Fabian Perez valerie painting

Fabian Perez valerie paintingFabian Perez monica paintingJohannes Vermeer Girl with a Pearl Earring painting
aminute consent to the sort of thing that "Eblis" hinted at, any more thanany self-respecting girl would have, she'd found herself feeling self-conscious and a little proud whenever she walked past WESCAC's facility in the laboratories of the Cum Laude Project -- as if the computer knew it was she and would have whistled if it could. Then one fateful spring evening she'd stayed late to file some data-papers for Dr. Eierkopf at the laboratory (where she'd worked during a temporary furlough from her Library post), and being the last to leave except for the night security-guards, had crossed the hall from her office to make certain that the door to the -room was locked. . .
"Itwas, just as it should have been," she said. "And I started to go; but then -- maybe I thought I heard something peculiar, a singing-noise or something; maybe not, I don't know. Anyhow I came back to the door, and for some reason or other I unlocked it and went inside. . . just to check, I suppose; or maybe some impulse. . . I was upset about Max's attitude, I remember. . ."
Her narrative grew less coherent here, until she'd got herself inside the co

Titian Sacred and Profane Love [detail] painting

Titian Sacred and Profane Love [detail] paintingTitian Bacchus and Ariadne paintingLorenzo Lotto St Catherine of Alexandria painting
for publication, selected by the press for its obvious promotional tie-ins.
"Same with my Infinite Divisor," he lamented. "The blueprints are drawn, the computations are computed, but Croaker keeps dropping the pieces! What good's a right-hand man that's all thumbs?" And in a sudden access of dejection, as once before in the Observatory, he wondered aloud whether brutes like his roommate, altogether free of reason and discernment, were not after all the truly passèd.
"I'm not sure about that yet," I replied, assuming he'd put the question to me. "But even if Bray's citations for both of you are right -- and like yourself I don't see how they couldboth be -- it doesn't seem to me that either one of you has qualified for Candidacy yet on the grounds he cited."
Dr. Eierkopf was turning a fresh egg sadly in his fingers. "If I told him once about highsol, I told him twenty times." Now he brightened and tittered. "Did you know your friend Anastasia can break these with herlevator ani? I had her do a dozen

Vincent van Gogh Red vineyards painting

Vincent van Gogh Red vineyards paintingVincent van Gogh Mulberry Tree paintingVincent van Gogh Bedroom Arles painting
one might ask the casualest acquaintance, and when I described my encounter with Bray at the Grateway Exit and my perplexing Assignment, his mild comment was that my watch-chain had possibly short-circuited WESCAC's Assignment-Printer, for better or worse. Or possibly not.
"You sound as if you don't care!" I cried. Formerly he might have shrugged, or scolded me; now he said serenely:
"My boy, remember who I am, and why I'm here."
"You didn't do anything!" I said. "You're here because Stoker or somebody is out to get you!"
Max shook his head. Stoker was beyond doubt a flunkèd man, he said, and a flunking influence on everyone about him, myself included; yet his flunkèdness was necessary, for like the legendary Dunce he revealed to those with eyes to see the failings of their own minds and hearts -- an invaluable if fatal lesson.
"You didn't kill Herman Hermann!"
But he nodded,"Ja, I did, George. In the woods that night by Founder's Hill. It was his motorcycle Croaker found."

Guido Reni reni Aurora painting

Guido Reni reni Aurora paintingFrancois Boucher The Toilet of Venus paintingFrancois Boucher Madame de Pompadour painting
When I told him I had not, since Max's false arrest, he volunteered to fill the role himself, declaring that although he could not share my antagonism for Harold Bray, he respected the grounds of my own claim to Grand-Tutorhood, admired me personally, and would be pleased to assist me through the tedious ordeal of registration.
Mrs. Sear, who was lighting a cigarette, remarked, "He wants to blow you, too."
"Really, Hed."
I begged their pardon.
"We all want to, dear," she said, shrugging at one or the other of us. "Novelty's our cup of tea. Isn't it, Kennard?"
Dr. Sear smiled. "You'll give George the wrong impression."
The woman pinched my cheek. "Georgie's no dunce. He knows what was going on when he came in." Her husband, she declared, had long since lost his taste for ordinary coupling, whether conjugal or extra-curricular, and even for such common perversions as sodomy and flagellation. Watching others still amused him, but only when the spectacle was out of the ordinary, as in Stoker's Living Room; she herself, since she'd lost both novelty and youth, could interest him only by masturbating before the fluoroscope.

