Wear Your Boots If You Wander Today

On The Moon We Have Everything. Lettuce, And Pumpkin Pie And Amanita Phalloides. We Have Cat-furred Plants And Horses Dancing With Their Wings. All The Locks Are Solid And Tight, And There Are No Ghosts.

She Walked Quickly Around Her One-room Apartment. After More Than Four Years In This One Home She Knew All Its Possibilities, How It Could Put On A Sham Appearance Of Warmth And Welcome When She Needed A Place To Hide In, How It Stood Over Her In The Night When She Woke Suddenly, How It Could Relax Itself Into A Disagreeable Unmade, Badly-put-together State, Mornings Like This, Anxious To Drive Her Out And Go Back To Sleep.

Don't Do It, Eleanor Told The Little Girl; Insist On Your Cup Of Stars; Once They Have Trapped You Into Being Like Everyone Else You Will Never See Your Cup Of Stars Again; Don't Do It; And The Little Girl Glanced At Her, And Smiled A Little Subtle, Dimpling, Wholly Comprehending Smile, And Shook Her Head Stubbornly At The Glass. Brave Girl, Eleanor Thought; Wise, Brave Girl.

Can't You Make Them Stop?' I Asked Her That Day, Wondering If There Was Anything In This Woman I Could Speak To, If She Had Ever Run Joyfully Over Grass, Or Had Watched Flowers, Or Known Delight Or Love.

No Live Organism Can Continue For Long To Exist Sanely Under Conditions Of Absolute Reality; Even Larks And Katydids Are Supposed, By Some, To Dream. Hill House, Not Sane, Stood By Itself Against Its Hills, Holding Darkness Within; It Had Stood So For Eighty Years And Might Stand For Eighty More. Within, Walls Continued Upright, Bricks Met Neatly, Floors Were Firm, And Doors Were Sensibly Shut; Silence Lay Steadily Against The Wood And Stone Of Hill House, And Whatever Walked There, Walked Alone.