It’s winter, and, to be frank, it’s cold out and it’s dark out and I don’t really want to be there. I’m staying in at night, most nights, and I’m watching movies. It has turned out to be a peculiar string for the weeks leading up to Christmas, including, as it does, Bergman’s Persona; Ozu’s Late Spring; Malick’s Badlands; Chaplin’s The Great Dictator; Boleslawski’s Theodora Goes Wild; and Ford’s My Darling Clementine. Most of them I had never seen before. Only one was a disappointment (the Chaplin); I think it was already overfamiliar before I ever saw it. Perhaps it isn’t especially light fare (it is a dark season, after all), but I haven’t found these films to be particularly bleak, boring, confusing, austere, or obtuse. They just require a little bit of patience, just a little bit, and that patience is almost immediately rewarded.

It is my second-grade class picture. In it are twenty-seven children and one adult; sixteen boys, eleven girls, one woman. Eleven of the boys wear ties for the picture, and ten wear smiles. Three girls are in Brownie uniforms and the rest wear dresses. Only one smiles so that her teeth show but the rest wear half-smiles that the boys do not affect. One girl, in a uniform, is frozen in mid-giggle, eyes averted, head turned, shoulders raised. One boy has his eyes shut or is looking down. The teacher is dressed in a tweedy suit and wears her hair up; I think she must have had red hair but the photo is in black-and-white. Five boys are seated, legs crossed, on the floor in front of the class, Behind them are eight girls, seated. These girls all have their hands folded neatly in their laps. In the next row are three girls, and then four boys. The giggler is standing next to a boy; maybe that’s why she was giggling. Finally, there are seven boys, who must have stood on chairs. The teacher is taller than all but one of the boys, the one in the middle.I am in the middle of the front row, and you can see the sole of my left shoe.

Some would have us believe that the course of civilization is inevitable, that the progress of mankind is uniform, pre-ordained, and irreversible; that some utopian telos draws all nations inevitably toward fruition. And yet there are Great Men, whose individual integrity, imagination, vision and striving alter the course of human aspiration. Their names spring to mind without bidding: Paracelsus, Robert Fludd, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Sir Henry Rawlinson, and, of course, Mr. Asa T. Soule of Rochester. Recollect, if you dare, the conditions under which so many suffered only a few short years ago, before Mr. Soule compassionately introduced to the world his medical miracle, the Invalid’s Friend and Hope, the universal panacea, Hop Bitters. Only those few years ago, sufferers of blight, malaise, liver spots, habitual drunkenness, mysteria, corns, rubellia, gangrene, gout and insomnia, were doomed to decades of hopeless suffering and eventual painful death. Those days are but a tremor-inducing nightmare, thanks to Mr. Soule! Pneumonia? Condominiums? Hellenophilia? No condition is too abstruse, no diagnosis too dire, no symptom too vague: there is a cure for what ails you; and it is the Invalid’s Friend and Hope, Hop Bitters.

It is colder these days. Ceaselessly, relentlessly cold. Sun weak as water. And so little of it! I wear gloves under mittens. Clapping my hands hollowly. Ears turn pink on top. I wear a hat always. A thick wooly hat. How I miss the warmth! It seemed to make me happy. I am not happy now. I am only cold. It is colder these days.

Remember how we used to go downtown and look in the windows, at the Christmas displays, they were so clever, and you would laugh and clap your hands; the lights shined so cozily in the windows of the little houses, Santa and the elves, smiling, rosy-cheeked, waved mechanically out the window, and a sleigh would coast, over and over, down a slope of fluffy white fabric. They’ve been building town houses there the last few years, I don’t know if they sell many of them. I remember Eleanor worked as a clerk in there, we’d have lunch at the little cafe on the third floor. And of course the tree in the square would be all lit up, I’d bundle you up and off we’d go, Santa came on a fire truck on one of those Saturday afternoons. They had some lovely coats on sale one year, remember I bought that one with the fur collar, I really loved that coat. They come around every fall, that charity, and pick up bags of clothing right off the front porch. I put it out for them a few years ago, and that plaid ensemble, it went out of fashion so fast, I don’t think I ever wore it, not more than twice. I don’t get as many chances to dress up as I used to, I only really need two or three outfits. The carolers on the green, remember? You in your mittens and wool cap, and you were so insistent about the red ones! I just loved those windows, it made you feel so warm inside, just like a real small town Christmas.

