When The Lightning Strikes One Of Us,

I'm Inclined To Reserve All Judgement, A Habit That Has Opened Up Many Curious Natures To Me And Made Me The Victim Of Not A Few Veteran Bores. The Abnormal Mind Is Quick To Detect And Attach Itself To This Quality When It Appears In A Normal Person, And So It Came About That In College I Was Unjustly Accused Of Being A Politician, Because I Was Privy To The Secret Griefs Of Wild, Unknown Men.

The Years Between Thirty-five And Sixty-five Revolve Before The Passive Mind As One Unexplained, Confusing Merry-go-round. True, They Are A Merry-go-round Of Ill-gaited And Wind-broken Horses, Painted First In Pastel Colors, Then In Dull Grays And Browns, But Perplexing And Intolerably Dizzy The Thing Is, As Never Were The Merry-go-rounds Of Childhood Or Adolescence; As Never, Surely, Were The Certain-coursed, Dynamic Roller-coasters Of Youth. For Most Men And Women These Thirty Years Are Taken Up With A Gradual Withdrawal From Life.

There Used To Be Two Kinds Of Kisses: First When Girls Were Kissed And Deserted; Second, When They Were Engaged. Now There's A Third Kind, Where The Man Is Kissed And Deserted. If Mr. Jones Of The Nineties Bragged He'd Kissed A Girl, Everyone Knew He Was Through With Her. If Mr. Jones Of 1919 Brags The Same, Everyone Knows It's Because He Can't Kiss Her Any More. Given A Decent Start Any Girl Can Beat A Man Nowadays.

You Have To Develop A Conscience And If On Top Of That You Have Talent So Much The Better. But If You Have Talent Without Conscience, You Are Just One Of Many Thousand Journalists.

Often People Display A Curious Respect For A Man Drunk, Rather Like The Respect Of Simple Races For The Insane... There Is Something Awe-inspiring In One Who Has Lost All Inhibitions.