, he often used the word “beautiful.”

Always it was to be called a rod. If someone called it a pole, my father looked at him as a sergeant in the United States Marines would look at a recruit who had just called a rifle a gun.

I was tough by being the product of tough establishments—the United States Forest Service and logging camps. Paul was tough by thinking he was tougher than any establishment.

Perhaps we always wondered which of us was tougher, but, if boyhood questions aren't answered before a certain point in time, they can't ever be raised again.

In some ways, I liked him even less than Paul did, and it's no pleasure to see your wife's face on somebody you don't like.

“My, my!”

She was one of America's mothers who never dream of using profanity themselves but enjoy their husbands', and later come to need it, like cigar smoke.