In Order To See Birds It Is

When People Complain Of The Decay Of Manners They Have In Mind Not The Impudent Abbreviations Of The Crowd, But The Decline In Bowing And Scraping And In Speaking Of One's Employer As "the Master." What The Rich Mean By The Good Manners Of The Poor Is Usually Not Civility, But Servility.

Jane Austen Has Often Been Praised As A Natural Historian. She Is A Naturalist Among Tame Animals. She Does Not Study Men (as Dostoevsky Does) In His Wild State Before He Has Been Domesticated. Her Men And Women Are Essentially Men And Women Of The Fireside.

When One Has Praised Turgenev, However, For The Beauty Of His Character And The Beautiful Truth Of His Art, One Remembers That He, Too, Was Human And Therefore Less Than Perfect. His Chief Failing Was, Perhaps, That Of All The Great Artists, He Was The Most Lacking In Exuberance. That Is Why He Began To Be Scorned In A World Which Rated Exuberance Higher Than Beauty Or Love Or Pity.

No Man Is Uninteresting When His Hat Is Blown Off And He Has To Scuttle After It Down The Street.

It May Be That All Games Are Silly. But Then, So Are Humans.