I'm Not Much Like Myself Any More.

Men Don’t Often Know Those Times When A Girl Could Be Had For Nothing.

The Past--the Wild Charge At The Head Of His Men Up San Juan Hill; The First Years Of His Marriage When He Worked Late Into The Summer Dusk Down In The Busy City For Young Hildegarde Whom He Loved; The Days Before That When He Sat Smoking Far Into The Night In The Gloomy Old Button House On Monroe Street With His Grandfather-all These Had Faded Like Unsubstantial Dreams From His Mind As Though They Had Never Been. He Did Not Remember.

People Disappeared, Reappeared, Made Plans To Go Somewhere, And Then Lost Each Other, Searched For Each Other, Found Each Other A Few Feet Away.

The Growth Of Intimacy Is Like That. First One Gives Off His Best Picture, The Bright And Finished Product Mended With Bluff And Falsehood And Humour. Then More Details Are Required And One Paints A Second Portrait, And A Third – Before Long The Best Lines Cancel Out – And The Secret Is Exposed At Last; The Planes Of The Pictures Have Intermingled And Given Us Away, And Though We Paint And Paint We Can No Longer Sell A Picture. We Must Be Satisfied With Hoping That Such Fatuous Accounts Of Ourselves As We Make To Our Wives And Children And Business Associates Are Accepted As True

I Hope I Haven't Given You The Impression That I Consider Kissing Intrinsically Irrational.