Interesting Good Morning Quotes

Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life… But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin?

It is the custom of every good mother after her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and put things straight for next morning, repacking into their proper places the many articles that have wandered during the day. If you could keep awake (but of course you can’t) you would see your own mother doing this, and you would find it very interesting to watch her. It is quite like tidying up drawers. You would see her on her knees, I expect, lingering humorously over some of your contents, wondering where on earth you had picked this thing up, making discoveries sweet and not so sweet, pressing this to her cheek as if it were as nice as a kitten, and hurriedly stowing that out of sight. When you wake in the morning, the naughtinesses and evil passions with which you went to bed have been folded up small and placed at the bottom of your mind; and on the top, beautifully aired, are spread out prettier thoughts, ready for you to put on.

Mrs. Darling first heard of Peter when she was tidying up her children's minds. It is the nightly custom of every good mother after her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and put things straight for next morning, repacking into their proper places the many articles that have wandered during the day. If you could keep awake (but of course you can't) you would see your own mother doing this and you would find it very interesting to watch. It's quite like tidying up drawers. You would see her on her knees, I expect, lingering humorously over some of your contents, wondering where on Earth you picked this thing up, making discoveries sweet and not so sweet, pressing this to her cheek, as if it were a nice kitten, and hurriedly stowing that out of sight. When you wake in the morning, the naughtiness and evil passions with which you went to bed have been folded up small and placed at the bottom of your mind and on the top, beautifully aired, are spread out the prettier thoughts, ready for you to put on.

maybe you’re sleeping and I suppose I could just say this in the morning, but now I can’t sleep and I’m just lying here so I might as well get it over with, and well . . .I’m sorry about this afternoon, J.D. The first spill honestly was an accident, but the second . . . okay, that was completely uncalled for. I’m, um, happy to pay for the dry cleaning. And, well . . . I guess that’s it. Although you really might want to rethink leaving your jacket on your chair. I’m just saying. Okay, then. That’s what they make hangers for. Good. Fine. Good-bye.” J.D. heard the beep, signaling the end of the message, and he hung up the phone. He thought about what Payton had said—not so much her apology, which was question-ably mediocre at best—but something else. She thought about him while lying in bed. Interesting. Later that night, having been asleep for a few hours, J.D. shot up in bed He suddenly remembered—her shoe. Oops.

Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed- interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing sprit- crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing you last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that?

The perfect Librarian is calm, cool, collected, intelligent, multilingual, a crack shot, a martial artist, an Olympic-level runner (at both the sprint and marathon), a good swimmer, an expert thief, and a genius con artist. They can steal a dozen books from a top-security strongbox in the morning, discuss literature all afternoon, have dinner with the cream of society in the evening, and then stay up until midnight dancing, before stealing some more interesting tomes at three a.m. That's what a perfect Librarian would do. In practice, most Librarians would rather spend their time reading a good book.

while it was true that books could change with the years just as much as people could, the difference was that whereas people would always drop you when they could no longer get any advantage or pleasure or interest or at least a good feeling from you, a book would never abandon you. Naturally you sometimes dropped them, maybe for several years, or even forever. But they, even if you betrayed them, would never turn their backs on you: they would go on waiting for you silently and humbly on their shelf. They would wait for ten years. They wouldn't complain. One night, when you suddenly needed a book, even at three in the morning, even if it was a book you had abandoned and erased from your heart for years and years, it would never disappoint you, it would come down from its shelf and keep you company in your moment of need. It would not try to get its own back or make excuses or ask itself if it was worth its while or if you deserved it or if you still suited each other, it would come at once as soon as you asked. A book would never let you down.

When once more alone, I reviewed the information I had got; looked into my heart, examined its thoughts and feelings, and endeavoured to bring back with a strict hand such as had been straying through imagination's boundless and trackless waste, into the safe fold of common sense. Arraigned to my own bar, Memory having given her evidence of the hopes, wishes, sentiments I had been cherishing since last night--of the general state of mind in which I had indulged for nearly a fortnight past; Reason having come forward and told, in her quiet way a plain, unvarnished tale, showing how I had rejected the real, and rapidly devoured the ideal--I pronounced judgement to this effect-- That a greater fool than Jane Eyre had never breathed the breath of life; that a more fantastic idiot had never surfeited herself on sweet lies, and swallowed poison as if it were nectar. "You," I said, "a favourite with Mr. Rochester? You're gifted with the power of pleasing him? You're of importance to him in any way? Go!--your folly sickens me. And you have derived pleasure from occasional tokens of preference--equivocal tokens shown by a gentleman of family and a man of the world to dependent and novice. How dared you? Poor stupid dupe! Could not even self-interest make you wiser? You repeated to yourself this morning the brief scene of last night? Cover your face and be ashamed! He said something in praise of your eyes, did he? Blind puppy! Open their bleared lids and look on your own accursed senselessness! It does no good to no woman to be flattered by her superior, who cannot possibly intend to marry her; and it is madness in all women to let a secret love kindle within them, which, if unreturned and unknown, must devour the life that feeds it; and if discovered and responded to, must lead into miry wilds whence there is no extrication. "Listen, then, Jane Eyre, to your sentence: tomorrow, place the glass before you, and draw in chalk your own pictures, faithfully, without softening on defect; omit no harsh line, smooth away no displeasing irregularity; write under it, 'Portrait of a Governess, disconnected, poor, and plain.' "Afterwards, take a piece of smooth ivory--you have one prepared in your drawing-box: take your palette, mix your freshest, finest, clearest tints; choose your most delicate camel-hair pencils; delineate carefully the loveliest face you can imageine; paint it in your softest shades and sweetest lines, according to the description given by Mrs. Fairfax of Blanche Ingram; remember the raven ringlets, the oriental eye--What! you revert to Mr. Rochester as a model! Order! No snivel!--no sentiment!--no regret! I will endure only sense and resolution... "Whenever, in the future, you should chance to fancy Mr. Rochester thinks well of you, take out these two pictures and compare them--say, "Mr. Rochester might probably win that noble lady's love, if he chose to strive for it; is it likely he would waste a serious thought on this indignent and insignifican plebian?" "I'll do it," I resolved; and having framed this determination, I grew calm, and fell asleep.

Two dozen armed soldiers stood at the threshold. "Good morning," said the man in front. "Could we interest you in an unconditional surrender?" "By all means," Cecelia replied. "I do not know who you are, but I am most happy to accept your surrender.

I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch – hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into – some fearful, devastating scourge, I know – and, before I had glanced half down the list of “premonitory symptoms,” it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it. I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever – read the symptoms – discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it – wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus’s Dance – found, as I expected, that I had that too, – began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically – read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Bright’s disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid’s knee. ... I had walked into that reading-room a happy, healthy man. I crawled out a decrepit wreck. I went to my medical man. He is an old chum of mine, and feels my pulse, and looks at my tongue, and talks about the weather, all for nothing, when I fancy I’m ill; so I thought I would do him a good turn by going to him now. “What a doctor wants,” I said, “is practice. He shall have me. He will get more practice out of me than out of seventeen hundred of your ordinary, commonplace patients, with only one or two diseases each.” So I went straight up and saw him, and he said: “Well, what’s the matter with you?” I said: “I will not take up your time, dear boy, with telling you what is the matter with me. Life is brief, and you might pass away before I had finished. But I will tell you what is NOT the matter with me. I have not got housemaid’s knee. Why I have not got housemaid’s knee, I cannot tell you; but the fact remains that I have not got it. Everything else, however, I HAVE got.” And I told him how I came to discover it all. Then he opened me and looked down me, and clutched hold of my wrist, and then he hit me over the chest when I wasn’t expecting it – a cowardly thing to do, I call it – and immediately afterwards butted me with the side of his head. After that, he sat down and wrote out a prescription, and folded it up and gave it me, and I put it in my pocket and went out. I did not open it. I took it to the nearest chemist’s, and handed it in. The man read it, and then handed it back. He said he didn’t keep it. I said: “You are a chemist?” He said: “I am a chemist. If I was a co-operative stores and family hotel combined, I might be able to oblige you. Being only a chemist hampers me.” I read the prescription. It ran: “1 lb. beefsteak, with 1 pt. bitter beer every 6 hours. 1 ten-mile walk every morning. 1 bed at 11 sharp every night. And don’t stuff up your head with things you don’t understand.” I followed the directions, with the happy result – speaking for myself – that my life was preserved, and is still going on.

Acceptance, on the other hand, teaches that how you feel is simply how you feel. It’s neither good nor bad. It just is. And interestingly, when you’re stewing in negative emotions, accepting them often helps them dissipate, like an early morning mist beneath a ray of sun.

weren't we all the same as children?" eiko asked. "all of us, destined to become beautiful brides in fluffy white dresses!" she giggled to herself. "where did we go wrong?" isn't that what keeps life interesting?" i replied. "and who knows? next year you could be somebody's wife. no one knows what will happen." sometimes i think it would be wonderful just to stay the way i am forever, just kick back and space out during the afternoon thinking about all the exciting things that the night will bring, all the naughty things i might take part in." she snickered again. well," i said, "aren't you the happy one." she squinted her tiny nose and laughed. dawn was breaking as we said good-bye. i saw her off by watching her small body disappear into the background, her high heels clapping along, echoing in the early morning city. my drunkenness, the sunrise, the bright sky, and a friend who was leaving. if i had died in my fall i would have missed that morning - that splendid sunrise over tokyo.

Well I want something to do, to create, to achieve, to whatever.... Something I can’t get enough of. You know something that I can't wait to get up in the morning to do something I can't get enough of, something that brings me joy and makes my heart sing. It could be anything, could be more than one thing but something that grabs me. Even a job, if it grabs me so that I could hardly wait to get there. Something that makes me feel good, allows me to be me, gives me freedom to grow and expand, something that grasps my heart, my joy, my excitement and leads me down the path to more joyful things, exciting challenges and challenging things. Barely stopping to take a breath I continued. Need a new journey a new destination, I want to grow to be or become, tread a new path, see what I haven't seen be what I haven't been ask what I haven't asked dare to what I haven't dared to . . . I don't even think it is so much a physical thing or mental it's just sort of un-learning some of what I learned It’s being happy, while I am happy but I want something to do that creates even more. (..) Doing it for the joy of doing it not for any other reason; also I want it from and un-edited creativity free flowing something… I have some things that seem very interesting and somehow just don’t feel right almost like I’m taking the wrong path and yet there are other things that I could be doing like writing but it seems that it does not feel good to sit and write but yet some part of me seems to love it and something in me hates it sort of like it could be the thing for me to do and yet it might not be.

You,” I said, “a favourite with Mr. Rochester? You gifted with the power of pleasing him? You of importance to him in any way? Go! your folly sickens me. And you have derived pleasure from occasional tokens of preference—equivocal tokens shown by a gentleman of family and a man of the world to a dependent and a novice. How dared you? Poor stupid dupe!—Could not even self-interest make you wiser? You repeated to yourself this morning the brief scene of last night?—Cover your face and be ashamed! He said something in praise of your eyes, did he? Blind puppy! Open their bleared lids and look on your own accursed senselessness! It does good to no woman to be flattered by her superior, who cannot possibly intend to marry her; and it is madness in all women to let a secret love kindle within them, which, if unreturned and unknown, must devour the life that feeds it; and, if discovered and responded to, must lead, ignis-fatus-like, into miry wilds whence there is no extrication.

No wonder they don’t like her,” Valdivia said to herself. A woman who is good at her job always rocks the boat, she thought. She knew this from experience, but didn’t think she had run into the archetypal boys’ club in New Valley; however, Valdivia never dropped her guard to the possibility. It was then she realized the chief’s lack of interest in the case, his attempt to dissuade her from her instincts, was just a softer version of the same old thing.

Good morning, Meroe,' I said, dusting uselessly at my tracksuit pants. 'Might I interest you in today's special, pre-floured kitten?

How resilient I am; and how fatalistic now; and how little I mind and how much; and how good my novel is; and how tired I am this morning; and how I like praise; and how full of ideas I am; and Tom and Stephen came to tea, and Ray and William dine; and I forgot to describe my interesting talk with Nessa about my criticizing her children; and I left out—I forget what.

We receive no message in the strict sense of the word when a friend enters a room and says "good morning." The word has no function to select from an ensemble of possible states, though situations are conceivable in which it would have. The most interesting consequence of this way of looking at communication is the general conclusion that the greater the probability of a symbol's occurrence in any given situation, the smaller will be its information content. Where we can anticipate we need not listen. It is in this context that projection will do for perception.

Dear Abba, I’m stepping into a new day brimming with new mercies, fresh-slate-do-over grace extended freely to me by Your hands. But it is not just given to me but to all. So that my attempts to control and manipulate others, even if it’s in their best interests, is not only to spit on the grace given them, but also that given to me. Father, the only thing truly “for our own good” is Your mercy. Nothing else comes close. Nothing. Have mercy on me.

The Loneliness of the Military Historian Confess: it's my profession that alarms you. This is why few people ask me to dinner, though Lord knows I don't go out of my way to be scary. I wear dresses of sensible cut and unalarming shades of beige, I smell of lavender and go to the hairdresser's: no prophetess mane of mine, complete with snakes, will frighten the youngsters. If I roll my eyes and mutter, if I clutch at my heart and scream in horror like a third-rate actress chewing up a mad scene, I do it in private and nobody sees but the bathroom mirror. In general I might agree with you: women should not contemplate war, should not weigh tactics impartially, or evade the word enemy, or view both sides and denounce nothing. Women should march for peace, or hand out white feathers to arouse bravery, spit themselves on bayonets to protect their babies, whose skulls will be split anyway, or,having been raped repeatedly, hang themselves with their own hair. There are the functions that inspire general comfort. That, and the knitting of socks for the troops and a sort of moral cheerleading. Also: mourning the dead. Sons,lovers and so forth. All the killed children. Instead of this, I tell what I hope will pass as truth. A blunt thing, not lovely. The truth is seldom welcome, especially at dinner, though I am good at what I do. My trade is courage and atrocities. I look at them and do not condemn. I write things down the way they happened, as near as can be remembered. I don't ask why, because it is mostly the same. Wars happen because the ones who start them think they can win. In my dreams there is glamour. The Vikings leave their fields each year for a few months of killing and plunder, much as the boys go hunting. In real life they were farmers. The come back loaded with splendour. The Arabs ride against Crusaders with scimitars that could sever silk in the air. A swift cut to the horse's neck and a hunk of armour crashes down like a tower. Fire against metal. A poet might say: romance against banality. When awake, I know better. Despite the propaganda, there are no monsters, or none that could be finally buried. Finish one off, and circumstances and the radio create another. Believe me: whole armies have prayed fervently to God all night and meant it, and been slaughtered anyway. Brutality wins frequently, and large outcomes have turned on the invention of a mechanical device, viz. radar. True, valour sometimes counts for something, as at Thermopylae. Sometimes being right - though ultimate virtue, by agreed tradition, is decided by the winner. Sometimes men throw themselves on grenades and burst like paper bags of guts to save their comrades. I can admire that. But rats and cholera have won many wars. Those, and potatoes, or the absence of them. It's no use pinning all those medals across the chests of the dead. Impressive, but I know too much. Grand exploits merely depress me. In the interests of research I have walked on many battlefields that once were liquid with pulped men's bodies and spangled with exploded shells and splayed bone. All of them have been green again by the time I got there. Each has inspired a few good quotes in its day. Sad marble angels brood like hens over the grassy nests where nothing hatches. (The angels could just as well be described as vulgar or pitiless, depending on camera angle.) The word glory figures a lot on gateways. Of course I pick a flower or two from each, and press it in the hotel Bible for a souvenir. I'm just as human as you. But it's no use asking me for a final statement. As I say, I deal in tactics. Also statistics: for every year of peace there have been four hundred years of war.