Lord Frederick Leighton Leighton Winding the Skein painting

John William Waterhouse In the Peristyle painting
John Singer Sargent A Dinner Table at Night painting
Lord Frederick Leighton Leighton Winding the Skein painting
He said more; indeed he may have talked the night through, but further than this I knew nothing until Croaker waked me with a gentle touch. My first thought was that I'd dozed off for half a sentence -- Dr. Eierkopf sat on Croaker's shoulders as before, and resumed the conversation as soon as my eyelids opened -- but I discovered that I was lying on a cot, and a large clock on the wall read four and a half hours after midnight. Croaker set a folding screen before me and served up a breakfast of hard-boiled eggs, pancakes, and sausage; while I dined (I could not of course stomach the sausage any more than Eierkopf could abide the sight of my eating anything at all) my host spoke on from behind the screen:
"Itis extraordinary how many things point to your being the GILES, except the one thing that proves you're not. And it's almost a pity. You're an interesting young man, a pleasant young man -- but that's not the point." What he meant was that although he assumed the Cum Laude Project to be a cause forever lost, it intrigued him to imagine what WESCAC might have produced had it indeed fertilized some lady with the GILES. Moreover, while he felt certain that he knew what Graduation is, and that he was himself a Graduate, there were admittedly moments when he could almost wish it were something else -- something miraculous after all, as the superstitious held it to be.
"What is Commencement?" I asked him through the screen. Croaker fried

Zhang Xiaogang Big Family painting

Zhang Xiaogang Big Family paintingZhang Xiaogang big family 1996 paintingZhang Xiaogang A Big Family painting
TALIPED: What do you think I've got?
Good news, he calls it! Don't you see I'm not
off the Proph-profs hook yet? Look, old man--

AGENORA: He's not so old.

MAILMAN: [TO AGENORA]
You either, kid.

AGENORA: [TO MAILMAN]
You can
put your mail inmybox any time.

TALIPED: For Founder's sake get serious, or I'm
a goner! If they weren't my folks, then why'd
they raise me as their son? Why did they hide
the truth from me?

MAILMAN: The Dean and his old lady
kept their mouths shut 'cause they knew how shady
your adoption was. And they promoted
me so I'd shut up. Before I toted
mail I was a shepherd, see, and once
his guy I used to shep with, couple of months
each season, in the hills near Dean's Ravine --

AGENORA: Hey, that's in Cadmus, isn't it?

COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: It's between
Cadmus and Isthmus campuses, I think.

MAILMAN: Well, anyhow, my buddy gave a wink
at me one day and asked me if I knew

Vincent van Gogh Vase with Daisies and Anemones painting

Vincent van Gogh Vase with Daisies and Anemones paintingVincent van Gogh The Starry Night 2 paintingVincent van Gogh The Church in Auvers painting
She was not, she declared, blaming him -- but her survival, not to say well-being, depended on an end to the tensions between them. She had not permitted him to reply: if when she arrived, after the his presence would signify his readiness to Start Afresh; if not, she would assume that he had found himself finally and for all unwilling, or unable, to respond to her needs -- which he would then be free to regard as excessive if it comforted him to do so -- and they would legalize their separation.
"I walked down the steps of that there house with my head fit to crack," he told me. "And on one step I loved Sally Ann and hated myself, and on the next it was vicey-versy. I tried to thinkI'm okay, and what the heck anyhow - - but it never did sound just right. So I figured I'd better stroll around some to clear my head, and next thing I knew, I was out along the highway, and I thought I saw a cycle go by with some young slicker a-driving it, and Miss Sally Ann in the sidecar!"
I expressed my astonishment, and Max, who had waked again in time to hear the last few episodes of Peter Greene's history, said "Hah," not very sympathetically. But Greene himself seemed more bemused than disturbed by his vision.

