she has that you are weak, not because you need her good-will but because you can expect more letters like this, and they can only serve to increase your already dangerous anti-social instincts. finish As Perry continued to sort and choose, the pile of material he thought too dear to part with, even temporarily, assumed a tottering height. But what was he to do? He couldn't risk losing the Bronze Medal earned in Korea, or his high-school diploma (issued by the Leavenworth County Board of Education as a result of his having, while in prison, resumed his long-recessed studies). Nor did he care to chance the loss of a manila envelope fat with photo-graphs - primarily of himself, and ranging in time from a pretty- little-boy portrait made when he was in the Merchant Marine (and on the back of which he had scribbled, "16 yrs. old. Young, happy-go-lucky & Innocent") to the recent Acapulco pictures. And there were half a hundred other items he had decided he must take with him, among them his treasure maps, Otto's sketchbook, and two thick notebooks, the thicker of which constituted his personal dictionary, a non-alphabetically listed miscellany of words he believed "beautiful" or "useful," or at least "worth memorizing." (Sample page: "Thanatoid = deathlike; Omnilingual =versed in languages; Amerce = punishment, amount fixed by court; Nescient = ignorance; Facinorous = atrociously wicked; Hagiophobia = a morbid fear of holy places & things; Lapidicolous = living under stones, as certain blind beetles; Dyspathy = lack of sympathy, fellow feeling; Psilopher = a fellow who fain would pass as a philosopher; Omophagia = eating raw flesh, the rite of some savage tribes; Depredate = to pillage, rob, and prey upon; Aphrodisiac = a drug or the like which excites sexual desire; Megaloda Citylous = having abnormally large fingers; Myrtophobia =fear of night and darkness.") Oil the cover of the second notebook, the handwriting of which he was so proud, a script abounding in curly, feminine flourishes, proclaimed the contents to be "The Private Diary of Perry Edward Smith" - an inaccurate description, for it was not in the least a diary but, rather, a form of anthology consisting of obscure facts ("Every fifteen years Mars gets closer. 1958 is a close year"), poems and literary quotations ("No man is an island, Entire of itself), and passages for newspapers and books paraphrased or quoted. For example: My acquaintances are many, my friends are few; those who really know me fewer still. Heard about a new rat poison on the market. Extremely potent, odorless, tasteless, is so completely absorbed once swallowed that no trace could ever be found in a dead body. If called upon to make a speech: "I can't remember what I was going to say for the life of me - I don't think that ever before in my life have so many people been so directly responsible for my being so very, very glad. It's a wonderful moment and a rare one and I'm certainly indebted. Thank you!" Read interesting article Feb. issue of Man to Mtn: "I Knifed My Way to a Diamond Pit."
"It is almost impossible for a man who enjoys freedom with all its prerogatives, to realize what it means to be deprived of that freedom." - Said by Erie Stanley Gardner.
"What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is as the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset." - Said by Chief Crowfoot, Blackfoot Indian Chief. This last entry was written in red ink and decorated with a border of green-ink stars; the anthologist wished to emphasize its "personal significance." "A breath of a buffalo in the wintertime" - that exactly evoked his view of life. Why worry? What was thereto "sweat about"? Man was nothing, a mist, a shadow absorbed by shadows. But, damn it, you do worry, scheme, fret over your finger nails and the warnings of hotel managements: "Su dia termina a las 2 p.m."
"Dick? You hear me?" Perry said. "It's almost one o'clock." Dick was awake. He was rather more than that; he and Inez were making love. As though