Gossip, Or, As We Gossips Like To

Sometimes One Has The Feeling Of An Almost Supernatural Character To The Shifts And Changes In Our National Mood. They Appear Beyond The Prose Of Cause And Effect.

I Have Come To The Belief That There Is Not Merely An Accidental Relationship Between Bad Writing And Routine Sociological Research, But A Wonderfully Pure, Integral Relationship; The Awkwardness Is Necessary And Inevitable.

Many People Believe Letters The Most Personal And Revealing Form Of Communication. In Them, We Expect To Find The Charmer At His Nap, Slumped, Open-mouthed, Profoundly Himself Without Thought For Appearances. Yet, This Is Not Quite True. Letters Are Above All Useful As A Means Of Expressing The Ideal Self; And No Other Method Of Communication Is Quite So Good For This Purpose. In Conversation, Those Uneasy Eyes Upon You, Those Lips Ready With An Emendation Before You Have Begun To Speak, Are A Powerful Deterrent To Unreality, Even To Hope.

The Fifties - They Seem To Have Taken Place On A Sunny Afternoon That Asked Nothing Of You Except A Drifting Belief In The Moment And Its Power To Satisfy.

They Had Created Themselves Together, And They Always Saw Themselves, Their Youth, Their Love, Their Lost Youth And Lost Love, Their Failures And Memories, As A Sort Of Living Fiction.