Thought for Monday morning

Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton (May 25 1803 – January 18, 1873), was an English novelist, poet, playwright, and politician. He was immensely popular with the reading public and wrote a stream of bestselling novels which earned him a considerable fortune. He is perhaps most famous for The Last Days of Pompeii -- and because he (not Snoopy) penned the infamous opening line "It was a dark and stormy night."

And because one so seldom gets to endure the full impact of that famous line that Snoopy was always typing, here it is in all its shocking splendor, the opening sentence from his novel Paul Clifford:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

Just makes you want to run out and pick up a copy at your local library, don't it?