It Is The Gossip Columnist's Business To

In The History Of Thought And Culture The Dark Nights Have Perhaps In Some Ways Cost Mankind Less Grief Than The False Dawns, The Prison Houses In Which Hope Persists Less Grief Than The Promised Lands Where Hope Expires.

We Are Neurotically Haunted Today By The Imminence, And By The Ignominy, Of Failure. We Know At How Frightening A Cost One Succeeds: To Fail Is Something Too Awful To Think About.

We Might Define An Eccentric As A Man Who Is A Law Unto Himself, And A Crank As One Who, Having Determined What The Law Is, Insists On Laying It Down To Others.

It Is One Of The Sublime Provincialities Of New York That Its Inhabitants Lap Up Trivial Gossip About Essential Nobodies They've Never Set Eyes On, While Continuing To Boast That They Could Live Somewhere For Twenty Years Without So Much As Exchanging Pleasantries With Their Neighbors Across The Hall.

The Materialistic Idealism That Governs American Life, That On The One Hand Makes A Chariot Of Every Grocery Wagon, And On The Other A Mere Hitching Post Of Every Star, Lets Every Man Lead A Very Enticing Double Life.