A Well-made Martini Or Gibson, Correctly Chilled

It Must Not Simply Be Taken For Granted That A Given Set Of Ill-assorted People, For No Other Reason Than Because It Is Christmas, Will Be Joyful To Be Reunited And To Break Bread Together.

For Anyone Addicted To Reading Commonplace Books . . . Finding A Good New One Is Much Like Enduring A Familiar Recurrence Of Malaria, With Fever, Fits Of Shaking, Strange Dreams . . . .

There Is No Chiropractic Treatment, No Yoga Exercise, No Hour Of Meditation In A Music-throbbing Chapel, That Will Leave You Emptier Of Bad Thoughts Than This Homely Ceremony Of Making Bread.

If Time, So Fleeting, Must Like Humans Die, Let It Be Filled With Good Food And Good Talk, And Then Embalmed In The Perfumes Of Conviviality.

All Men Are Hungry. They Always Have Been. They Must Eat, And When They Deny Themselves The Pleasures Of Carrying Out That Need, They Are Cutting Off Part Of Their Possible Fullness, Their Natural Realization Of Life, Whether They Are Rich Or Poor.