That a greater fool than Jane Eyre had never breathed the breath of life, that a more fantastic idiot had never surfeited herself on sweet lies and swallowed poison as if it were nectar. YOU, I said, a favourite with Mr. Rochester? YOU gifted with the power of pleasing him? YOU of importance to him in any way? Go; your folly sickens me. And you have derived pleasure from occasional tokens of peference, equivocal tokens shown by a gentleman of family and a man of the world, to a dependent and a novice. How dared you? Poor stupid dupe? Could not even self-interest make you wiser? You repeated to yourself this morning the brief scene of last night; Cover your face and be ashamed. He said something in praise of your eyes did he> Blind puppy. Open their bleared lids and look on your own accursed senselessness. It does good to no woman to be flattered by her superior who cannot possibly intend to marry her, and it is madness in all women to let a secret love kindle within them which, if unreturned and unknown, must devour the life that feeds it, and if discovered and responded to, must lead ignis-fatus-like into miry wilds whence there is no extrication.

It is the nightly custom of every good mother after her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and put things straight for next morning, repacking into their proper places the many articles that have wandered during the day. If you could keep awake (but of course you can't) you would see your own mother doing this, and you would find it very interesting to watch her. It is quite like tidying up drawers. You would see her on her knees, I expect, lingering humorously over some of your contents, wondering where on earth you had picked this thing up, making discoveries sweet and not so sweet, pressing this to her cheek as if it were as nice as a kitten, and hurriedly stowing that out of sight. When you wake in the morning, the naughtiness and evil passions with which you went to bed have been folded up small and placed at the bottom of your mind; and on the top, beautifully aired, are spread out your prettier thoughts, ready for you to put on.

It would have been helpful if there was a Mayo Clinic chapter about the topic of "leaving." Man, I would have read that chapter over and over -- leaving your wailing baby in the morning without wanting to slit your wrists; leaving your desk even though you are only a half hour away from completing something that would feel so good to wrap up; leaving the building so no one notices that you are actually leaving. I was much more interested in honing that skill than learning how to puree apples and carrots to freeze in ice-cube trays (not that I ever did that either). As long as I was a full-time working mother with a clock to punch or a train to catch -- as I would be for eight more years -- I never figured out how to leave with grace or with so-called conviction.

Forever, Tom thought. Maybe he’d never go back to the States. It was not so much Europe itself as the evenings he had spent alone, here and in Rome, that made him feel that way. Evenings by himself simply looking at maps, or lying around on sofas thumbing through guidebooks. Evenings looking at his clothes - his clothes and Dickie’s - and feeling Dickie’s rings between his palms, and running his fingers over the antelope suitcase he had bought at Gucci’s. He had polished the suitcase with a special English leather dressing, not that it needed polishing because he took such good care of it, but for its protection. He loved possessions, not masses of them, but a select few that he did not part with. They gave a man self-respect. Not ostentation but quality, and the love that cherished the quality. Possessions reminded him that he existed, and made him enjoy his existence. It was as simple as that. And wasn’t that worth something? He existed. Not many people in the world knew how to, even if they had the money. It really didn’t take money, masses of money, it took a certain security. He had been on the road to it, even with Marc Priminger. He had appreciated Marc’s possessions, and they were what had attracted him to the house, but they were not his own, and it had been impossible to make a beginning at acquiring anything of his own on forty dollars a week. It would have taken him the best years of his life, even if he had economised stringently, to buy the things he wanted. Dickie’s money had given him only an added momentum on the road he had been travelling. The money gave him the leisure to see Greece, to collect Etruscan pottery if he wanted (he had recently read an interesting book on that subject by an American living in Rome), to join art societies if he cared to and to donate to their work. It gave him the leisure, for instance, to read his Malraux tonight as late as he pleased, because he did not have to go to a job in the morning. He had just bought a two-volume edition of Malraux’s Psychologic de I’art which he was now reading, with great pleasure, in French with the aid of a dictionary.

You took it with good grace when you could have sliced him to ribbons with a few words." "I was tempted," she admitted. "But I couldn't help remembering something Mother once said." It had been on a long-ago morning in her childhood, when she and Gabriel had still needed books stacked on their chairs whenever they sat at the breakfast table. Their father had been reading a freshly ironed newspaper, while their mother, Evangeline, or Evie, as family and friends called her, fed spoonfuls of sweetened porridge to baby Raphael in his high chair. After Phoebe had recounted some injustice done to her by a playmate, saying she wouldn't accept the girl's apology, her mother had persuaded her to reconsider for the sake of kindness. "But she's a bad, selfish girl," Phoebe had said indignantly. Evie's reply was gentle but matter-of-fact. "Kindness counts the most when it's given to people who don't deserve it." "Does Gabriel have to be kind to everyone too?" Phoebe had demanded. "Yes, darling." "Does Father?" "No, Redbird," her father had replied, his mouth twitching at the corners. "That's why I married your mother- she's kind enough for two people." "Mother," Gabriel had asked hopefully, "could you be kind enough for three people?" At that, their father had taken a sudden intense interest in his newspaper, lifting it in front of his face. A quiet wheeze emerged from behind it. "I'm afraid not, dear," Evie had said gently, her eyes sparkling. "But I'm sure you and your sister can find a great deal of kindness in your own hearts." Returning her thoughts to the present, Phoebe said, "Mother told us to be kind even to people who don't deserve it.

It is a curious fact, and makes life very interesting, that, generally speaking, none of us have any expectation that things are going to happen till the very moment when they do happen. We wake up some morning with no idea that a great happiness is at hand, and before night it has come, and all the world is changed for us; or we wake bright and cheerful, with never a guess that clouds of sorrow are lowering in our sky, to put all the sunshine out for a while, and before noon all is dark. Nothing whispers of either the joy or the grief. No instinct bids us to delay or to hasten the opening of the letter or telegram, or the lifting of the latch of the door at which stands the messenger of good or ill.

The way I feel about you, Jacinda...I know you feel it, too." He stares at me so starkly, so hungrily that I can only nod. Agree. Of course, I feel it. "I do," I admit. But I don't understand him. Don't get why he should feel this way about me. Why should he want me so much? What do I offer him? Why did he save me that day in the mountains? And why does he pursue me now? When no girl spiked his interest before? "Good," he says. "Then how about a date?" "A date?" I repeat, like I've never heard the word. "Yeah. A real date. Something official. You. Me. Tonight. We're long overdue." His smile deepens, revealing the deep grooves on the sides of his cheeks. "Dinner. Movie. Popcorn." "Yes." The word slips past. For a moment I forget. Forget that I'm not an ordinary girl. That he's not an ordinary boy. For the first time, I understand Tamra. And the appeal of normal. "Yes." It feels good to say it. To pretend. To drink in the sight of him and forget there's an ulterior reason I need to go out with him. A reason that's going to tear us apart forever. Stupid. Did you think you might have a future with him? Mom's right. Time to grow up. He smiles. Then he's gone. Out the door. For a second, I'm confused. Then he's at my door, opening it, helping me out. Together we walk through the parking lot. Side by side. We move only a few feet before he slips his hand around mine. As we near the front of the building, I see several kids hanging out around the flagpole. Tamra with her usual crowd. Brooklyn at the head. I try to tug my hand free. His fingers tighten on mine. I glance at him, see the resolve in his eyes. His hazel eyes glint brightly in the already too hot morning. "Coward." "Oh." The single sound escapes me. Outrage. Indignation. I stop. Turn and face him. Feel something slip, give way, and crumble loose inside me. Set free, it propels me. Standing on my tiptoes, I circle my hand around his neck and pull his face down to mine. Kiss him. Right there in front of the school. Reckless. Stupid. I stake a claim on him like I've got something to prove, like a drake standing before the pride in a bonding ceremony. But then I forget our audience. Forget everything but the dry heat of our lips. My lungs tighten, contract. I feel my skin shimmer, warm as my lungs catch. Crackling heat works its way up my chest. Not the smartest move I've ever made.

Human colour is the colour I'm truly interested in, the colour of your humanity. May the size of your heart and the depth of your soul be your currency. welcome aboard my Good Ship. Let us sail to the colourful island of misex identity. You can eat from the cooking pot of mixed culture and bathe in the cool shade of being mixed-race. There is no need for a passport. There are no borders. We are all citizens of the world. Whatever shade you are, bring your light, bring your colour, bring your music and your books, your stories and your histories, and climb aboad. United as a people we are a million majestic colours, together we are a glorious stained-glass window. We are building a cathedral of otherness, brick by brick and book by book. Raise your glass of rum, let's toast to the minorities who are the majority. There's no stopping time, nor the blurring of lines or the blending of shades. With a spirit of hope I leave you now. I drink to our sameness and to our unique differences. This is the twenty-first century and we share this, we live here, in the future. It is a beautiful morning, it is first light on the time of being other, so get out from that shade and feel the warmth of being outside. You tick: Other.

And fortunately for me, neither of my parents would have known what you were talking about if you mentioned that modern and grossly overworked epithet 'racist'. To Tacklow, as with the early Greeks and Romans, and in their day the Venetians, all men were 'people' irrespective of race or color: there were good people and bad ones, nice or nasty ones, clever or stupid ones, interesting or boring ones - plus all the degrees that range between those poles. But all the same. Just 'people'. His fellow men.

My Dear Mrs Winter. (I had half a mind when I dipped my pen in the ink, to address you by your old natural Christian name.) The snow lies so deep on the Northern Railway, and the Posts have been so interrupted in consequence, that your charming note arrived here only this morning... I get the heartache again when I read your commission, written in the hand which I find now to be not in the least changed, and yet it is a great pleasure to be entrusted with it, and to have that share in your gentler remembrances which I cannot find it still my privilege to have, without a stirring of the old fancies. ... I am very very sorry you mistrusted me in not writing before your little girl was born; but I hope now you know me better you will teach her, one day, to tell her children, in times to come when they have some interest in wondering about it, that I loved her mother with the most extraordinary earnestness when I was a boy. I have always believed since, and always shall to the last, that there never was such a faithful and devoted poor fellow as I was. Whatever of fancy, romance, energy, passion, aspiration and determination belong to me, I never have separated and never shall separate from the hard hearted little woman - you - whom it is nothing to say I would have died for, with the greatest alacrity! I never can think, and I never seem to observe, that other young people are in such desperate earnest, or set so much, so long, upon one absorbing hope. It is a matter of perfect certainty to me that I began to fight my way out of poverty and obscurity, with one perpetual idea of you. This is so fixed in my knowledge that to the hour when I opened your letter last Friday night, I have never heard anybody addressed by your name or spoken of by your name, without a start. The sound of it has always filled me with a kind of pity and respect for the deep truth that I had, in my silly hobbledehoyhood, to bestow upon one creature who represented the whole world to me. I have never been so good a man since, as I was when you made me wretchedly happy. I shall never be half so good a fellow any more. This is all so strange now, both to think of, and to say, after every change that has come about; but I think, when you ask me to write to you, you are not unprepared for what it is so natural to me to recall, and will not be displeased to read it. I fancy, - though you may not have thought in the old time how manfully I loved you - that you may have seen in one of my books a faithful reflection of the passion I had for you, and may have thought that it was something to have been loved so well, and may have seen in little bits of "Dora" touches of your old self sometimes, and a grace here and there that may be revived in your little girls, years hence, for the bewilderment of some other young lover - though he will never be as terribly in earnest as I and David Copperfield were. People used to say to me how pretty all that was, and how fanciful it was, and how elevated it was above the little foolish loves of very young men and women. But they little thought what reason I had to know it was true and nothing more nor less. These are things that I have locked up in my own breast, and that I never thought to bring out any more. But when I find myself writing to you again "all to your self", how can I forbear to let as much light in upon them as will shew you that they are there still! If the most innocent, the most ardent, and the most disinterested days of my life had you for their Sun - as indeed they had - and if I know that the Dream I lived in did me good, refined my heart, and made me patient and persevering, and if the Dream were all of you - as God knows it was - how can I receive a confidence from you, and return it, and make a feint of blotting all this out! ...

It was that reader that she'd found in Mama's trunk. At the schoolhouse they had McGuffey, good lessons about good boys and girls. But Meggie had found the worn, faded book of fairy tales. They had been much more interesting than the stern admonitions of McGuffey. And her imagination had taken flight. Fanciful, that's what her father had called it. And when she'd read about Rapunzel, she'd decided that none of the local boys would ever do. A real prince was coming up the mountain for Meggie Best someday. She was sure of it. Unfortunately, this morning she'd thought that he'd arrived.

OLIVER DAVENANT did not merely read books. He snuffed them up, took breaths of them into his lungs, filled his eyes with the sight of the print and his head with the sound of words. Some emanation from the book itself poured into his bones, as if he were absorbing steady sunshine. The pages had personality. He was of the kind who cannot have a horrifying book in the room at night. He would, in fine weather, lay it upon an outside sill and close the window. Often Julia would see a book lying on his doormat. As well as this, his reading led him in and out of love. At first, it was the picture of Alice going up on tiptoe to shake hands with Humpty Dumpty; then the little Fatima in his Arthur Rackham book, her sweet dusky face, the coins hanging on her brow, the billowing trousers and embroidered coat. Her childish face was alive with excitement as she put the key to the lock. “Don’t!” he had once cried to her in loud agony. In London, he would go every Saturday morning to the Public Library to look at a picture of Lorna Doone. Some Saturdays it was not there, and he would go home again, wondering who had borrowed her, in what kind of house she found herself that week-end. On his last Saturday, he went to say good-bye and the book was not there, so he sat down at a table to await its return. Just before the library was to be shut for lunch-time, he went to the shelf and kissed the two books which would lie on either side of his Lorna when she was returned and, having left this message of farewell, made his way home, late for lunch and empty of heart. If this passion is to be called reading, then the matrons with their circulating libraries and the clergymen with their detective tales are merely flirting and passing time. To discover how Oliver’s life was lived, it was necessary, as in reading The Waste Land, to have an extensive knowledge of literature. With impartiality, he studied comic papers and encyclopaedia, Eleanor’s pamphlets on whatever interested her at the moment, the labels on breakfast cereals and cod liver oil, Conan Doyle and Charlotte Brontë.

Which philosophers would Alain suggest for practical living? Alain’s list overlaps nearly 100% with my own: Epicurus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Plato, Michel de Montaigne, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Bertrand Russell. * Most-gifted or recommended books? The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, Essays of Michel de Montaigne. * Favorite documentary The Up series: This ongoing series is filmed in the UK, and revisits the same group of people every 7 years. It started with their 7th birthdays (Seven Up!) and continues up to present day, when they are in their 50s. Subjects were picked from a wide variety of social backgrounds. Alain calls these very undramatic and quietly powerful films “probably the best documentary that exists.” TF: This is also the favorite of Stephen Dubner on page 574. Stephen says, “If you are at all interested in any kind of science or sociology, or human decision-making, or nurture versus nature, it is the best thing ever.” * Advice to your 30-year-old self? “I would have said, ‘Appreciate what’s good about this moment. Don’t always think that you’re on a permanent journey. Stop and enjoy the view.’ . . . I always had this assumption that if you appreciate the moment, you’re weakening your resolve to improve your circumstances. That’s not true, but I think when you’re young, it’s sort of associated with that. . . . I had people around me who’d say things like, ‘Oh, a flower, nice.’ A little part of me was thinking, ‘You absolute loser. You’ve taken time to appreciate a flower? Do you not have bigger plans? I mean, this the limit of your ambition?’ and when life’s knocked you around a bit and when you’ve seen a few things, and time has happened and you’ve got some years under your belt, you start to think more highly of modest things like flowers and a pretty sky, or just a morning where nothing’s wrong and everyone’s been pretty nice to everyone else. . . . Fortune can do anything with us. We are very fragile creatures. You only need to tap us or hit us in slightly the wrong place. . . . You only have to push us a little bit, and we crack very easily, whether that’s the pressure of disgrace or physical illness, financial pressure, etc. It doesn’t take very much. So, we do have to appreciate every day that goes by without a major disaster.