I wasn’t sure whether to go. But we were told that we should go get you, so I followed, lagging a little behind, so when you came around the corner I had to step back. You had that stormy look I was a little apprehensive about, and you were moving pretty fast as you went past me, and I heard you say my name. You fixed the problem and went back to your office. It seems like I spend a lot of time watching you recede, and that’s what I did then. As you were going you turned your head, just enough so that you might have been watching me, watching you. I think you were.

St.-Ethelred-In-The-Wells is without a doubt the penultimate example of “the village that time forgot.” One enters, most alluringly, on a charming country road (Pitstin Rd.) which winds its way betwixt the twin tors of Mulgothwin and Brno from the neighboring hamlet of Millrace, 2 m. (18.4 k.) to the south. The road is framed by graveyards and cesspools, turning nauseatingly to reveal the magnificent vista known as St. Ethelred’s Nose, only partially obscured these days by the salvage yards. Don’t miss our festive “Doge Days”, held in alternate Augusts and Novembers (see brochure 27a), when local pinheads grin toothlessly and bestrew the Old Gut Pike with vomit and nasturtiums. Spend an hour at our “local”, the “Pith and Vinegar”, and sample our fruitsome batch-brewed lager, such as it is. Your host is local raconteur and sandbagger “Bing” Crosby (no relation). Afterwards, feel free to sleep it off downstairs in our converted coalbin. Don’t count your change as we bid you a fond farewell: come again soon!

Sweet angel baby, what do you see?
Dreams sent from heaven: one, two, three.

Sweet angel baby, what do you hear?
Kisses in a lullaby, in your ear.

Sweet angel baby, what do you smell?
Popcorn and bubblegum – I can tell.

Sweet angel baby, what do you taste?
Chocolate rainbows, sugar-laced.

Sweet angel baby, what do you feel?
Love like a blanket, warm and real.

Sweet angel baby, what do you think?
Time to go to sleep yet? What do YOU think?

My ears were filled with a horrible buzzing, and then I remember nothing else. When I came to, I was stretched out in a dimly lit, hexagonal chamber, which smelled faintly of wax. I nearly screamed when I saw that I was being observed by two horrific creatures, their faces dominated by huge, bulbous, compound eyes, feathery antennae, and grotesque mandibles. Then I thought to myself, what the hell ­– and I screamed anyway. The bees consulted over this (for that is what they were, reader, man-sized bees in three-piece suits) and one edged forward to address me. I was reassured to notice that he (she) spoke English, though I admit I detected traces of a lower-class accent. I was told that no harm would come to me, that I was being taken to their bee-planet, Ronzoni, where I would be privileged to undergo numerous experiments and then be brought back to Earth, memory wiped, with only the occasional sweatmare as evidence of my ordeal. I said, Right ho, good deal, and if, reader, that was all that happened, I would consider myself well off, especially considering what has become of the rest of humanity, poor devils. But little did I realize that my innocuous adventure was destined to go comically awry.

He set his foot on the deck, which seemed firm enough until he looked out to sea and saw the horizon shifting slightly before him. At sea, for a voyage of two or three years, he thought, and all the certainties (as well as the uncertainties) of his life on the land left behind. He was prepared: his sea-rig came on board with him, he was on the vessel at the appointed hour, with a few hours to go before she set the city behind her and ran before the wind until it all vanished except the sea and sky.

For all the preparation, for all the calmness of the prospect, and the regularity of the temperature and the wind and the faithfulness of the sun and the tide, he found himself disquieted within. The sea was very great and he was very small. The future stretched in front of him as blank and empty as those limitless waters. Those days and weeks and years would be filled, but he could not imagine what would fill them; he could expect only that their contents would be unlike anything which had come before.