It Was A Book To Kill Time

The Superior Thing ... Was To Be Late. Lateness Showed That Serene Contempt For The Illusion We Call Time Which Is So Necessary To Ensure The Respect Of Others And Oneself. Only The Servile Are Punctual.

The Ascendancy Over Men's Minds Of The Ruins Of The Stupendous Past, The Past Of History, Legend And Myth, At Once Factual And Fantastic, Stretching Back And Back Into Ages That Can But Be Surmised, Is Half-mystical In Basis. The Intoxication, At Once So Heady And So Devout, Is Not The Romantic Melancholy Engendered By Broken Towers And Mouldered Stones; It Is The Soaring Of The Imagination Into The High Empyrean Where Huge Episodes Are Tangled With Myths And Dreams; It Is The Stunning Impact Of World History On Its Amazed Heirs.

All Sorts Of Articles And Letters Appear In The Papers About Women. Profound Questions Are Raised Concerning Them. Should They Smoke? Should They Work? Vote? Marry? Exist? Are Not Their Skirts Too Short, Or Their Sleeves? Have They A Sense Of Humor, Of Honor, Of Direction? Are Spinsters Superfluous? But How Seldom Similar Inquiries Are Propounded About Men.

Traveling Together Is A Great Test, Which Has Damaged Many Friendships And Even Honeymoons, And Some People Such As [thomas] Gray And Horace Walpole, Never Feel Quite The Same To One Another Again, And It Is Nobody's Fault, As One Knows If One Listens To The Stories Of Both, Though It Seems To Be Some People's Fault More Than Others.

As To The Family, I Have Never Understood How That Fits In With The Other Ideals -- Or, Indeed, Why It Should Be An Ideal At All.