The Robertsons’ goal was never to be known as TV stars (except maybe Uncle Si, but, hey, he’s nuts—in a good way). In fact, I wasn’t even convinced the show would actually happen until I looked out my window one morning and saw cameramen running through my brother Willie’s front yard like bees swarming to a hive. I’ll never forget overhearing what one of the cameramen whispered to a technician on the first day of filming. He was sad that the show would probably tear our family apart. I remember thinking to myself, He hasn’t met my family. He didn’t know that the only kind of stardom my family and I are interested in is the lifestyle in Christ as described in Philippians 2:15—16: “Children of God . . . [that] shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life.

How could boredom be beneficial? In Hindu and Buddhist traditions, boredom is described as a precursor to insight and discovery. Parents sometimes want their children to be bored because they have an intuitive sense that grappling with this uncomfortable state is how kids discover what they’re interested in, quiet their mind, and find outlets to channel their energy. We wish more parents would trust that when their kids get bored, they’ll find the way out on their own, resisting the temptation to schedule activities from morning to night to keep boredom at bay. But don’t just take our word for it. The American Academy of Pediatrics released a 2007 consensus statement on how child-directed, exploratory play is far superior when it comes to developing emotional, social, and mental agility than structured, adult-guided activity.

Some years ago—to be definite, in May, 1884—there came to Lee a gentleman, Neville St. Clair by name, who appeared to have plenty of money. He took a large villa, laid out the grounds very nicely, and lived generally in good style. By degrees he made friends in the neighbourhood, and in 1887 he married the daughter of a local brewer, by whom he now has two children. He had no occupation, but was interested in several companies and went into town as a rule in the morning, returning by the 5:14 from Cannon Street every night. Mr. St. Clair is now thirty-seven years of age, is a man of temperate habits, a good husband, a very affectionate father, and a man who is popular with all who know him. I may add that his whole debts at the present moment, as far as we have been able to ascertain, amount to �88 10s., while he has �220 standing to his credit in the Capital and Counties Bank. There is no reason, therefore, to think that money troubles have been weighing upon his mind.

A dog wash?” Bird repeated the next morning. I’d called her to let her know I needed to talk. She was making her Scoopin’ Poopin’ runs and had invited me to ride along with her. I shrugged. “Could be interesting, in a guys-in-wet-T-shirts kind of way.” ‘Hmm. Hadn’t thought of that. Still, it’s going to be a lot of work, and you’ll be the one who ends up doing it.” “Whatever. It’s for a good cause. Orphaned dogs. But that’s not really why I called.” “Didn’t think it was.” “I was just sorta wondering…have you ever noticed the way Jason looks at me?” She looked in her rearview mirror, looked in her side view mirror. “Bird?” “I’m thinking.” “It’s not an essay question. It’s a yes or no.” “Yes.” “And?” “Thought you said no essay.” “Come on, Bird, how does he look at me?” She sighed. “He looks at you like you’re something he wants and can’t have.” I gazed out the window at the houses passing by. “When have you seen him looking at me like that?” “When have I not seen him looking at you like that?

It looked like every cartoon of a flying saucer Newt had ever seen. As he stared over the top of his map, a door in the saucer slid aside with a satisfying whoosh, revealing a gleaming walkway which extended automatically down to the road. Brilliant blue light shone out, outlining three alien shapes. They walked down the ramp. At least, two of them walked. The one that looked like a pepper pot just skidded down it, and fell over at the bottom. The other two ignored its frantic beeping and walked over to the car quite slowly, in the worldwide approved manner of policemen already compiling the charge sheet it their heads. The tallest one, a yellow toad dressed in kitchen foil, rapped on Newt's window. He wound it down. The thing was wearing the kind of mirror-finished sunglasses that Newt always thought of as Cool Hand Luke shades. 'Morning, sir or madam or neuter,' the thing said. 'This your planet, is it?' The other alien, which was stubby and green, had wandered off into the woods by the side of the road. Out of the corner of his eye Newt saw it kick a tree, and then run a leaf through some complicated gadget on its belt. It didn't look very pleased. 'Well, yes. I suppose so.' he said. The toad stared thoughtfully at the skyline. 'Had it long, have we, sir?' it said. 'Er. Not personally. I mean, as a species, about half a million years. I think.' The alien exchanged glances with its colleague. 'Been letting the old acid rain build up, haven't we, sir?' it said. 'Been letting ourselves go a bit with the old hydrocarbons, perhaps?' 'I'm sorry.' 'Could you tell me your planet's albedo, sir?' said the the toad, still staring levelly at the horizon as though it was doing something interesting. 'Er. No.' 'Well, I'm sorry to have to tell you, sir, that your polar ice caps are below regulation size for a planet of this category, sir.' 'Oh, dear,' said Newt. He was wondering who he could tell about this, and realizing that there was absolutely no one who would believe him. [...] The small alien walked past the car. 'CO2 level up 0.5 percent,' it rasped, giving him a meaningful look. 'You do know you could find yourself charged with being a dominant species while under the influence of impulse-driven consumerism, don't you?

After a torrent of rapid knocking, Lucy swept past her in the hallway, threw her purse on the table, and landed her ass on the couch before turning expectantly toward Riley and patting the couch next to her. Her dark eyes examined every nuance of Riley’s appearance. “Okay, dish,” she demanded. “Every last detail.” Riley rolled her eyes and shook her head as she scooted across the floor in her sock feet. She didn’t feel great, but at least she wasn’t in full torture mode. She thought Lucy might have waited until afternoon instead of showing up at ten-thirty a.m. but what the hell. Her old sweatshirt hugged against her stomach as she pulled her arms together. “Well,” she feigned ignorance, “what do you want to talk about?” Lucy slammed her hand on the couch. “Oh, don’t you even. Right now.” She threw herself back against the couch, her face fixed in a not-to-be-toyed-with expression. Riley noted with mild interest how her breasts jiggled inside her white t-shirt. Maybe she was turning into some kind of sex fiend. “Okay, yes, he sets me on fire. I can’t help it. Blame my gender lineage.” “I could see he set you fire. Your eyes could hardly look at anything else.” She picked at a tear in her faded jeans then flared back at Riley with an expression of awe. “Of course, my eyes had a few spasms of their own in his direction. Shit, the man is a god. I can’t remember seeing a body that well put together. At least,” she arched her back, “not a male body.” Riley threw back her head and laughed. Lucy was good tonic, at the very least. “Oh my god, can you stand it?!” “No—but tell me you didn’t give in, before I pass out.” “No, we didn’t have sex. But he did kiss me and my panties nearly fell straight to my ankles,” she chuckled. “He stopped himself, thank god, or I would have had him right there on the floor.” “You were drunk.” “Oh, yeah, ridiculous drunk. He ordered steaks delivered while he drove me home, and then sliced the steak for me and practically put it in my mouth.” She couldn’t sit still, the memory forcing her up from the couch to pace. She’d spent the entire morning and half the night trying to forget everything about him, and of course the other half had been consumed with remembering everything about him. “Shit. Fire.” Lucy’s glance followed her. “I want some. Can we have him?

How is my English?” Tatiana asked Alexander in English. “It’s good,” Alexander replied in English. It was late morning. They were walking through the dense deciduous riverbank woods a few kilometers from home, with two buckets for blueberries, and they were supposed to be talking only in English, but Tatiana backtracked and said in Russian, “I’m reading much better than I’m talking, I think. John Stuart Mill is simply unreadable now instead of unintelligible.” Alexander smiled. “That’s a fine distinction.” He yanked up a couple of mushrooms. “Tania, can we eat these?” Taking them out of his hands and throwing them back on the ground, Tatiana said, “Yes. But we will only be able to eat them once.” Alexander laughed. She said, “I have to teach you how to pick mushrooms, Shura. You can’t just rip them out of the ground like that.” “I have to teach you how to speak English, Tania,” said Alexander. In English, Tatiana continued, “This is my new husband, Alexander Barrington.” And in English, Alexander replied with a smile of pleasure on his face, “And this is my young wife, Tatiana Metanova.” He kissed the top of her braided head and in Russian said, “Tatiana, now say the other words I taught you.” She turned the color of a tomato. “No,” she stated firmly, in English. “I am not saying them.” “Please.” “No. Look for blueberries.” Still in English. She saw that Alexander couldn’t have been less interested in blueberries. “What about later? Will you say them later?” he asked. “Not now, not later,” Tatiana replied bravely. But she was not looking at him. Alexander drew her to him. “Later,” he continued in English, “I will insist that you please me by using your English-speaking tongue in bed with me.” Struggling slightly against him, Tatiana said in English, “It is good I am not understand what you say to me.” “I will show you what I mean,” said Alexander, putting down his bucket. “Later, later,” she acquiesced. “Now, pick up your backet. Collect blueberries.” “All right,” he said in English, not letting go of her. “And it’s bucket. Come on, Tania. Say the other words.” He held her. “Your shyness is an aphrodisiac to me. Say them.” Tatiana, breathless inside and out, said, “All right,” in English. “Pick up your bucket. Let us go house. I will practice love with you.” Alexander laughed. “Make love to you, Tania. Make love to you.

First, READ this book a chapter a day. We suggest at least five days a week for the next seven weeks, but whatever works for your schedule. Each chapter should only take you around ten minutes to read. Second, READ the Bible each day. Let the Word of God mold you into a person of prayer. We encourage you to read through the Gospel of Luke during these seven weeks and be studying it through the lens of what you can learn from Jesus about prayer. You are also encouraged to look up and study verses in each chapter that you are unfamiliar with that spark your interest. Third, PRAY every day. Prayer should be both scheduled and spontaneous. Choose a place and time when you can pray alone each day, preferably in the morning (Ps. 5:3). Write down specific needs and personal requests you’ll be targeting in prayer over the next few weeks, along with the following prayer: Heavenly Father, I come to You in Jesus’ name, asking that You draw me into a closer, more personal relationship with You. Cleanse me of my sins and prepare my heart to pray in a way that pleases You. Help me know You and love You more this week. Use all the circumstances of my life to make me more like Jesus, and teach me how to pray more strategically and effectively in Your name, according to Your will and Your Word. Use my faith, my obedience, and my prayers this week for the benefit of others, for my good, and for Your glory. Amen. May we each experience the amazing power of God in our generation as a testimony of His goodness for His glory! My Scheduled Prayer Time ___:___ a.m./p.m. My Scheduled Prayer Place ________________________ My Prayer Targets Develop a specific, personalized, ongoing prayer list using one or more of the following questions: What are your top three biggest needs right now? What are the top three things you are most stressed about? What are three issues in your life that would take a miracle of God to resolve? What is something good and honorable that, if God provided it, would greatly benefit you, your family, and others? What is something you believe God may be leading you to do, but you need His clarity and direction on it? What is a need from someone you love that you’d like to start praying about? 1. ______________________________________________ 2. ______________________________________________ 3. ______________________________________________ 4. ______________________________________________ 5. ______________________________________________ 6. ______________________________________________

I always had trouble with the feet of Jón the First, or Pre-Jón, as I called him later. He would frequently put them in front of me in the evening and tell me to take off his socks and rub his toes, soles, heels and calves. It was quite impossible for me to love these Icelandic men's feet that were shaped like birch stumps, hard and chunky, and screaming white as the wood when the bark is stripped from it. Yes, and as cold and damp, too. The toes had horny nails that resembled dead buds in a frosty spring. Nor can I forget the smell, for malodorous feet were very common in the post-war years when men wore nylon socks and practically slept in their shoes. How was it possible to love these Icelandic men? Who belched at the meal table and farted constantly. After four Icelandic husbands and a whole load of casual lovers I had become a vrai connaisseur of flatulence, could describe its species and varieties in the way that a wine-taster knows his wines. The howling backfire, the load, the gas bomb and the Luftwaffe were names I used most. The coffee belch and the silencer were also well-known quantities, but the worst were the date farts, a speciality of Bæring of Westfjord. Icelandic men don’t know how to behave: they never have and never will, but they are generally good fun. At least, Icelandic women think so. They seem to come with this inner emergency box, filled with humour and irony, which they always carry around with them and can open for useful items if things get too rough, and it must be a hereditary gift of the generations. Anyone who loses their way in the mountains and gets snowed in or spends the whole weekend stuck in a lift can always open this special Icelandic emergency box and get out of the situation with a good story. After wandering the world and living on the Continent I had long tired of well-behaved, fart-free gentlemen who opened the door and paid the bills but never had a story to tell and were either completely asexual or demanded skin-burning action until the morning light. Swiss watch salesmen who only knew of “sechs” as their wake-up hour, or hairy French apes who always required their twelve rounds of screwing after the six-course meal. I suppose I liked German men the best. They were a suitable mixture of belching northerner and cultivated southerner, of orderly westerner and crazy easterner, but in the post-war years they were of course broken men. There was little you could do with them except try to put them right first. And who had the time for that? Londoners are positive and jolly, but their famous irony struck me as mechanical and wearisome in the long run. As if that irony machine had eaten away their real essence. The French machine, on the other hand, is fuelled by seriousness alone, and the Frogs can drive you beyond the limit when they get going with their philosophical noun-dropping. The Italian worships every woman like a queen until he gets her home, when she suddenly turns into a slut. The Yank is one hell of a guy who thinks big: he always wants to take you the moon. At the same time, however, he is as smug and petty as the meanest seamstress, and has a fit if someone eats his peanut butter sandwich aboard the space shuttle. I found Russians interesting. In fact they were the most Icelandic of all: drank every glass to the bottom and threw themselves into any jollity, knew countless stories and never talked seriously unless at the bottom of the bottle, when they began to wail for their mother who lived a thousand miles away but came on foot to bring them their clean laundry once a month. They were completely crazy and were better athletes in bed than my dear countrymen, but in the end I had enough of all their pommel-horse routines. Nordic men are all as tactless as Icelanders. They get drunk over dinner, laugh loudly and fart, eventually start “singing” even in public restaurants where people have paid to escape the tumult of

And were you immediately taken with Charlotte, when you found her?" "Who wouldn't be?" Gentry parried with a bland smile. He drew a slow circle on Lottie's palm, stroking the insides of her fingers, brushed his thumb over the delicate veins of her wrist. The subtle exploration made her feel hot and breathless, her entire being focused on the fingertip that feathered along the tender flesh of her upper palm. Most disconcerting of all was the realization that Gentry didn't even know what he was doing. He fiddled lazily with her hand and talked with Sophia, while the chocolate service was brought to the parlor and set out on the table. "Isn't it charming?" Sophia asked, indicating the flowered porcelain service with a flourish. She picked up the tall, narrow pot and poured a dark, fragrant liquid into one of the small cups, filling the bottom third. "Most people use cocoa powder, but the best results are obtained by mixing the cream with chocolate liquor." Expertly she stirred a generous spoonful of sugar into the steaming liquid. "Not liquor as in wine or spirits, mind you. Chocolate liquor is pressed from the meat of the beans, after they have been roasted and hulled." "It smells quite lovely," Lottie commented, her breath catching as Gentry's fingertip investigated the plump softness at the base of her thumb. Sophia turned her attention to preparing the other cups. "Yes, and the flavor is divine. I much prefer chocolate to coffee in the morning." "Is it a st-stimulant, then?" Lottie asked, finally managing to jerk her hand away from Gentry. Deprived of his plaything, he gave her a questioning glance. "Yes, of a sort," Sophia replied, pouring a generous amount of cream into the sweetened chocolate liquor. She stirred the cups with a tiny silver spoon. "Although it is not quite as animating as coffee, chocolate is uplifting in its own way." She winked at Lottie. "Some even claim that chocolate rouses the amorous instincts." "How interesting," Lottie said, doing her best to ignore Gentry as she accepted her cup. Inhaling the rich fumes appreciatively, she took a tiny sip of the shiny, dark liquid. The robust sweetness slid along her tongue and tickled the back of her throat. Sophia laughed in delight at Lottie's expression. "You like it, I see. Good- now I have found an inducement to make you visit often." Lottie nodded as she continued to drink. By the time she reached the bottom of the cup, her head was swimming, and her nerves were tingling from the mixture of heat and sugar. Gentry set his cup aside after a swallow or two. "Too rich for my taste, Sophia, although I compliment your skill in preparing it. Besides, my amorous instincts need no encouragement." He smiled as the statement caused Lottie to choke on the last few drops of chocolate.

