I Would Not Send A First Story

Most People Trusted In The Future, Assuming That Their Preferred Version Of It Would Unfold. Blindly Planning For It, Envisioning Things That Weren't The Case. This Was The Working Of The Will. This Was What Gave The World Purpose And Direction. Not What Was There But What Was Not.

Isolation Offered Its Own Form Of Companionship: The Reliable Silence Of Her Rooms, The Steadfast Tranquility Of The Evenings. The Promise That She Would Find Things Where She Put Them, That There Would Be No Interruption, No Surprise. It Greeted Her At The End Of Each Day And Lay Still With Her At Night.

It Is A Magical Thing For A Handful Of Words, Artfully Arranged, To Stop Time. To Conjure A Place, A Person, A Situation, In All Its Specificity And Dimensions. To Affect Us And Alter Us, As Profoundly As Real People And Things Do.

She Had Listened To Him, Partly Sympathetic, Partly Horrified. For It Was One Thing For Her To Reject Her Background, To Be Critical Of Her Family's Heritage, Another To Hear It From Him.

...that In Spite Of Living In A Mansion An American Is Not Above Wearing A Pair Of Secondhand Pants, Bought For Fifty Cents.