... People Are Always Turning Out To

Nothing Good Ever Comes Without A Price.

The Older The Violin, The Sweeter The Music.

Working- And Middle-class Families Sat Down At The Dinner Table Every Night - The Shared Meal Was The Touchstone Of Good Manners. Indeed, That Dinner Table Was The One Time When We Were All Together, Every Day: Parents, Grandparents, Children, Siblings. Rudeness Between Siblings, Or A Failure To Observe The Etiquette Of Passing Dishes To One Another, Accompanied By "please" And "thank You," Was The Training Ground Of Behavior, The Place Where Manners Began.

When Augustus Came Out On The Porch The Blue Pigs Were Eating A Rattlesnake—not A Very Big One. It Had Probably Just Been Crawling Around Looking For Shade When It Ran Into The Pigs. They Were Having A Fine Tug-of-war With It, And Its Rattling Days Were Over.

Obviously, Where Art Has It Over Life Is In The Matter Of Editing. Life Can Be Seen To Suffer From A Drastic Lack Of Editing. It Stops Too Quick, Or Else It Goes On Too Long. Worse, Its Pacing Is Erratic. Some Chapters Are Little More Than A Few Sentences In Length, While Others Stretch Into Volumes. Life, For All Its Raw Talent, Has Little Sense Of Structure. It Creates Amazing Textures, But It Can't Be Counted On For Snappy Beginnings Or Good Endings Either. Indeed, In Many Cases No Ending Is Provided At All.