His life at the Society was not uninteresting. It was methodical, habitual, but that was a consequence of life in any collective. Self-interest was more exciting—sleeping through the afternoon one day, climbing Olympus to threaten the gods the next— but it scared people, upset them. Tending to every whim made others unnecessarily combative, mistrustful. They preferred the reassurance of customs, little traditions, the more inconsequential the better. Breakfast in the morning, supper at the sound of the gong. It soothed them, normality. Everyone wanted most desperately to be unafraid and numb. Humans were mostly sensible animals. They knew the dangers of erratic behavior. It was a chronic condition, survival. “My intentions are the same as anyone’s,” said Callum after a few moments. “Stand taller. Think smarter. Be better.” “Better than what?” Callum shrugged. “Anyone. Everyone. Does it matter?” He glanced at Tristan over his glass and registered a vibration of malcontent. “Ah,” Callum said. “You’d prefer me to lie to you.” Tristan bristled. “I don’t want you to lie—” “No, you want my truths to be different, which you know they won’t be. The more of my true intentions you know, the guiltier you feel. That’s good, you know,” Callum assured him. “You want so terribly to disassociate, but the truth is you feel more than anyone in this house.” “More?” Tristan echoed doubtfully, recoiling from the prospect. “More,” Callum confirmed. “At higher volumes. At broader spectrums.

A father one day said to his son, Tom, who, he knew, had refused to fill his mother's woodbox that morning: 'Tom, I'm sure you'll be glad to go and bring in some wood for your mother.' And without a word Tom went. Why? Just because his father showed so plainly that he expected him to do the right thing. Suppose he had said: 'Tom, I overheard what you said to your mother this morning, and I'm ashamed of you. Go at once and fill that woodbox!' I'll warrant that woodbox, would be empty yet, so far as Tom was concerned!" On and on read the minister—a word here, a line there, a paragraph somewhere else: "What men and women need is encouragement. Their natural resisting powers should be strengthened, not weakened.... Instead of always harping on a man's faults, tell him of his virtues. Try to pull him out of his rut of bad habits. Hold up to him his better self, his REAL self that can dare and do and win out!... The influence of a beautiful, helpful, hopeful character is contagious, and may revolutionize a whole town.... People radiate what is in their minds and in their hearts. If a man feels kindly and obliging, his neighbors will feel that way, too, before long. But if he scolds and scowls and criticizes—his neighbors will return scowl for scowl, and add interest!... When you look for the bad, expecting it, you will get it. When you know you will find the good—you will get that.... Tell your son Tom you KNOW he'll be glad to fill that woodbox—then watch him start, alert and interested!

ONLY IMAGINE   In his classic self-help book Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill wrote, “Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, he can achieve.” His premise, and that of many others, is that once the human mind is programmed with a certain expectation, it will begin to fulfill that expectation. The Scriptures declared this principle long before Hill wrote his book. Faith believes and then sees. It is the expectation of a miracle before it occurs. The Aluminum Company of America coined an interesting word: imagineering. They combined the idea of imagining a product or service, with the idea that the dream would then be engineered into a reality. Throughout history we’ve seen this principle at work.   A primitive ancestor came up with the idea that it was easier to roll objects than drag them—and he carved a wheel from stone.   A man named Gutenberg imagined that letters might be set in metal and combined to create words, which then could be printed repeatedly with the application of ink. He set about to make such a machine.   Men designed cathedrals that took decades to build—but build them they did. Ideas and dreams you have today will directly influence your future. What you begin to believe for, and then how you act on that belief, will result in what you have, do, and are in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead. Let your “faith imagination” soar today. Believe for God’s highest and best in your life. Then begin to live and work as if that miracle is on its way.   FAITH IS THE SUBSTANCE OF THINGS HOPED FOR, THE EVIDENCE OF THINGS NOT SEEN. HEBREWS 11:1 NKJV

I want porridge!" she said, exasperated. "That's all. I wanted a bunny before and 'it' appeared, and now I want porridge. The way my aunts used to make it on cold mornings. Warm and buttery, with rich toasted acorns in it." "Acorns? Really? That sounds... um... I mean, it's an interesting gastronomic choice." She rolled her eyes. "We lived in the middle of a 'forest,' Royal Prince. It was what we had. And a real treat in the middle of winter." Then she proceeded to ignore him. She closed her eyes and cupped her hands. She prayed and wished and imagined and begged. Phillip stayed politely silent- though he did look around, sigh a little, and do all sorts of other things to obviously fret over the passage of time. She tried to call up the feel of the wooden bowl in her hands: it warmed almost like flesh where the wood was thin and the heat of her fingers and the hot porridge mingled. She summoned the smell, a mix of dairy and things of the earth and the tall green grass and the woods. Sometimes there was even a dollop of honey on top. She thought so hard she felt like she had to go to the privy. Her concentration faltered for a moment when she distractedly wondered if that ever happened to Maleficent when she was performing an incantation. But after a few seconds she was back in her dream of porridge. Time passed... "GOOD LORD!" The smell in her head was giving to a real scent in her nose now, with even that faint, almost 'un'tasty burnt smell the acorns sometimes gave off. She smiled and opened her eyes. In her hands was a cracked wooden bowl full of porridge, just like she remembered.

When our son was born, my wife and I made adjustments to our lives like all parents must. The ideal in our particular family was to keep the little man out of daycare, which meant one of us would care for him in the home. For the first two years, we decided I would be the one to work from home and care for him, until we could figure a plan to have her stay home with him. With all of the crazy nighttime feedings, his need to be cuddled, and other activities, getting a good rest at night was out of the question. I had become accustomed to rising early and having personal devotions. Obviously, that became quite the challenge. My mind was becoming overwhelmed with the difficulty of functioning on very little rest. So, before this went too far, I prayed. I said something like, “Lord! You gave us this boy to nurture and care for. You want us to be the best parents possible. You are the One who taught us balance and temperance. I am feeling out of balance, Lord. I am having difficulty getting up in the mornings. And when I do get up, I can hardly concentrate on the Bible or praying. I know this is not what you intended for us. I am dedicating this certain time in the morning to you. Will you please keep our son asleep during that time so you and I can have the time you want?” Let me tell you, the Lord answered immediately! From the very next morning, even with all of the frenzy of baby activity and my overwhelming weariness, the Most High soothed and kept our son asleep until my worship time was over. And the interesting thing is, he only stayed asleep for that particular time. When the time was done, he always woke up.

With a scowl, he turned from the window, but it was too late. The sight of Lady Celia crossing the courtyard dressed in some rich fabric had already stirred his blood. She never wore such fetching clothes; generally her lithe figure was shrouded in smocks to protect her workaday gowns from powder smudges while she practiced her target shooting. But this morning, in that lemon-colored gown, with her hair finely arranged and a jeweled bracelet on her delicate wrist, she was summer on a dreary winter day, sunshine in the bleak of night, music in the still silence of a deserted concert hall. And he was a fool. "I can see how you might find her maddening," Masters said in a low voice. Jackson stiffened. "Your wife?" he said, deliberately being obtuse. "Lady Celia." Hell and blazes. He'd obviously let his feelings show. He'd spent his childhood learning to keep them hidden so the other children wouldn't see how their epithets wounded him, and he'd refined that talent as an investigator who knew the value of an unemotional demeanor. He drew on that talent as he faced the barrister. "Anyone would find her maddening. She's reckless and spoiled and liable to give her husband grief at every turn." When she wasn't tempting him to madness. Masters raised an eyebrow. "Yet you often watch her. Have you any interest there?" Jackson forced a shrug. "Certainly not. You'll have to find another way to inherit your new bride's fortune." He'd hoped to prick Masters's pride and thus change the subject, but Masters laughed. "You, marry my sister-in-law? That, I'd like to see. Aside from the fact that her grandmother would never approve, Lady Celia hates you." She did indeed. The chit had taken an instant dislike to him when he'd interfered in an impromptu shooting match she'd been participating in with her brother and his friends at a public park. That should have set him on his guard right then. A pity it hadn't. Because even if she didn't despise him and weren't miles above him in rank, she'd never make him a good wife. She was young and indulged, not the sort of female to make do on a Bow Street Runner's salary. But she'll be an heiress once she marries. He gritted his teeth. That only made matters worse. She would assume he was marrying her for her inheritance. So would everyone else. And his pride chafed at that. Dirty bastard. Son of shame. Whoreson. Love-brat. He'd been called them all as a boy. Later, as he'd moved up at Bow Street, those who resented his rapid advancement had called him a baseborn upstart. He wasn't about to add money-grubbing fortune hunter to the list. "Besides," Masters went on, "you may not realize this, since you haven't been around much these past few weeks, but Minerva claims that Celia has her eye on three very eligible potential suitors." Jackson's startled gaze shot to him. Suitors? The word who was on his lips when the door opened and Stoneville entered. The rest of the family followed, leaving Jackson to force a smile and exchange pleasantries as they settled into seats about the table, but his mind kept running over Masters's words. Lady Celia had suitors. Eligible ones. Good-that was good. He needn't worry about himself around her anymore. She was now out of his reach, thank God. Not that she was ever in his reach, but- "Have you got any news?" Stoneville asked. Jackson started. "Yes." He took a steadying breath and forced his mine to the matter at hand.

Marks,” he replied, crawling about on hands and knees, eyes intent on the short turf. “How did they know where to start and stop?” “Good question. I don’t see anything.” Casting an eye over the ground, though, I did see an interesting plant growing near the base of one of the tall stones. Myosotis? No, probably not; this had orange centers to the deep blue flowers. Intrigued, I started toward it. Frank, with keener hearing than I, leaped to his feet and seized my arm, hurrying me out of the circle a moment before one of the morning’s dancers entered from the other side. It was Miss Grant, the tubby little woman who, suitably enough in view of her figure, ran the sweets and pastries shop in the town’s High Street. She peered nearsightedly around, then fumbled in her pocket for her spectacles. Jamming these on her nose, she strolled about the circle, at last pouncing on the lost hair-clip for which she had returned. Having restored it to its place in her thick, glossy locks, she seemed in no hurry to return to business. Instead, she seated herself on a boulder, leaned back against one of the stone giants in comradely fashion and lighted a leisurely cigarette. Frank gave a muted sigh of exasperation beside me. “Well,” he said, resigned, “we’d best go. She could sit there all morning, by the looks of her. And I didn’t see any obvious markings in any case.” “Perhaps we could come back later,” I suggested, still curious about the blue-flowered vine. “Yes, all right.” But he had plainly lost interest in the circle itself, being now absorbed in the details of the ceremony. He quizzed me relentlessly on the way down the path, urging me to remember as closely as I could the exact wording of the calls, and the timing of the dance.

Mr. Bredon had been a week with Pym's Publicity, and had learnt a number of things. He learned the average number of words that can be crammed into four inches of copy; that Mr. Armstrong's fancy could be caught by an elaborately-drawn lay-out, whereas Mr. Hankin looked on art-work as waste of a copy-writer's time; that the word “pure” was dangerous, because, if lightly used, it laid the client open to prosecution by the Government inspectors, whereas the words “highest quality,” “finest ingredients,” “packed under the best conditions” had no legal meaning, and were therefore safe; that the expression “giving work to umpteen thousand British employees in our model works at so-and-so” was not by any means the same thing as “British made throughout”; that the north of England liked its butter and margarine salted, whereas the south preferred it fresh; that the Morning Star would not accept any advertisements containing the word “cure,” though there was no objection to such expressions as “relieve” or “ameliorate,” and that, further, any commodity that professed to “cure” anything might find itself compelled to register as a patent medicine and use an expensive stamp; that the most convincing copy was always written with the tongue in the cheek, a genuine conviction of the commodity's worth producing—for some reason—poverty and flatness of style; that if, by the most far-fetched stretch of ingenuity, an indecent meaning could be read into a headline, that was the meaning that the great British Public would infallibly read into it; that the great aim and object of the studio artist was to crowd the copy out of the advertisement and that, conversely, the copy-writer was a designing villain whose ambition was to cram the space with verbiage and leave no room for the sketch; that the lay-out man, a meek ass between two burdens, spent a miserable life trying to reconcile these opposing parties; and further, that all departments alike united in hatred of the client, who persisted in spoiling good lay-outs by cluttering them up with coupons, free-gift offers, lists of local agents and realistic portraits of hideous and uninteresting cartons, to the detriment of his own interests and the annoyance of everybody concerned.

HER HUSBAND’S ALMOST HOME. He’ll catch her this time. There isn’t a scrap of curtain, not a blade of blind, in number 212—the rust-red townhome that once housed the newlywed Motts, until recently, until they un-wed. I never met either Mott, but occasionally I check in online: his LinkedIn profile, her Facebook page. Their wedding registry lives on at Macy’s. I could still buy them flatware. As I was saying: not even a window dressing. So number 212 gazes blankly across the street, ruddy and raw, and I gaze right back, watching the mistress of the manor lead her contractor into the guest bedroom. What is it about that house? It’s where love goes to die. She’s lovely, a genuine redhead, with grass-green eyes and an archipelago of tiny moles trailing across her back. Much prettier than her husband, a Dr. John Miller, psychotherapist—yes, he offers couples counseling—and one of 436,000 John Millers online. This particular specimen works near Gramercy Park and does not accept insurance. According to the deed of sale, he paid $3.6 million for his house. Business must be good. I know both more and less about the wife. Not much of a homemaker, clearly; the Millers moved in eight weeks ago, yet still those windows are bare, tsk-tsk. She practices yoga three times a week, tripping down the steps with her magic-carpet mat rolled beneath one arm, legs shrink-wrapped in Lululemon. And she must volunteer someplace—she leaves the house a little past eleven on Mondays and Fridays, around the time I get up, and returns between five and five thirty, just as I’m settling in for my nightly film. (This evening’s selection: The Man Who Knew Too Much, for the umpteenth time. I am the woman who viewed too much.) I’ve noticed she likes a drink in the afternoon, as do I. Does she also like a drink in the morning? As do I? But her age is a mystery, although she’s certainly younger than Dr. Miller, and younger than me (nimbler, too); her name I can only guess at. I think of her as Rita, because she looks like Hayworth in Gilda. “I’m not in the least interested”—love that line. I myself am very much interested. Not in her body—the pale ridge of her spine, her shoulder blades like stunted wings, the baby-blue bra clasping her breasts: whenever these loom within my lens, any of them, I look away—but in the life she leads. The lives. Two more than I’ve got.

