If Words Are To Change Their Meanings,

Each Wrong Act Brings With It Its Own Anesthetic, Dulling The Conscience And Blinding It Against Further Light, And Sometimes For Years.

Decades Have A Delusive Edge To Them. They Are Not, Of Course, Really Periods At All, Except As Any Other Ten Years May Be. But We, Looking At Them, Are Caught By The Different Name Each Bears, And Give Them Different Attributes, And Tie Labels On Them, As If They Were Flowers In A Border.

Take My Camel, Dear,' Said My Aunt Dot, Climbing Down From That Animal On Her Return From High Mass.

I Can Think Of Few Things More Disastrous Than Starting A New Correspondence With Any One. Letters Are A Burden Indeed ... They Seem Often The Last Straw That Breaks The Back ... You Should See The Piles Of Those That I Must Answer That Litter And Weight My Writing Table.

Words, Living And Ghostly, The Quick And The Dead, Crowd And Jostle The Otherwise Too Empty Corridors Of My Mind ... To Move Among This Bright, Strange, Often Fabulous Herd Of Beings, To Summon Them At My Will, To Fasten Them On To Paper Like Flies, That They May Decorate It, This Is The Pleasure Of Writing.