Edward Hopper Gas painting

Edward Hopper Gas paintingEdward Hopper Ground Swell paintingEdgar Degas Woman Combing Her Hair painting
Now," Stoker said briskly. "You know whatservice means, George; I've heard you use the word yourself. Well, that's the Spring Sunrise Service going on on the Hill -- you can't see the actual servicing because it's too dark. And when somebody important dies we have a Memorial Service in his honor. life over Death, all that sort of thing. Usually private, you know, between married relatives, but since you're the Grand Tutor. . . Blow the whistle as soon as you're done."
With a clap on the shoulder he took me to the couch, beside which Anastasia stood and would not let Mrs. Sear unbelt her.
"It's notso, George!" she said. "There's no such custom at all, except at these parties. Believe me!"
But the swelling organ bore my doubts away. "You believeme," I said. "Nothing else matters." With my free hand I gave her sash the needed jerk; Mrs. Sear moved quickly to open the robe.
"Look,Ken!" she cried. "Oh, you littledarling! I wishI were

Vincent van Gogh Mulberry Tree painting

Vincent van Gogh Mulberry Tree paintingVincent van Gogh Bedroom Arles paintingVincent van Gogh Almond Branches in Bloom painting
few myself, and was rewarded by the spectacle of winches spinning, crane-buckets dropping, signal-lights flashing, and work-gangs leaping like creosoted fleas.
"This is Graduation!" Stoker shouted happily. "Never mind the question: the Answer'spower!"
Its fine explosive sound made him repeat the word, and me join in. "Power! Power!" I pulled another lever, and the entire catwalk slowly descended towards the next lower balcony; yet another, and the nearest furnace door yawned to afford me my first clear glimpse of the fire inside -- a boundless, flickerless, terrifying white-orange glow, like one compressed and solid flame, the heat of which even at fifty meters had like to have singed my fleece.
"Wrong lever!" Stoker laughed, and having pushed it back and pulled two others he rushed me off the catwalk and onto the lower balcony. Moments later a crane-bucket swinging furnacewards (at my command, it seems) crashed through the catwalk rail and spilled its molten contents directly on the switchboard. Sparks flew, bells rang, men with masks and hoses swarmed to the catwalk, which soon disappeared in a pall of steam.
"Come on, before the whole flunkèd place blows!" Stoker opened

Francois Boucher Madame de Pompadour painting

Francois Boucher Madame de Pompadour paintingFrancois Boucher Adoration of the Shepherds paintingJohannes Vermeer The Concert painting
Stoker, she had willingly assented to the match at the time of its arrangement by her guardian, Ira Hector, and further that she would not dream of deserting one who needed her so absolutely as did her husband -- however violently he himself denied that need.
"I knew it!" Max cried out. "A pact between the meanest mind on campus and the flunkèdest!" Ira Hector, he reminded me, was the wealthy and infamously selfish older brother of the former chancellor of NTC; from humble beginnings as a used-book peddler he had risen to his present position as head of a vast informational empire, controlling the manufacture and distribution of virtually every reference-volume published in the West-Campus college. Ready to line his pockets at anyone's expense, he was despised and catered to by liberals and conservatives alike (though always closer in spirit to the latter); while he preached the virtues of free research, what he practiced was the stifling of competition, the freedom of the clever to oppress the ignorant and stupid. Yet so enormous was his and so ubiquitous his influence, every New Tammany chancellor had to come to terms with him; and Max himself, how vehemently soever he had used to rail in the