I might know a way we could repay that debt.” Everything inside Darius sharpened at that comment, just like it did when he stumbled across an idea for a new experiment. “Oh?” he asked, trying to keep his voice casual. “The young lady drew me aside after she returned from her luncheon today. She made an odd request.” Darius recalled their earlier run-in at the pond. Odd didn’t begin to describe it—him stalking her through the grass in his sodden clothes and bare feet. She’d handled herself with plenty of spirit, though, and he’d thought they’d left on good terms. “I did have words with her this morning,” he admitted, though it seemed like forever ago now, with all that had happened since. “Her request did not pertain to you, sir. At least, not directly.” Darius arched a brow. “What did it pertain to?” Wellborn was always serious, but something in the man’s expression made the back of Darius’s neck prickle. “Miss Greyson requested, if anyone came to Oakhaven asking after a young woman matching her description, that I not reveal her presence here. Also, that I make her aware of the situation at once.” Darius fell back against the worktable. He grabbed the edge to steady himself. “She’s in some kind of trouble.” Wellborn dipped his chin in agreement. “It seems a logical conclusion. I’d thought to discuss the matter with you later this evening.” “Thank you for bringing it to my attention,” Darius said, ironically slipping into the same formality he had chided Wellborn for earlier. However, when a man lost his equilibrium, he tended to resort to old habits to regain his footing. “I found her phrasing of the request a bit odd.” A contemplative look came over the butler’s face. Darius mentally reviewed Wellborn’s account, analyzing each section as he would one of his journal articles until a hypothesis formed. “She’s more concerned over someone recognizing her appearance than her name.” Wellborn nodded. “That is the impression I gained.” Interesting. It seemed his new secretary might have accepted the position under false pretenses. Well, a false name, at least. Not that it mattered. The woman had proved herself more than capable. Her name didn’t matter. “Let’s adhere to her wishes for now. With one deviation.” Darius pushed up from the table and braced his legs apart, as if preparing for battle. “If anyone comes looking for her, inform me first. She deserves our protection, Wellborn. I intend to see that she gets it.

He returned to the table with a pile of pastries and two coffees. “Hungry?” she asked. “Let’s figure out what you like.” He waved at the pastries. How thoughtful. She picked up a small biscuit cookie to nibble but shook her head. “Too crunchy.” “Try the scone,” he recommended. One bite. “Nope. No scones. Maybe I’m not a pastry person.” “I’m taking notes over here.” He almost spit out his sip of coffee from laughter when she had to empty her mouth into a small napkin after biting into a cheesy sweet concoction. “Sorry.” Her face went hot. “I’ll stick with croissants. What about you? What do you like?” He shrugged. “I’m not picky.” “Is it bad to be picky? Does it mean I’m high maintenance?” “Maybe you’re not into sweets.” “If I dribbled chocolate all over you, I’d lick it off and like it.” She slapped a hand over her mouth. “Did I just say that out loud? Forget I said that.” “No undoing that. It’s stuck in here.” He tapped his head. “Moon madness.” “It’s mid-morning. There’s no moon in the sky.” He peeked out the window. “Maybe not a full moon, but there’s one in the sky. This insanity is our bodies cranking up for the main event later today.” His eyes traveled down her body and back up; he wet his lips with his tongue. Her mind flashed back to the moment his lips were on hers, the way his fingers had dug into her, the desperation flowing from his fingertips. Things were about to get a lot more interesting as the day wore on. In silence, they ate for a while. She leaned back and stared at him. “You may have to answer to someone, but you like what you do most of the time. Why do you do it? Save humans against things that bump in the night?” “I’m cursed to follow orders.” “Sure, you’re forced into some things, but that only goes so far.” He wiped a few crumbs off the table. “Perhaps so. It’s a good cause. Most of the time. Occasionally, the missions we’re ordered on are based on erroneous information.” She reached out and put her hand over his. “I might be as bad as they made me out. I don’t remember. I appreciate you trying to help me figure it out, but if I start to show an inclination toward evil or world domination, do your job.” He rotated his hand to hold hers and stared at their connection. “The fact you considered it means you’re not someone I should kill.” “We don’t know.” She removed her hand from his. “Tell me something about yourself. What pastry do you like? Are you a scones person?” He shook his head. “I’m not into a lot of sweets, but I’ve realized I like chocolate.

told my people that I wanted only the best, whatever it took, wherever they came from, whatever it cost. We assembled thirty people, the brightest cybersecurity minds we have. A few are on loan, pursuant to strict confidentiality agreements, from the private sector—software companies, telecommunications giants, cybersecurity firms, military contractors. Two are former hackers themselves, one of them currently serving a thirteen-year sentence in a federal penitentiary. Most are from various agencies of the federal government—Homeland Security, CIA, FBI, NSA. Half our team is devoted to threat mitigation—how to limit the damage to our systems and infrastructure after the virus hits. But right now, I’m concerned with the other half, the threat-response team that Devin and Casey are running. They’re devoted to stopping the virus, something they’ve been unable to do for the last two weeks. “Good morning, Mr. President,” says Devin Wittmer. He comes from NSA. After graduating from Berkeley, he started designing cyberdefense software for clients like Apple before the NSA recruited him away. He has developed federal cybersecurity assessment tools to help industries and governments understand their preparedness against cyberattacks. When the major health-care systems in France were hit with a ransomware virus three years ago, we lent them Devin, who was able to locate and disable it. Nobody in America, I’ve been assured, is better at finding holes in cyberdefense systems or at plugging them. “Mr. President,” says Casey Alvarez. Casey is the daughter of Mexican immigrants who settled in Arizona to start a family and built up a fleet of grocery stores in the Southwest along the way. Casey showed no interest in the business, taking quickly to computers and wanting to join law enforcement. When she was a grad student at Penn, she got turned down for a position at the Department of Justice. So Casey got on her computer and managed to do what state and federal authorities had been unable to do for years—she hacked into an underground child-pornography website and disclosed the identities of all the website’s patrons, basically gift-wrapping a federal prosecution for Justice and shutting down an operation that was believed to be the largest purveyor of kiddie porn in the country. DOJ hired her on the spot, and she stayed there until she went to work for the CIA. She’s been most recently deployed in the Middle East with US Central Command, where she intercepts, decodes, and disrupts cybercommunications among terrorist groups. I’ve been assured that these two are, by far, the best we have. And they are about to meet the person who, so far, has been better. There is a hint of reverence in their expressions as I introduce them to Augie. The Sons of Jihad is the all-star team of cyberterrorists, mythical figures in that world. But I sense some competitive fire, too, which will be a good thing.

As a nine-year-old, the circadian rhythm would have the child asleep by around nine p.m., driven in part by the rising tide of melatonin at this time in children. By the time that same individual has reached sixteen years of age, their circadian rhythm has undergone a dramatic shift forward in its cycling phase. The rising tide of melatonin, and the instruction of darkness and sleep, is many hours away. As a consequence, the sixteen-year-old will usually have no interest in sleeping at nine p.m. Instead, peak wakefulness is usually still in play at that hour. By the time the parents are getting tired, as their circadian rhythms take a downturn and melatonin release instructs sleep—perhaps around ten or eleven p.m., their teenager can still be wide awake. A few more hours must pass before the circadian rhythm of a teenage brain begins to shut down alertness and allow for easy, sound sleep to begin. This, of course, leads to much angst and frustration for all parties involved on the back end of sleep. Parents want their teenager to be awake at a “reasonable” hour of the morning. Teenagers, on the other hand, having only been capable of initiating sleep some hours after their parents, can still be in their trough of the circadian downswing. Like an animal prematurely wrenched out of hibernation too early, the adolescent brain still needs more sleep and more time to complete the circadian cycle before it can operate efficiently, without grogginess. If this remains perplexing to parents, a different way to frame and perhaps appreciate the mismatch is this: asking your teenage son or daughter to go to bed and fall asleep at ten p.m. is the circadian equivalent of asking you, their parent, to go to sleep at seven or eight p.m. No matter how loud you enunciate the order, no matter how much that teenager truly wishes to obey your instruction, and no matter what amount of willed effort is applied by either of the two parties, the circadian rhythm of a teenager will not be miraculously coaxed into a change. Furthermore, asking that same teenager to wake up at seven the next morning and function with intellect, grace, and good mood is the equivalent of asking you, their parent, to do the same at four or five a.m. Sadly, neither society nor our parental attitudes are well designed to appreciate or accept that teenagers need more sleep than adults, and that they are biologically wired to obtain that sleep at a different time from their parents. It’s very understandable for parents to feel frustrated in this way, since they believe that their teenager’s sleep patterns reflect a conscious choice and not a biological edict. But non-volitional, non-negotiable, and strongly biological they are. We parents would be wise to accept this fact, and to embrace it, encourage it, and praise it, lest we wish our own children to suffer developmental brain abnormalities or force a raised risk of mental illness upon them.

A fierce battle was taking place at Tobruk, and nothing thrilled him more than spirited warfare and the prospect of military glory. He stayed up until three-thirty, in high spirits, “laughing, chaffing and alternating business with conversation,” wrote Colville. One by one his official guests, including Anthony Eden, gave up and went to bed. Churchill, however, continued to hold forth, his audience reduced to only Colville and Mary’s potential suitor, Eric Duncannon. Mary by this point had retired to the Prison Room, aware that the next day held the potential to change her life forever. — IN BERLIN, MEANWHILE, HITLER and Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels joked about a newly published English biography of Churchill that revealed many of his idiosyncrasies, including his penchant for wearing pink silk underwear, working in the bathtub, and drinking throughout the day. “He dictates messages in the bath or in his underpants; a startling image which the Führer finds hugely amusing,” Goebbels wrote in his diary on Saturday. “He sees the English Empire as slowly disintegrating. Not much will be salvageable.” — ON SUNDAY MORNING, a low-grade anxiety colored the Cromwellian reaches of Chequers. Today, it seemed, would be the day Eric Duncannon proposed to Mary, and no one other than Mary was happy about it. Even she, however, was not wholly at ease with the idea. She was eighteen years old and had never had a romantic relationship, let alone been seriously courted. The prospect of betrothal left her feeling emotionally roiled, though it did add a certain piquancy to the day. New guests arrived: Sarah Churchill, the Prof, and Churchill’s twenty-year-old niece, Clarissa Spencer-Churchill—“looking quite beautiful,” Colville noted. She was accompanied by Captain Alan Hillgarth, a raffishly handsome novelist and self-styled adventurer now serving as naval attaché in Madrid, where he ran intelligence operations; some of these were engineered with the help of a lieutenant on his staff, Ian Fleming, who later credited Captain Hillgarth as being one of the inspirations for James Bond. “It was obvious,” Colville wrote, “that Eric was expected to make advances to Mary and that the prospect was viewed with nervous pleasure by Mary, with approbation by Moyra, with dislike by Mrs. C. and with amusement by Clarissa.” Churchill expressed little interest. After lunch, Mary and the others walked into the rose garden, while Colville showed Churchill telegrams about the situation in Iraq. The day was sunny and warm, a nice change from the recent stretch of cold. Soon, to Colville’s mystification, Eric and Clarissa set off on a long walk over the grounds by themselves, leaving Mary behind. “His motives,” Colville wrote, “were either Clarissa’s attraction, which she did not attempt to keep in the background, or else the belief that it was good policy to arouse Mary’s jealousy.” After the walk, and after Clarissa and Captain Hillgarth had left, Eric took a nap, with the apparent intention (as Colville

I got your flowers. They’re beautiful, thank you.” A gorgeous riot of Gerber daisies and lilies in a rainbow of reds, pinks, yellows and oranges. “Welcome. Bet Duncan loved sending one of his guys out to pick them up for me.” She could hear the smile in his voice, imagined the devilish twinkle in his eyes. “Oh, he did. Said it’s probably the first time in the history of WITSEC that a U.S. Marshal delivered flowers to one of their witnesses.” A low chuckle. “Well, this was a special circumstance, so they helped me out.” “I loved the card you sent with them the best though.” Proud of you. Give ‘em hell tomorrow. He’d signed it Nathan rather than Nate, which had made her smile. “I had no idea you were romantic,” she continued. “All these interesting things I’m learning about you.” She hadn’t been able to wipe the silly smile off her face after one of the security team members had knocked on her door and handed them to her with a goofy smile and a, “special delivery”. “Baby, you haven’t seen anything yet. When the trial’s done you’re gonna get all the romance you can handle, and then some.” “Really?” Now that was something for a girl to look forward to, and it sure as hell did the trick in taking her mind off her worries. “Well I’m all intrigued, because it’s been forever since I was romanced. What do you have in mind? Candlelit dinners? Going to the movies? Long walks? Lazy afternoon picnics?” “Not gonna give away my hand this early on, but I’ll take those into consideration.” “And what’s the key to your heart, by the way? I mean, other than the thing I did to you this morning.” “What thing is that? Refresh my memory,” he said, a teasing note in his voice. She smiled, enjoying the light banter. It felt good to let her worry about tomorrow go and focus on what she had to look forward to when this was all done. Being with him again, seeing her family, getting back to her life. A life that would hopefully include Nathan in a romantic capacity. “Waking you up with my mouth.” He gave a low groan. “I loved every second of it. But think simpler.” Simpler than sex? For a guy like him? “Food, then. I bet you’re a sucker for a home-cooked meal. Am I right?” He chuckled. “That works too, but it’s still not the key.” “Then what?” “You.” She blinked, her heart squeezing at the conviction behind his answer. “Me?” “Yeah, just you. And maybe bacon,” he added, a smile in his voice. He was so freaking adorable. “So you’re saying if I made and served you a BLT, you’d be putty in my hands?” Seemed hard to imagine, but okay. A masculine rumble filled her ears. “God, yeah.” She couldn’t help the sappy smile that spread across her face. “Wow, you are easy. And I can definitely arrange that.” “I can hardly wait. Will you serve it to me naked? Or maybe wearing just a frilly little apron and heels?” She smothered a laugh, but a clear image of her doing just that popped into her head, serving him the sandwich in that sexy outfit while watching his eyes go all heated. “Depends on how good you are.” “Oh, baby, I’ll be so good to you, you have no idea.

