Death And Worse Happened On

It's A Fine World, Though Rich In Hardships At Times.

Call Listened With Amusement--not That The Incident Hadn't Been Terrible. Being Decapitated Was A Grisly Fate, Whether You Were A Yankee Or Not. But Then, Amusing Things Happened In Battle, As They Did In The Rest Of Life. Some Of The Funniest Things He Had Ever Witnessed Had Occurred During Battles. He Had Always Found It More Satisfying To Laugh On A Battlefield Than Anywhere Else, For If You Lived To Laugh On A Battlefield, You Could Feel You Had Earned The Laugh. But If You Just Laughed In A Saloon, Or At A Social, The Laugh Didn't Reach Deep.

I Make My Share Of Mistakes, But One I Never Make Is To Underestimate The Power Of Things. People Imbued From Childhood With The Myth Of The Primacy Of Feeling Seldom Like To Admit They Really Want Things As Much As They Might Want Love, But My Career Has Convinced Me That Plenty Of Them Do. And Some Want Things A Lot Worse Than They Want Love.

Occasionally The Very Youngness Of The Young Moved Him To Charity--they Had No Sense Of The Swiftness Of Life, Nor Of Its Limits. The Years Would Pass Like Weeks, And Loves Would Pass Too, Or Else Grow Sour.

Obviously, Where Art Has It Over Life Is In The Matter Of Editing. Life Can Be Seen To Suffer From A Drastic Lack Of Editing. It Stops Too Quick, Or Else It Goes On Too Long. Worse, Its Pacing Is Erratic. Some Chapters Are Little More Than A Few Sentences In Length, While Others Stretch Into Volumes. Life, For All Its Raw Talent, Has Little Sense Of Structure. It Creates Amazing Textures, But It Can't Be Counted On For Snappy Beginnings Or Good Endings Either. Indeed, In Many Cases No Ending Is Provided At All.