Affluence Means Influence.

Desire Is A Pain Which Seeks Easement Through Possession.

Mercedes Nursed A Special Grievance - The Grievance Of Sex. She Was Pretty And Soft, And Had Been Chivalrously Treated All Her Days. But The Present Treatment By Her Husband And Brother Was Everything Save Chivalrous. It Was Her Custom To Be Helpless. They Complained. Upon Which Impeachment Of What To Her Was Her Most Essential Sex Pregorative, She Made Their Lives Unendurable.

I Early Learned That There Were Two Natures In Me. This Caused Me A Great Deal Of Trouble, Till I Worked Out A Philosophy Of Life And Struck A Compromise Between The Flesh And The Spirit. Too Great An Ascendancy Of Either Was To Be Abnormal, And Since Normality Is Almost A Fetish Of Mine, I Finally Succeeded In Balancing Both Natures. Ordinarily They Are At Equilibrium; Yet As Frequently As One Is Permitted To Run Rampant, So Is The Other. I Have Small Regard For An Utter Brute Or For An Utter Saint.

He Had Learned Well The Law Of Club And Fang, And He Never Forewent An Advantage Or Drew Back From A Foe He Had Started On The Way To Death. He Had Lessoned From Spitz, And From The Chief Fighting Dogs Of The Police And Mail, And Knew There Was No Middle Course. He Must Master Or Be Mastered; While To Show Mercy Was A Weakness. Mercy Did Not Exist In The Primordial Life. It Was Misunderstood For Fear, And Such Misunderstandings Made For Death. Kill Or Be Killed, Eat Or Be Eaten, Was The Law; And This Mandate, Down Out Of The Depths Of Time, He Obeyed.

Bog-lights, Vapors Of Mysticism, Psychic Overtones, Soul Orgies, Wailings Among The Shadows, Weird Gnosticisms, Veils And Tissues Of Words, Gibbering Subjectivisms, Gropings And Maunderings, Ontological Fantasies ... This Is The Stuff, The Phantasms Of Hope, That Fills Your Book Shelves. Look At Them, All The Sad Wraiths Of Sad Mad Men And Passionate Rebels — Your Schopenhauers, Your Strindbergs, Your Tolstois And Nietzsches. Come. Your Glass Is Empty. Fill And Forget.