John William Waterhouse Miranda - The Tempest painting

John William Waterhouse Miranda - The Tempest paintingJohn William Waterhouse Gather ye rosebuds while ye may paintingJohn William Waterhouse Gather Ye Rosebuds while ye may painting
describe the contradiction between the old Founder's Scroll, which exhorted students to accept their ignorance and repose their trust in the Founder's wisdom, and the dialogues of Scapulas, wherein the tutor Maios declares to his protégés that the end of education is to understand oneself utterly. But he must have observed my inattention, for in the midst of raising the question whether the search for truth remained desirable if the truth was that the seeker is flunkèd forever, he stopped short.
"You're not listening, George."
In truth I was not, and with tingling cheeks confessed as much. After my initial protest against the interpretation of my dream, I remained quite agitated by its several images. Now it was not alarm, distaste, or shame I felt, but a vastennui : a restlessness which though vague seemed rooted somewhere in what I'd dreamt. I was unable to think about self-knowledge or anything else; it seemed to me that the seven years since I'd struck down my friend had been one long class-period, from which now suddenly I craved recess. Then I had known nothing; now my eyes were open to fenceless meadows of information; I

John Singer Sargent The Rialto painting

John Singer Sargent The Rialto paintingJohn Singer Sargent The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit paintingJohn Singer Sargent The Chess Game painting
clandestinely (don't ask me why) to confer with his protégés, and then disappeared for good. The tale was like so many others one has heard, I could almost have predicted certain features -- such as that these same protégés had subsequently dedicated their lives to spreading their Mentor's word and institutionalizing his method as they understood it; that they too were roughly used as they transferred from college to but won proselytes by their zeal wherever they went. Neither was it surprising to learn that this Professor Giles, this "Grand Tutor" as his son called him, never committed his wisdom to the press: what academic department has not its Grand Old Man who packs the lecture-halls term after term but never publishes a word in his field? In fact, the one unusual particular of the whole story as I heard it this first time was the not-very-creditable one that the man had got a child, by a lady married to someone else; otherwise it was the standard painful history of reformers and innovators.
The problem for my visitor, then -- the fruit of this illicit planting -- was the common one faced by second-generation followers of any pioneer: to formulate the Master's

Gustav Klimt The Beethoven Frieze painting

Gustav Klimt The Beethoven Frieze paintingGustav Klimt Schloss Kammer Am Attersee II painting
Christ, I am tired. I dreamt it was last night," Culver said. He got to his feet. A truck moved through the clearing in a cloud of dust. There seemed to be new activity in the command post, and new confusion. Culver and O'Leary turned together then toward the operations tent; the Colonel had come out and was striding toward them, followed by Mannix.
"Culver, get your jeep and driver," he said, walking toward the road, not looking up. His voice was briskly matter-of-fact; he strode past them with short, choppy steps and the swagger stick in his hand made a quick tattoo, s/ap-s/ap-slapping against his dungaree pants. "I want you and Captain Mannix to go with me down to Third Batt. See if we can help." His voice faded; Mannix trailed behind him, saying nothing, but his face seemed to Culver even more exhausted, and even more grimly taut, than it had been an hour before.
The road was a dusty cart-

George Frederick Watts Charity painting

George Frederick Watts Charity paintingFrancisco de Goya Clothed Maja painting
questions to which he had addressed himself. The Major was absorbed; he looked up at Templeton with an intent baby-blue gaze and parted mouth, upon which, against a pink cleft of the lower lip, there glittered a bead of saliva. "Reluctantly," the Colonel went on slowly, "reluctantly, I came to this conclusion: the Battalion's been doping off." He paused again. "Doping off. Especially," he said, turning briefly toward Mannix with a thin smile, "a certain component unit known as Headquarters and Service Company." He leaned back on the camp stool and slowly caressed the pewter-colored surface of his hair. "I decided a little walk might be in order for tomorrow night, after we secure the problem. Instead of going back to the base on the trucks. What do you think, Billy?"
"I think that's an excellent idea, sir. An excellent idea. In fact I've been meaning to suggest something like that to the Colonel for quite some time. As a means of inculcating a sort of group esprit."
"It's what they need, Billy."