Put yourself in the way of grace,' says a friend of ours, who is a monk, and a bishop; and he smiles his floating and shining smile. And truly, can there be a subject of more interest to each of us than whether or not grace exists, and the soul? And, consequent upon the existence of the soul, a whole landscape of incorruptible forces, perhaps even a source, an almost palpably suggested second universe? A world that is incomprehensible through reason? To believe in the soul---to believe in it exactly as much and as hardily as one believes in a mountain, say, or a fingernail, which is ever in view---imagine the consequences! How far-reaching, and thoroughly wonderful! For everything, by such a belief, would be charged, and changed. You wake in the morning, the soul exists, your mouth sings it, your mind accepts it. And the perceived, tactile world is, upon the instant, only half the world! How easily I travel, about halfway, through such a scenario. I believe in the soul---in mine, and yours, and the blue-jay's, and the pilot whale's. I believe each goldfinch flying away over the coarse ragweed has a soul, and the ragweed too, plant by plant, and the tiny stones in the earth below, and the grains of earth as well. Not romantically do I believe this, nor poetically, nor emotionally, nor metaphorically except as all reality is metaphor, but steadily, lumpishly, and absolutely. The wild waste spaces of the sea, and the pale dunes with one hawk hanging in the wind, they are for me the formal spaces that, in a liturgy, are taken up by prayer, song, sermon, silence, homily, scripture, the architecture of the church itself. And as with prayer, which is a dipping of oneself toward the light, there is a consequence of attentiveness to the grass itself, and the sky itself, and to the floating bird. I too leave the fret and enclosure of my own life. I too dip myself toward the immeasurable. Now winter, the winter I am writing about, begins to ease. And what, if anything, has been determined, selected, nailed down? This is the lesson of age---events pass, things change, trauma fades, good fortune rises, fades, rises again but different. Whereas what happens when one is twenty, as I remember it, happens forever. I have not been twenty for a long time! The sun rolls toward the north and I feel, gratefully, its brightness flaming up once more. Somewhere in the world the misery we can do nothing about yet goes on. Somewhere the words I will write down next year, and the next, are drifting into the wind, out of the ornate pods of the weeds of the Provincelands. Once I went into the woods to find an almost unfindable bird, a blue grosbeak. And I found it: a rough, deep blue, almost black, with heavy beak; it was plucking one by one the humped, pale green caterpillars from the leaves of a thick green tree. Then it vanished into the shadows of the leaves and, in the same moment, from the crown of the tree flew a western bluebird---little aqua thrush of the mountains, hundreds of miles from its home. It is a moment hard to top---but, I can. Once I came upon two angels, they were standing quietly, keeping guard beside a car. Light streamed from them, and a splash of flames lay quietly under their feet. What is one to do with such moments, such memories, but cherish them? Who knows what is beyond the known? And if you think that any day the secret of light might come, would you not keep the house of your mind ready? Would you not cleanse your study of all that is cheap, or trivial? Would you not live in continual hope, and pleasure, and excitement?

They were clustered by an open tent from which breakfast was being served. Kassandra exchanged greetings, accepted a cup of milk laced with honey, and tried hard not to look around for Royce. Just as she was wondering where he could have gone off to, he appeared in the company of the twin javelin throwers. Seeing her, he stopped, and for a moment simply looked. Whatever he saw must have pleased him, for his smile was slow, devastating and utterly male. But his address, when he spoke to her, was entirely proper. “Good morning, Your Highness. I trust you slept well.” Two could play this game, she decided. He looked just smug enough for her to want to take him down a notch or two. “Alas, I did not. There was something rather annoying and persistent in my tent…an insect of some sort, I think.” Royce had just taken a swallow of lemonade. He coughed and cleared his throat. “An insect? Really? Are you sure it wasn’t something larger?” He leaned a little closer so that only she could hear him. “Considerably larger, Princess, and very…attentive, shall we say?” Fighting a fierce blush, she pretended great interest in the sweet breads and fruits set out on wooden platters. “I really can’t recall,” she murmured, and endured Royce’s chuckle with as good grace as she could muster.

because there was a new face in the chorus, and rumor—in the person of his friend Aubrey—said she was a promising possibility as a mistress. And indeed she was, Lucien had to admit—at least, she would be for Aubrey, who had come into his title and had full control of his fortune. But not for someone like Lucien—a young man on a strict allowance and whose title of Viscount Hartford was only a courtesy one, borrowed from his father. Being my lord was, he had found, one of the few benefits of being the only son of the Earl of Chiswick. “She’s quite attractive, as game pullets go,” he told Aubrey carelessly after the play, as they cracked the first bottle of wine at their club. “Have her with my blessing.” Aubrey snorted. “You know, Lucien, it’s just as well you’re not looking for a high-flyer, for you damned well couldn’t afford her.” Lucien forced a smile. “She’s not my sort, as it happens.” “Balderdash—she’s any man’s sort.” Not mine, Lucien thought absently. He might have said it aloud if the sentiment hadn’t been so startlingly true. How odd—for the chorus girl had been a prime piece, buxom and long-limbed and flashy, as well as incredibly flexible as she moved around the stage. How could he not be interested? Aubrey was looking at him strangely, so Lucien said, “If she’s so much to your taste, I’m surprised you didn’t go around to the stage door after the performance and make yourself known.” “Strategy, my friend. Never let a woman guess exactly how interested you are.” Aubrey waved a hand at a waiter to bring another bottle, and as they drank it, he detailed his plan for winning the chorus girl. “It’s too bad you can’t join the fun, for I’m certain she has a friend,” Aubrey finished. “The gossips have it that your father is never without a lightskirt, so why should he object to you having one?” “Oh, not a lightskirt. Only the finest of the demimonde will do for the Earl of Chiswick.” Lucien drained his glass. “I’m meant to be on the road to Weybridge at first light—for the duke’s birthday, you know. A few hours’ sleep before I climb into a jolting carriage will not come amiss.” “Too late.” Aubrey tilted his head toward the nearest window. “Dawn’s breaking now, if I’m not mistaken. You won’t mind if I don’t come to see you off? Deadly dull it is, waving good-bye—and I’ve a mind for a hand or two of piquet before I go home.” Lucien walked from the club to his rooms in Mount Street, hoping a fresh breeze might help clear his head. The post-chaise Uncle Josiah had ordered for him was already waiting. The horses stamped impatiently, snorting in the cool morning air, and the postboys looked bored. Nearby, Lucien’s valet paced—but he

February 11 MORNING “And they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.” — Acts 4:13 A Christian should be a striking likeness of Jesus Christ. You have read lives of Christ, beautifully and eloquently written, but the best life of Christ is His living biography, written out in the words and actions of His people. If we were what we profess to be, and what we should be, we should be pictures of Christ; yea, such striking likenesses of Him, that the world would not have to hold us up by the hour together, and say, “Well, it seems somewhat of a likeness;” but they would, when they once beheld us, exclaim, “He has been with Jesus; he has been taught of Him; he is like Him; he has caught the very idea of the holy Man of Nazareth, and he works it out in his life and every-day actions.” A Christian should be like Christ in his boldness. Never blush to own your religion; your profession will never disgrace you: take care you never disgrace that. Be like Jesus, very valiant for your God. Imitate Him in your loving spirit; think kindly, speak kindly, and do kindly, that men may say of you, “He has been with Jesus.” Imitate Jesus in His holiness. Was He zealous for His Master? So be you; ever go about doing good. Let not time be wasted: it is too precious. Was He selfdenying, never looking to His own interest? Be the same. Was He devout? Be you fervent in your prayers. Had He deference to His Father’s will? So submit yourselves to Him. Was He patient? So learn to endure. And best of all, as the highest portraiture of Jesus, try to forgive your enemies, as He did; and let those sublime words of your Master, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do,” always ring in your ears. Forgive, as you hope to be forgiven. Heap coals of fire on the head of your foe by your kindness to him. Good for evil, recollect, is godlike. Be godlike, then; and in all ways and by all means, so live that all may say of you, “He has been with Jesus.

Wishing to let David sleep, she eased one arm free. “Good morning, wife.” His sleep-graveled voice tickled her ear. Megan smiled and lifted her head to enjoy being near him. They’d slept side by side on the train too, in a smaller bed. But they’d never snuggled up like this. “Good morning, David. I’ve lazed the morning away, it seems. Time to be up and about.” He seemed to focus on her smile with undue interest. Then slowly, smoothly, he lowered his head and kissed her. Her first kiss. It was warm and gentle and she found a surprising pleasure in it. How could a kiss be felt all through a woman’s body? It made no sense, yet at the same time it was undeniable. David raised himself up on his left arm—the one wrapped behind her neck. Without loosening his grip, he was over her, the kiss deeper, his head slanted as if he wanted to be closer, which didn’t seem possible. Just as David shifted his weight to press down on her more fully, the bedroom door flew open. “Pa, it’s morning! Get up! We’re hungry, Ma!” David moved away from her fast, but his arm was wrapped around her and he dragged her on top of him. Their eyes met. She saw dismay dawning in his gaze. She wasn’t sure why he was dismayed, but she found herself annoyed at it. Hadn’t he enjoyed their kiss? Before she could ask what he was thinking, the boys pounced, Zack on top of Megan’s back. Ben on his knees, bouncing on the bed beside them.

Complaining     “I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances” (Philippians 4:11).     God hates complaining. In the Old Testament, God rescued the Israelites from 400 years of slavery in Egypt. They had a miraculous escape through the Red Sea and were on their way to the Promised Land. Yet only two of the original group actually arrived at the final destination. The rest perished in the desert. Why? One contributing factor was their complaining.   First, they complained that they had no food so God graciously provided manna. This was food that miraculously appeared each morning for them to collect for their families for the day. However, it wasn’t long before they complained about the manna. They even went so far as to say that they preferred their lives of slavery in Egypt to another day of eating manna.   I’m disgusted by their ungratefulness. They were a complaining, grumbling bunch that couldn’t see how good they actually had it. They were constantly looking for the bad in their situation instead of focusing on how God had favoured them, heard their cries, saved them from slavery, and provided for them on their way to the Promised Land.   However, it’s easy for me to pass judgment on them as I read about their story in the Bible. It’s obvious to me what they did wrong. But I was recently convicted of my own behaviour. Some days I am no better than those complainers.   I can think specifically of a job I received. This job was a miracle from God in itself. My two co-workers had been waiting over three years to get this job – I had just applied a month before. It was only part-time hours so it allowed me to continue to pursue my other interests and hobbies. It was close to my home, within the hours that my children were at school and doing what I love to do – teach.   However, when I was first offered the job I complained about the topic I would be teaching – accounting. It was not my first love. I would have preferred to teach creative writing or marketing – something fun. But accounting? I balked. Then I complained about the cost of parking. Then I complained that I had to share an office. Then I complained that my mailbox was too high, the water was too cold, the photocopier was too far away, the computer was too slow – well, you get the point. Instead of focusing on the answer to prayer, I focused on the little irritants about which to complain.   Finally, I started to complain about the students – one particular student. She would come to class with a snarl and sit in the back of the classroom with her arms crossed, feet up and a scowl that would scare crows away. It seemed to me that she not only hated the topic I was teaching, but she also hated the teacher.   Each day, I returned home and complained to my husband about this particular student. Things didn’t improve. She became more and more despondent and even poisoned the entire class with her sickly attitude. I complained more. I complained to other teachers and my friends; anyone who dared to ask the question, “How do you enjoy teaching?”  

The Pretense That MFA Candidates Are Already Full-Blown Artists. MFA candidates are not full-blown artists in control of their craft. Many of them are unaware of their craft, on any level. Many of them are merely talented or have had the good or bad luck to write one piece interesting enough to impress a member of the admissions committee. Why is this pretense a flaw? Because it enables lazy teaching by promoting the idea that manuscripts submitted are fully considered representations of the best a particular writer has to offer, instead of what they most often are: desperate first drafts whipped off the night or morning before their workshop due date. Amazingly (and sadly), despite the fact that this is the nature of many workshop submissions, many participants still invest a lot of emotion in how well their stories are received by the workshop. And if the manuscripts are treated as if they're anything more than exercises in the training process, the responses can be damaging.

Later, as they sat at one another’s elbows, eating dinner at the employee house where they lived, Roan detected a subtle sense of happiness around Shiloh. Again, nothing obvious, but his operator’s senses told him that. “You said you were writing a chapter? On your latest book? The one that’s due to your editor’s desk?” “Yes.” She shrugged. “I woke up this morning WANTING to write for the first time since coming here.” She met his gray gaze, seeing interest in them. Roan, she was discovering, missed nothing. He listened to her without ever interrupting her flow of thought. “First time.” “Is this a good thing?” he wondered, adding more spoonfuls of whipped potatoes onto his plate. “Sure is,” she sighed, giving him a look of relief. “I’ve had writer’s block for the last six months. I just haven’t felt the driving passion to write.” She added some green beans onto her plate. “Ever since the stalker came into my life, my writing has turned off.” “Kind of expected?” “I suppose,” Shiloh muttered. “It’s hurt me in so many ways, seen and unseen.” “It’s what we in the military call psy ops or psychological warfare.

I watched the transformation in my father as he picked one winner after another, and I liked what I saw. As he watched the stock climb, he would break into a big, broad smile, until he was literally beaming. He was having a very good time. He was loosening up. He finally felt that he was getting ahead. This was why he had come to America, to make a life for his family. Often I would help him with his decisions. If he was interested in a particular company, I would research it for him, and we would discuss the possibility of buying a few shares. He treated me like an equal, like his partner. Together we learned about buying on margin, about options trading, about puts and calls. Before long I found myself leaping out of bed at the crack of dawn, pouring myself a bowl of cereal, and parking myself in front of the television. I had the morning newspaper to my left and a pad and pencil to my right. The fact is, anyone can do this. It’s just like homework, except it’s the real world. It takes time and effort to get an A, and the same rules apply here, but the difference is that this is worth taking very, very seriously. After all, we’re not talking about grades—we’re talking about serious money.

I don’t know what instructions Nimiar gave her seamstress in private. I had expected a modest trunk of nice fabric, enough for a gown or two in the current fashions. What returned, though, just over a week later, was a hired wagon bearing enough stuff to outfit the entire village, plus three determined young journey-seamstresses who came highly recommended and who were ready to make their fortunes. “Good,” Nee said, when we had finished interviewing them. She walked about inspecting the fabulous silks, velvets, linens, and a glorious array of embroidery twists, nodding happily. “Just what I wanted. Melise is a treasure.” “Isn’t this too much?” I asked, astounded. She grinned. “Not when you count up what you’ll need to make the right impression. Remember, you are acquiring overnight what ought to have been put together over years. Morning gowns, afternoon gowns, riding tunics and trousers, party dresses, and perhaps one ball gown, though that kind of thing you can order when we get to town, for those take an unconscionable amount of time to make if you don’t have a team doing it.” “A team? Doing nothing but sewing? What a horrible life!” I exclaimed. “Those who choose it would say the same about yours, I think,” Nee said with a chuckle. “Meaning your life as a revolutionary. There are many, not just women, though it’s mostly females, who like very much to sit in a warm house and sew and gossip all day. In the good houses the sewers have music, or have books read to them, and the products are the better for their minds being engaged in something interesting. This is their art, just as surely as yon scribe regards her map and her fellows regard their books.” She pointed toward the library. “And how those at Court view the way they conduct their public lives.” “So much to learn,” I said with a groan. “How will I manage?” She just laughed; and the next day a new arrival brought my most formidable interview yet: with my new maid.

Sean had never stared into as many blank-eyed faces before. Throughout the high school civics talk, he felt as if he were speaking to the kids in a foreign language, one they had no intention of learning. Scrambling for a way to reach his audience, he ad-libbed, tossing out anecdotes about his own years at Coral Beach High. He confessed that as a teenager his decision to run for student government had been little more than a wily excuse to approach the best-looking girls. But what ultimately hooked his interest in student government was the startling discovery that the kids at school, all so different—jocks, nerds, preppies, and brains—could unite behind a common cause. During his senior year, when he’d been president of the student council, Coral Beach High raised seven thousand dollars to aid Florida’s hurricane victims. Wouldn’t that be something to feel good about? Sean asked his teenage audience. The response he received was as rousing as a herd of cows chewing their cud. Except this group was blowing big pink bubbles with their gum. The question and answer period, too, turned out to be a joke. The teens’ main preoccupation: his salary and whether he got driven around town in a chauffeured limo. When they learned he was willing to work for peanuts and that he drove an eight-year-old convertible, he might as well have stamped a big fat L on his forehead. He was weak-kneed with relief when at last the principal mounted the auditorium steps and thanked Sean for his electrifying speech. While Sean was politically seasoned enough to put the morning’s snafus behind him, and not worry overmuch that the apathetic bunch he’d just talked to represented America’s future voters, it was the high school principal’s long-winded enthusiasm, telling Sean how much of an inspiration he was for these kids, that truly set Sean’s teeth on edge. And made him even later for the final meeting of the day, the coral reef advisory panel.

