Good Drama Should Sandpaper The Mind.

The Federal Building's Large Ceremonial Courtroom, Reserved For Show Trials, Is Veneered In Executive Teak. Bench, Counsel Tables, Jury Boxes, Entrances, And Exits -- All Are As Formally Arranged As An Elizabethan Stage. Only The Drama Is Shapeless, At Least To Those Of Us Who Have Never Seen A Trial Before. We See Only Random Movements, Sequences, Comings And Goings, No Form Or Agenda Apparent. To Us The Action Is Less Like Watching A Play Than Watching An Aquarium.

In A Nation Of Celebrity Worshipers, Amid Followers Of The Cult Of Personality, Individual Modesty Becomes A Heroic Quality. I Find Heroism In The Acceptance Of Anonymity, In The Studied Resistance To The Normal American Tropism Toward The Limelight.

Roughly Speaking, The President Of The United States Knows What His Job Is. Constitution And Custom Spell It Out, For Him As Well As For Us. His Wife Has No Such Luck. The First Lady Has No Rules; Rather Each New Woman Must Make Her Own.

How Is The Newcomer To Deal With Rome? What Is One To Make Of This Marble Rubble, This Milk Of Wolves, This Blood Of Caesars, This Sunrise Of Renaissance, This Baroquery Of Blown Stone, This Warm Hive Of Italians, This Antipasto Of Civilization?

The Law Changes And Flows Like Water, And . . . The Stream Of Women's Rights Law Has Become A Sudden Rushing Torrent.