Alphonse Maria Mucha JOB painting

Alphonse Maria Mucha JOB paintingAlphonse Maria Mucha Gismonda painting
only road Jack knew. An ancient magazine photograph of some dark-haired movie star was taped to the wall beside the bed, the skin tone gone magenta. He could hear Jack’s mother downstairs running water, filling the kettle and setting it back on the stove, asking the old man a muffled question.
The closet was a shallow cavity with a wooden rod braced across, a faded cretonne curtain on a string closing it off from the rest of the room. In the closet hung two pairs of jeans crease-ironed and folded neatly over wire hangers, on the floor a pair of worn packer boots he thought he remembered. At the north end of the closet a tiny jog in the wall made a slight hiding place and here, stiff with long suspension from a nail, hung a shirt. He lifted it off the nail. Jack’s old shirt from Brokeback days. The dried blood on the sleeve was his own blood, a gushing nosebleed on the last afternoon on the mountain when Jack, in their contortionistic grappling and wrestling, had slammed Ennis’s nose hard with his knee. He had staunched the blood which was everywhere, all over both of them, with his shirtsleeve, but the staunching hadn’t held because Ennis had suddenly swung from the deck and laid the ministering angel out in the wild columbine, wings folded.

Frederic Edwin Church Cotopaxi painting

Frederic Edwin Church Cotopaxi paintingFrederic Edwin Church Twilight in the Wilderness paintingFrederic Edwin Church Landscape with Waterfall painting
You--you--you did it on purpose," spluttered Piglet, as soon as he could speak again . . . and then accidentally had another mouthful of lathery flannel. "That's right, dear, don't say anything," said Kanga, and in another minute Piglet was out of the bath, and being rubbed dry with a towel. "Now," said Kanga, "there's your Medicine, and then bed." "W-w-what Medicine?" said Piglet. "You can't be Roo," he said, "because I've just seen Roo playing in Rabbit's house." "Well!" said Kanga. "Fancy that! Fancy my making a mistake like that." "There you are!" said Piglet. "I told you so. I'm Piglet." Christopher Robin shook his head again. "Oh, you're not Piglet," he said. "I know Piglet well, and he's quite a different colour." To make you grow big and strong, dear. You don't want to grow up small and weak like Piglet, do you? Well, then!" At that moment there was a knock at the door. "Come in," said Kanga, and in came Christopher Robin. "Christopher Robin, Christopher Robin!" cried Piglet. "Tell Kanga who I am! She keeps saying I'm Roo. I'm not Roo, am I?" Christopher Robin looked at him very carefully, and shook his head.

Vincent van Gogh The Olive Trees painting

Vincent van Gogh The Olive Trees paintingVincent van Gogh Still Life with Open Bible paintingVincent van Gogh Still Life with Iris painting
"She can restore him," Schmendrick said softly. "A unicorn's horn is proof against death itself." Alolly looked closely at him, as she had not done for a long time, and she saw that he had come at last to his power and his beginning. She could not say how she knew, for no wild glory burned about him, and no recognizable omens occurred in his honor, just at that moment. He was Schmendrick the Magician, as ever—and yet somehow it was for the first time.
It was long that the unicorn stood by Prince Li'r before
NCE THE SEA had taken back their diamond-shaped footprints, there was no sign that they had ever been there, any more than King Haggard's castle had been. The only difference was that Molly Grue remembered unicorns very well.like sunlight, and she turned and put her arms around the unicorn's neck.
"Oh, you stayed!" she whispered, "you stayed!" She was about to be very foolish then, and ask, "Will you stay?" but the unicorn slipped gently from her and moved to where Prince Li'r lay with his dark blue eyes already losing their color. She stood over him, as he had guarded the Lady Amal-thea.
"It's good that she went without saying good-by," she said to herself. "I would have been stupid. I'm going to be stupid in a minute, anyway, but it really is better like this." Then a warmth moved over her cheek and into her hair