All dogs wanted to be good dogs, no matter how unpromising they seemed. You just had to help them find a way. And they were sunshine creatures. When their master opened his eyes in the morning it was their signal that the day had begun, and a day was to be greeted with joy and intense interest. They were a good example for an old man.

Whereas in the early days of the plague they had been struck by the host of small details that, while meaning absolutely nothing to others, meant so much to them personally, and thus had realized, perhaps for the first time, the uniqueness of each man's life; now, on the other hand, they took an interest only in what interested everyone else, they had only general ideas, and even their tenderest affections now seemed abstract, items of the common stock. So completely were they dominated by the plague that sometimes the one thing they aspired to was the long sleep it brought, and they caught themselves thinking: "A good thing if I get plague and have done with it!" But really they were asleep already; this whole period was for them no more than a long night's slumber. The town was peopled with sleepwalkers, whose trance was broken only on the rare occasions when at night their wounds, to all appearance closed, suddenly reopened. Then, waking with a start, they would run their fingers over the wounds with a sort of absentminded curiosity, twisting their lips, and in a flash their grief blazed up again, and abruptly there rose before them the mournful visage of their love. In the morning they harked back to normal conditions, in other words, the plague.

Governor Fielding Wright’s radio address to the “Negroes of Mississippi.” His speech was aired eighteen months after the shooting in Anguilla. He was a Sharkey County native and a lawyer, who might have represented my father. But the reason this article jumped out of the library files and into my hands was the fact that Dad was then the editor of the Deer Creek Pilot, and he was a press agent for Governor Wright, who said: This morning I am speaking primarily to the negro citizens of Mississippi … We are living in troublous times and it is vital and essential that we maintain and preserve the harmonious and traditional relationship which has existed in this state between the white and colored races. It is a matter of common knowledge to all of you who have taken an interest in public affairs that in my inaugural address as governor some four months ago, I took specific issue with certain legislative proposals then being made by President Truman … These proposals of President Truman are concerned with the enactment of certain laws embraced within the popular term of “Civil Rights.” … [O]ur opposition to such legislation is that it is a definite, deliberate and outright invasion of the rights of the states to control their own affairs and meet their own duties and responsibilities. This same radical group pressing this particular proposal is also seeking to abolish separate schools in the South, separate cars on trains, separate seats in the picture shows, and every other form of physical separation between races. Another recommendation made by the President, and one of the main objectives of the many associations claiming to represent the negroes of this nation, is the abolition of segregation. White people of Mississippi and the Southland will not tolerate such a step. The good negro does not want it. The wise of both races recognize the absolute necessity of segregation. With all of this in mind, and with all frankness, as governor of your state, I must tell you that regardless of any recommendation of President Truman, despite any law passed by Congress, and no matter what is said to you by the many associations claiming to represent you, there will continue to be segregation between the races in Mississippi. If any of you have become so deluded as to want to enter our white schools, patronize our hotels and cafes, enjoy social equality with the whites, then true kindness and true sympathy requires me to advise you to make your homes in some state other than Mississippi.

Structural analysis leads to some surprising conclusions concerning “normal” people, which are nevertheless in accord with competent clinical judgment. In structural terms, a “happy” person is one in whom important aspects of the Parent, the Adult, and the Child are all syntonic with each other….The following anecdote illustrates the structure of the “happy” personality carried to its logical end: A young man came home one day and announced to his mother: “I’m so happy! I’ve just been promoted!” His mother congratulated him, and as she got out the bottle of wine she had been saving for such an occasion, she asked him what his new appointment was. ‘This morning,” said the young man, “I was only a guard at the concentration camp, but tonight I’m the new commandant!” “Very good, my son,” said his mother, “see how well I’ve brought you up!” In this case, Parent, Adult, and Child were all interested in and gratified by his career, so that he met the requirements for “happiness.” He fulfilled his mother’s ambitions for him with patriotic rationality while obtaining gratification of his archaic sadism. In this light, it is not so surprising that in real life many of these people were able to enjoy good music and literature in their leisure hours. This distasteful example raises some serious questions about certain naive attitudes concerning the relationship between happiness, virtue, and usefulness, including the Greek aspect of “good workmanship.” It is also an effective illustration for people who want to know “how to raise children” but cannot specify clearly what they want to raise them to be. It is not enough to want to raise them to be “happy.

Go easy on her," I snarled. Fuck! I pulled at my hair. Why did I say that? "Is there a point to this call? I appreciate the secretary. I don't appreciate being told how to run my business. I assume when you recommended Hannah you felt she was capable of—" "Pam, sorry. Listen. Forget that. She's a friend. That's why I'm calling. This goes almost without saying, but it's imperative that..." I stopped pacing. I rubbed my neck as I searched for words. For once in her life, Pam didn't seize my silence as an opportunity to interject. Even that unnerved me. Was she curious about my relation to Hannah? Pam did a good job of disguising any interest in me and my life, but she was also one of the most cunning people I knew. She had probably figured out a lot about me over the years. God, now I was analyzing Pam. Was Pam analyzing me? Fuck, I just needed to eat. My morning coffee on an empty stomach was giving me the shakes. "Imperative that she... not know who I am," I stumbled. Awesome phrasing. Way to go bestselling author. "Ah, that is, documents and... things you might have with my name... in connection with..." Pam let me flounder. I despised her for it. "Pam, I know you take my privacy as seriously as I do, but in this circumstance I..." Finally, the steely bitch spoke up. God damn, I was glad to have Pam Wing as a friend and not an enemy.

Marcie felt something on her hair and woke to look into Ian’s rich brown eyes. Dawn was barely lighting the cabin and he was running his big hand over her curls. “Morning,” she said sleepily. He didn’t say anything. He just lowered his lips to hers and touched them gently, sweetly. She felt the brush of his beard, the soft flesh of his lips and let her eyes drop closed. He moved over her mouth for a moment. She moaned and slipped an arm around his neck, holding him there. He pulled back just a little and whispered, “We’re snowed in, honey.” “Good.” “I was jealous of Bobby, you know,” Ian said, petting her hair back along her temple, moving it over her ear. “Be careful, Ian—you’re talking about ‘it.’” “I’m ready to tell you anything you want to know. We were all a little jealous of Bobby. He had something real special with you. You sent him panties.” Her cheeks warmed in spite of herself. Her eyes got very round. “He showed you?” Ian chuckled. “He showed everyone. Very skimpy panties. I think they were lime-green with black lace or something.” “I cannot believe he showed you!” “He was proud of them. He kept them tucked in his inside pocket like a good-luck charm.” “They were perfectly clean, I’ll have you know.” “Aw, that almost comes as a disappointment,” Ian said, chuckling. “They should have had your scent on them.” “They had Tide and Downy on them!” “And you sent him that picture—on the motorcycle.” She put her hands over her face. In muffled tones she muttered, “I’m mortified.” He pulled her hands away and lightly kissed her again. “So the night I almost froze to death was actually the second time you’ve seen me in my underwear.” “Technically, I’ve seen your underwear a ton of times. I came home a couple of times to see your cute little rump sticking out of the covers, not to mention all that underwear on my tub, drying out,” he said. “And I’d trade my life to see you in your underwear again.” Her eyes got round for a minute, but then she smiled slightly and a little laugh escaped her. “I’ve heard some interesting come-ons in my limited experience, but that’s a new one. Tell me, do I have to shoot you after you peek?” “What if I told you, you might have to shoot me to stop me? Would that scare you?” “You don’t scare me, Ian. I know you’d protect me from anything. Even yourself.” He

Buddhism and other religious and ethical systems, however, have long recognized and sought to correct this prejudice in favour of the self. A scholar of Judaism, commenting on the Torah, wrote: ‘In morals, holiness negatively demanded resistance to every urge of nature which made self-serving the essence of human life; and positively, submission to an ethic which placed service to others at the centre of its system.’6 It would be naive to expect that all men could be persuaded to place service to others before service to self. But with sufficient resolve on the part of governments and institutions that influence public opinion and set international standards of behaviour, a greater proportion of the world’s population could be made to realize that self-interest (whether as an individual, a community or a nation) cannot be divorced entirely from the interests of others. Instead of assuming that material progress will bring an improvement in social, political and ethical standards, should it not be considered that an active promotion of appropriate social, political and ethical values might not only aid material progress but also help ensure that its results are wisely and happily distributed? ‘Wealth enough to keep misery away and a heart wise enough to use it’7 was described as the ‘greatest good’ by Aeschylus, who lived in an age when, after decades of war, revolution and tyrannies, Athenian democracy in its morning freshness was beginning to prove itself as a system wonderfully suited to free, thinking men. A

Kestrel set her cup on its saucer. “I didn’t ask to see you,” she said. “Too bad.” Arin claimed the chair across from her table in the library in a manner unbearably familiar to her. It was as if the chair had always been his. He slouched in his seat, tipped his head back, and looked at her from beneath lowered lids. The morning light fired his profile. “Worried, Lady Kestrel?” He spoke in Valorian, his accent roughening his voice. He always pronounced his r’s too low in his throat, so that when he spoke in her tongue everything came across as a soft growl. “Dreading what I’ll say…or do?” He smiled a grim little smile. “No need. I’ll be the perfect gentleman.” He tugged at his cuffs. It was only then that Kestrel noticed that they came too short on his arms and showed his wrists. It pained her to see his self-consciousness, the way it had suddenly revealed itself. In this light, his gray eyes were too clear. His posture had been confident. His words had had an edge. But his eyes were uncertain. Arin fidgeted again with his cuffs as if there was something wrong with them--with him. No, she would have said. You’re perfect, she wanted to say. She imagined it: how she would reach out to touch Arin’s bare wrist. That could lead nowhere good. She was nervous, she was cold. Her stomach was a flurry of snow. She dropped her hands to her lap. “No one’s here anyway,” Arin said, “and the librarians are in the stacks. You’re safe enough.” It was too early for courtiers to be in the library. Kestrel had counted on this, and on the fact that if anyone did turn up and saw her with the Herrani minister of agriculture, such a meeting would excite little interest. One with Arin, however, was an entirely different story. It was frustrating: his uncanny ability to unsettle her plans--and her very sense of self. She said, “Pressing where you’re not invited seems to be a habit with you.” “And yours is to put people in their place. But people aren’t gaming pieces. You can’t arrange them to suit yourself.” A librarian coughed. “Lower your voice,” Kestrel hissed at Arin. “Stop being so--” “Inconvenient?” “Frankly, yes.” His smile came: quick, true, surprised by itself. Then changing, and slow. “I could be worse.” “I am sure.” “I could tell you how.” “Arin, how is it for you here, in the capital?” He held her gaze. “I would rather talk about what we were talking about.” “Arin, how is it for you here, in the capital?” He held her gaze. “I would rather talk about what we were talking about.” She arranged her fingers along the studs that pinned green leather to the tabletop. She felt each cool, small, hard nail. The silence inside her was like those nails. What it held down was something sheer: a feeling like fragile silk, billowing up at the sound of his voice. If she and Arin were to talk about what they had been talking about, that silk could tear free. It would float up. It would catch the light, and cast a colored shadow. What color would it be, Kestrel wondered, the silk of what she felt? What would it be like to let it go, let it canopy above her?

Initial Contact Script Good morning__________, this is__________from__________. The reason I'm calling you today specifically is so I can stop by and tell you about our new__________ program that increases__________. I'm sure that you, like__________, are interested in__________. (Positive response). That's great__________; let's get together. How's__________? Third-Party Endorsement Script Good morning__________, this is__________ from__________. (Insert your brief commercial on your company.) The reason I'm calling you today specifically is that we've just completed working on a major project for__________, which was extremely successful in increasing__________. What I'd like to do is stop by next__________to tell you about the success I had at__________. How's__________? Follow-Up Script Good morning__________, this is__________ from__________. A number of weeks ago I contacted you, and you asked me to call you back today to set up an appointment. Would__________ be good for you? About the Author STEPHAN SCHIFFMAN is president of D.E.I.

During the afternoons the only thing that seems to hold my interest is baking. I go through my recipe books. Soft-centered biscuits, cakes slathered with icing, cupcakes piled up in pyramids on round plates. Pete doesn't say anything, although every morning he takes out the rubbish bags filled with stale muffins and half-eaten banana loaves. The only thoughts that seem to distract me from babies are those memories of Paris. A gray cold, tall men, black coffee, sweet pastries, Mama laughing, with her hair and scarf streaming behind her. The smell of chocolate and bread.

This is Sally. She is twelve years old and loves to read. Sally lives in a small town called Durham in North Carolina, and she visits the library almost two times a week. People say Sally is addicted to reading. When Sally goes to the library, she takes Milkshake, her cat. Milkshake likes to sit on the tall stool in the library and watch Sally while she is looking for a good book to read. Sally believes that Milkshake understands her completely, even if he can't talk to her. It was Monday morning, and Sally did not have to go to school since it was a holiday. What she didn't know is that this day was going to be special. Sally stood in the library and looked at the books that were on the shelf. She was searching for a good book to read. Within seconds, she noticed a special book. "I never saw this book before," she mumbled to herself. "Milkshake, do you see this book? It looks like a magical book,” she said while turning her head to the side to read the title on its binding. As always, Milkshake stood and watched, maybe understanding, maybe not. The book was on the third shelf, which was too high for Sally to reach standing on her tiptoes, so she decided to use the chair nearby. Using her legs, Sally put her right knee on the chair and raised her body, stretching both hands toward the book. Milkshake stared at her while Sally grumbled, "Come on - a little more. Here it is; here it…" Oops! Sally managed to grab the book, but she fell off the stool! Milkshake was surprised and gave a little “Meow,” while bending his head down. Oh no! Sally was on the floor; the chair had toppled over, and Milkshake was nearby. Sally picked up the book and looked at it. She noticed it was a special book. Its color was red, bright red like a fresh apple. The title of the book was also unique, "The Magical Zoo.” Sally read the title to Milkshake, and her pet was also interested.

Interestingly, the reward system that is activated in the brain when you receive a reward is the same system that is activated when you anticipate a reward. This is one reason the anticipation of an experience can often feel better than the attainment of it. As a child, thinking about Christmas morning can be better than opening the gifts. As an adult, daydreaming about an upcoming vacation can be more enjoyable than actually being on vacation. Scientists refer to this as the difference between “wanting” and “liking.

I think Steve holds no interest for you because you have no idea what your role would be in the relationship. You might not have to rescue him.” Then I paused and said with vehemence, “You’d be out of a job.

In other families, the answer to the question of how an elder kept a three-decades-long love alive might be "he was a good man" or "he always provided for us," maybe "he made me laugh." In my family, the answer is a sort of insanity. A man holds your interest because he's completely nuts: capricious, unpredictable, unsparing with affection and with everything else. Love is a party that lasts into the small hours of the night, a party you should probably leave but it's so fun you can't. Love is navigating together various forms of precariousness and prevailing not by establishing stability, but by evading debt and death, surviving to eat and drink and fuck at the end of it all.

