“
So now George has arrived. He is not nervous in
the least. As he gets out of his car, he
feels an upsurge of energy, of eagerness for the play to begin. And he walks eagerly, with
a springy step, along the gravel path past the Music Building toward the Department
office. He is all actor now—an actor on his way up
from the dressing room, hastening
through the backstage world of props and lamps and
stagehands to make his entrance. A
veteran, calm and assured, he pauses for a well-measured moment in the doorway of the
office and then, boldly, clearly, with the subtly modulated British intonation which his
public demands of him, speaks his opening line: "Go
od morning!"
And the three secretaries—each one of them a charming and accomplished actress in
her own chosen style—recognize him instantly, without even a flicker of doubt, and reply
"Good morning!" to him. (There is something religious here, like responses in church—a
reaffirmation of faith in the basic American dogma
that it is, always, a good morning.
Good, despite the Russians and their rockets, and all the ills and worries of the flesh. For
of course we know, don't we, that the Russians and
the worries are not really real? They
can be un-thought and made to vanish. And therefore
the morning can be made to be
good. Very well then, it is good.)
”
”