All sorts of mornings are interesting, don’t you think? You don’t know what’s going to happen through the day, and there’s so much scope for imagination. But I’m glad it’s not rainy today because it’s easier to be cheerful and bear up under affliction on a sunshiny day. I feel that I have a good deal to bear up under. It’s all very well to read about sorrows and imagine yourself living through them heroically but it’s not so nice when you really come to have them, is it?

She’d been trying to put distance between them, afraid that the strange attraction she felt for him would somehow be noticed and he’d think her incapable of doing her job. And all this time, he was in love with her! This would never do. Polly took a deep breath as she entered the kitchen. What if Mitch was there? What was she supposed to say? Mitch, I got your note, and, against my better judgment, I am finding myself very attracted to you, but I cannot imagine how a romance between us would work? Preposterous. That’s what it was. How could she even consider falling in love with a man who would keep her tied down to a family that… “Good morning, Polly!” Five cheerful voices greeted her as she entered the kitchen. They were all seated at the kitchen table, working on their…lessons? Isabella held up a slate. “I wite name!” Someone had clearly written Isabella on her slate, and underneath, Isabella had scribbled. “I’ve already done my spelling,” Louisa said. “And the other children are still working on theirs, but we should be ready for the rest of our lessons soon.” Then she held up a book. “Pastor, er, Uncle Frank said it was all right to borrow something from his study. I thought this looked interesting.” Robinson Crusoe. Not something Polly would have picked for the girl, but if she wanted to read it… “That sounds just fine.” Polly looked around the spotless kitchen. “Where’s Maddie?” Maddie came in the back door, drying her hands on her apron. “Just out finishing up a few things. I don’t know what you did to these children, but they’ve been well behaved all morning. Said they wanted you to get your rest and helped me with the washing up, then got right to their lessons.” Polly stared at them. “Really?” “Oh, yes,” Clara said, her smile filling her face. “We like you best of all of our nannies, and since the other ones left

At any given moment, everyone walks around with a laundry machine of vocabulary. Words spin and cycle in heads after fresh loads of new people, new ideas, and new encounters. This laundry machine of vocabulary hints at what we’re interested in, learning of, struggling with, and thinking about. It changes every few months. If you stick with a person long enough, while they may not confess to you that their family is dying, you wonder why they always come back to words like, “polka-dots,” “temperature” or phrases like “getting old” or “good morning, doc!

Learning that men and women both turn to women for understanding showed me that Jamie wasn’t ignoring me out of lack of interest or affection; he just wasn’t good at giving that kind of support. Jamie wasn’t going to have a long discussion about whether

I love start gazing in morning, noon and night and anytime, I love smell of soil while raining, I love breezy air, I love twilight, I love petrol or any other natural hydrocarbon smell, I love Rain, Thunder, lightening and other space phenomenon, I love new hard copy book smell, I love taking microscopy pictures of micro organisms and soil, I love wearing white coat and I love hand shakes, small fights that leads to good memories to keep, I did not include my food or dynamic capabilities, music, those are according to situations but the things I mentioned above are my deep interests - But these things I show only If I like the person, else I ignore

When they arrived in the corridor they saw that there were only a dozen people progressing to N.E.W.T. level. Crabbe and Goyle had evidently failed to achieve the required O.W.L. grade, but four Slytherins had made it through, including Malfoy. Four Ravenclaws were there, and one Hufflepuff, Ernie Macmillan, whom Harry liked despite his rather pompous manner. ‘Harry,’ Ernie said portentously, holding out his hand as Harry approached, ‘didn’t get a chance to speak in Defence Against the Dark Arts this morning. Good lesson, I thought, but Shield Charms are old hat, of course, for us old DA lags … and how are you, Ron – Hermione?’ Before they could say more than ‘fine’, the dungeon door opened and Slughorn’s belly preceded him out of the door. As they filed into the room, his great walrus moustache curved above his beaming mouth and he greeted Harry and Zabini with particular enthusiasm. The dungeon was, most unusually, already full of vapours and odd smells. Harry, Ron and Hermione sniffed interestedly as they passed large, bubbling cauldrons. The four Slytherins took a table together, as did the four Ravenclaws. This left Harry, Ron and Hermione to

Phyl Newton was visiting Sandy that evening, but the girls displayed a marked coolness toward Tom and Bud. Instead of engaging in conversation, they retired to Sandy's room upstairs to play records, while Mrs. Swift served the boys a warmed-up but tasty meal of roast beef and mince pie. "What's wrong? Are we repulsive or something?" Bud asked as they ate. Tom shrugged, concentrating on a mouthful of roast beef. "Search me. We sure don't seem very popular with the girls tonight." Mrs. Swift, overhearing their remarks in the kitchen, smiled but maintained a diplomatic silence. Suddenly Bud slapped his forehead. "Good night! No wonder!" Tom looked up with a grin of interest. "Well, what have we done?" "It's what we haven't done, pal!" Bud retorted. "We had a date this afternoon, remember? That beach party and dance put on by Sandy and Phyl's school sorority!" Tom gulped. "Oops! Boy, we really did pull a boner this time! I completely forgot!" As they finished supper, the boys discussed various ways to make amends. Boxes of chocolates? Flowers? None of their ideas seemed to have the proper spark. "We'll have to come up with something super," Bud said. "Right!" Tom agreed. "Let's sleep on it and see if we can't dream up something by tomorrow morning that'll really wow them." The next morning Tom had a flash of inspiration as he drove to the plant in his sports car. He hailed Bud at the first opportunity. "I

Initial Contact Script Good morning _______, this is _______ from _______. The reason I’m calling you today specifically is so I can stop by and tell you about our new _______ program that increases _______. I’m sure that you, like _______, are interested in _______. (Positive response). That’s great, _______; let’s get together. How’s _______? Third-Party Endorsement Script Good morning _______, this is _______ from _______. (Insert your brief commercial on your company.) The reason I’m calling you today specifically is that we’ve just completed working on a major project for _______, which was extremely successful in increasing _______. What I’d like to do is stop by next _______ to tell you about the success I had at _______. How’s _______? Follow-Up Script Good morning _______, this is _______ from _______. A number of weeks ago I contacted you, and you asked me to call you back today to set up an appointment. Would _______ be good for you?

But when my spirits were at their lowest ebb, the good Samaritan was close at hand, for one morning Susi came running at the top of his speed and gasped out, "An Englishman! I see him!" and off he darted to meet him. The American flag at the head of a caravan told of the nationality of the stranger. Bales of goods, baths of tin, huge kettles, cooking pots, tents, &c, made me think "This must be a luxurious traveller, and not one at his wits' end like me." (28th October, 1871.) It was Henry Moreland Stanley, the travelling correspondent of the New York Herald, sent by James Gordon Bennett, junior, at an expense of more than 4000l., to obtain accurate information about Dr. Livingstone if living, and if dead to bring home my bones. The news he had to tell to one who had been two full years without any tidings from Europe made my whole frame thrill. The terrible fate that had befallen France, the telegraphic cables successfully laid in the Atlantic, the election of General Grant, the death of good Lord Clarendon—my constant friend, the proof that Her Majesty's Government had not forgotten me in voting 1000l. for supplies, and many other points of interest, revived emotions that had lain dormant in Manyuema.

O powerful Goodness! bountiful Father! merciful Guide! Increase in me that wisdom which discovers my truest interest. Strengthen my resolution to perform what that wisdom dictates. Accept my kind offices to Thy other children as the only return in my power for Thy continual favors to me.”1 This is the morning mantra that set the tone for Benjamin Franklin’s day for most of his adult life.

FEBRUARY 11 MORNING AND THEY RECOGNIZED THAT THEY HAD BEEN WITH JESUS. — ACTS 4:1 3 A Christian should be a striking likeness of Jesus Christ. You have read lives of Christ, beautifully and eloquently written, but the best life of Christ is His living biography, written out in the words and actions of His people. If we were what we profess to be, and what we should be, we would be pictures of Christ; yes, such striking likenesses of Him that the world would not have to hold us to the mirror and say, “Well, it seems somewhat of a likeness”; they would, when they saw us, exclaim, “He has been with Jesus; he has been taught by Him; he is like Him; he has caught the very idea of the holy Man of Nazareth, and he works it out in his life and everyday actions.” A Christian should be like Christ in his boldness. Never blush to own your Christianity; your profession will never disgrace you: Take care you never disgrace that. Be like Jesus, very valiant for your God. Imitate Him in your loving spirit; think kindly, speak kindly, and do kindly, that men may say of you, “He has been with Jesus.” Imitate Jesus in His holiness. Was He zealous for His Master? So should you be, going about doing good. Do not waste time; it is too precious. Was He self-denying, never looking to His own interest? Be the same. Was He devout? Then be fervent in your prayers. Did He defer to His Father’s will? So submit yourselves to Him. Was He patient? So learn to endure. And best of all, as the highest portraiture of Jesus, try to forgive your enemies, as He did; and let those sublime words of your Master, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” always ring in your ears. Forgive, as you hope to be forgiven. Heap coals of fire on the head of your enemy by your kindness to him. Good for evil, remember, is Godlike. Be Godlike then; and in all ways and by all means so live that all may say of you, “He has been with Jesus.

Shea took another deep breath and looked around, determined to find what was making her so uneasy. A man lounged lazily in the shade of a tree. He was tall, dark, and motionless, like a hunter. She felt the impact of his eyes as his gaze casually found her. Her heart jumped. Who was he? Had Wallace found her so soon? Shea turned away. First, before anything, she had to complete her business. She dragged out her laptop computer and typed in the commands to access the clinic’s blood bank. If she had to move Jacques, they would need supplies desperately. In another moment, Shea felt silly. The door to the small general store across the street swung open. The short, stooped owner emerged, apron tied around his ample middle, a broom in his hand. He waved openly at the motionless figure beneath the tree. “Byron. Good morning to you. Bit early, isn’t it?” She recognized the local dialect. The tall, dark-haired man replied in the same language, but his voice was low, a beautiful tone. He stepped out of the shadows, young, good-looking. He flashed a quick, friendly smile at the grocer approaching him. Clearly they knew one another, were friendly. The dark-haired man was obviously no stranger to the area. Neither exhibited the least interest in Shea. She watched as Byron bent his head solicitously down to the older man, listening intently, his arm circling the shopkeeper’s shoulders. Shea breathed a soft sigh of relief. The feeling of being stalked was gone, and she couldn’t be certain if it had been real or imagined.

Once, when I was seven or eight, my mother said to me, as we sat on the last seat but one on the bus to the clinic or the shoe shop, that while it was true that books could change with the years just as much as people could, the difference was that whereas people would always drop you when they could no longer get any advantage or pleasure or interest or at least a good feeling from you, a book would never abandon you. Naturally you sometimes dropped them, maybe for several years, or even forever. But they, even if you betrayed them, would never turn their backs on you: they would go on waiting for you silently and humbly on their shelf. They would wait for ten years. They wouldn't complain. One night, when you suddenly needed a book, even at three in the morning, even if it was a book you had abandoned and erased from your heart for years and years, it would never disappoint you, it would come down from its shelf and keep you company in your moment of need. It would not try to get its own back or make excuses or ask itself if it was worth its while or if you deserved it or if you still suited each other, it would come at once as soon as you asked. A book would never let you down.

Later that night, after cocktails, a long and spirited debate ensued between him and Elon about the future of AI and what should be done. As we entered the wee hours of the morning, the circle of bystanders and kibitzers kept growing. Larry gave a passionate defense of the position I like to think of as digital utopianism: that digital life is the natural and desirable next step in the cosmic evolution and that if we let digital minds be free rather than try to stop or enslave them, the outcome is almost certain to be good. I view Larry as the most influential exponent of digital utopianism. He argued that if life is ever going to spread throughout our Galaxy and beyond, which he thought it should, then it would need to do so in digital form. His main concerns were that AI paranoia would delay the digital utopia and/or cause a military takeover of AI that would fall foul of Google’s “Don’t be evil” slogan. Elon kept pushing back and asking Larry to clarify details of his arguments, such as why he was so confident that digital life wouldn’t destroy everything we care about. At times, Larry accused Elon of being “specieist”: treating certain life forms as inferior just because they were silicon-based rather than carbon-based. We’ll return to explore these interesting issues and arguments in detail, starting in chapter 4.

...When my nephew was three, [his mother] was worrying about getting him into the right preschool. Kid's fifteen now. He's under pressure to make sure he gets good grades so he can get into a good school. He needs to show good extracurricular activities to get into a good school. He needs to be popular with his classmates. Which means be just like them. Dress right, use the proper slang, listen to proper music, go away on the proper vacations. Live in the right neighborhood, be sure his parents drive the right car, hang with the right group, have the right interests. He has homework. He has soccer practice and guitar lessons. The school decides what he has to learn, and when, and from whom. The school tells him which stairwell he can go up. It tells him how fast to move through the corridors, when he can talk, when he can't, when he can chew gum, when he can have lunch, what he is allowed to wear..." Rita paused and took a drink. "Boy", I said. "Ready for corporate life." She nodded. "And the rest of the world is telling him he's carefree," she said. "And all the time he's worried that the boys will think he's a sissy, and the school bully will beat him up, and the girls will think he's a geek." "Hard times," I said. "The hardest," she said. "And while he's going through puberty and struggling like hell to come to terms with the new person he's becoming, running through it all, like salt in a wound, is the self-satisfied adult smirk that keeps trivializing his angst." "They do learn to read and write and do numbers," I said. "They do. And they do that early. And after that, it's mostly bullshit. And nobody ever consults the kid about it." "You spend time with this kid," I said. "I do my Auntie Mame thing every few weeks. He takes the train in from his hideous suburb. We go to a museum, or shop, or walk around and look at the city. We have dinner. We talk. He spends the night, and I usually drive him back in the morning." "What do you tell him?" I said. "I tell him to hang on," Rita said. She was leaning a little forward now, each hand resting palm-down on the table, her drink growing warm with neglect. "I tell him that life in the hideous suburb is not all the life there is. I tell him it will get better in a few years. I tell him that he'll get out of that stultifying little claustrophobic coffin of a life, and the walls will fall away and he'll have room to move and choose, and if he's tough enough, to have a life of his own making." As she spoke, she was slapping the tabletop softly with her right hand. "If he doesn't explode first," she said. "Your jury summations must be riveting," I said. She laughed and sat back. "I love that kid," she said. "I think about it a lot." "He's lucky to have you. Lot of them have no one." Rita nodded. "Sometimes I want to take him and run," she said. The wind shifted outside, and the rain began to rattle against the big picture window next to us. It collected and ran down, distorting reality and blurring the headlights and taillights and traffic lights and colorful umbrellas and bright raincoats into a kind of Parisian shimmer. "I know," I said.

It seemed like a contradiction in terms, a conflict of interest. But this morning, I wrote Astrid a check. I could have fired her. I could have ruined her. I had all the money. I had all the power. And instead, I warned her. Instead, I let her go. Maybe there are good rich people. Maybe I could be one of them.

As time went on, I subscribed more and more to Toynbee’s idea that civilizations die not by murder but by suicide. And then one day everything changed for me. It was March thirtieth, 2013, I’ll never forget—Easter weekend. At the time I was living in Brussels, and every once in a while I’d go have a drink at the bar of the Métropole. I’d always loved Art Nouveau. There are magnificent examples in Prague and Vienna, and there are interesting buildings in Paris and London, too, but for me—right or wrong—the high point of Art Nouveau decor was the Hotel Métropole de Bruxelles, in particular the bar. The morning of March thirtieth, I happened to walk by and saw a sign that said the bar of the Métropole was closing for good, that very night.