Guido Reni Girl with a Rose painting

Guido Reni Girl with a Rose paintingGuido Reni Angel of the Annunciation paintingFrancois Boucher Venus Consoling Love painting
back her small, lean ears. But she could make no sound, and her horn did not grow bright again. She cowered when the Red Bull's bellow made the sky ripple and crack, and yet she did not back away.
"Please," Molly Grue said. "Please do something."
Schmendrick turned on her, and his face was wild with helplessness. "What can I do? What can I do, with my magic? Hat tricks, penny tricks, or the one where I scramble stones to make an omelet? Would that entertain the Red Bull,
do you think, or shall I try the trick with the singing oranges? I'll try whatever you suggest, for I would certainly be happy to be of some practical use."
Molly did not answer him. The Bull came on, and the unicorn crouched lower and lower, until she seemed about to snap in two. Schmendrick said, "I know what to do. If I could, I'd change her into some other creature, some beast too humble for the Bull to be concerned with. But only a great magician, a wizard like Nikos, who was my teacher, would have that kind of power. To transform a unicorn— anyone who could do that could juggle the seasons and shuffle years like

Rene Magritte The Sea of Flames painting

Rene Magritte The Sea of Flames paintingRene Magritte The Ignorant Fairy paintingRene Magritte The Human Condition painting
but she batted him one anyway. She was one woman who knew what to do with a slight moral edge.
The unicorn and the magician walked through the spring, over soft Cat Mountain and down into a violet valley where apple trees grew. Beyond the valley were low hills, as fat and docile as sheep, lowering their heads to sniff at the unicorn in wonder as she moved among them. After these came the slower heights of summer, and the baked plains where the air hung shiny as candy. Together she and Schmendrick forded rivers, scrambled up and down brambly banks and bluffs, and wandered in , though they could never resemble it, having known time. So has my forest, now, she thought, but she told herself that it did not matter, that all would be as before when she returned.
At night, while Schmendrick slept the sleep of a hungry, footsore magician, the unicorn crouched awake waiting to see the vast form of the Red Bull come charging out of the moon. At times she caught what she was sure was his smell—a dark, sly reek easing through the night, reaching out to find her. Then she would spring to her feet with a cold cry of readiness, only to find two

Thomas Kinkade Morro Bay at Sunset painting

Thomas Kinkade Morro Bay at Sunset paintingThomas Kinkade Lakeside Manor paintingThomas Kinkade Hometown Christmas painting
would yatter on about it, and news anchors would pontificate about it, and the Pope would do some pontificating too, and so would all the other holy men, and meanwhile the very rich would be cornering not only the market but the supplies. And then the very rich would be even more different from you and me.
I was curious why none of this had happened. The Yendi-ans were apparently so uninterested in their chance to be immortal that there was scarcely anything about it in the library.
But I could see, as the boat drew close to the town, that the travel agent had been a bit disingenuous. There had been hotels here—a couple of big ones, four stories. They were all visibly derelict, signs askew, windows boarded or blank.
The boatman, a shy young man, rather nice-looking as well as I could tell through his gauze envelope, said, "Hunters' lodge, ma'am?" into my translatomat

Francois Boucher The Rest on the Flight into Egypt painting

Francois Boucher The Rest on the Flight into Egypt paintingFrancois Boucher Portrait of Marquise de Pompadour paintingFrancois Boucher Diana Resting after her Bath painting
realised my wing muscles were getting tired and I'd better come down. That was hard. I mean, landing was hard because I didn't know how to land. I came down like a sack of rocks, bam! Nearly sprained my ankle, and the soles of my feet stung like fire. If anybody saw it they must have laughed. But I didn't care. It was just hard to be on the ground. I hated being down. , dragging my wings that weren't any good here, feeling weak, feeling heavy.
It took me , and Mama came in just a little after me. She looked at me and said, "You've been out," and I said, "I flew, Mama," and she burst into tears.
I wfts sorry for her but there wasn't much I could say.
She didn't even ask me if I was going to go on flying. She knew I would. I don't understand the people who have wings and don't use them. I suppose

Vincent van Gogh Wheat Field with Cypresses painting

Vincent van Gogh Wheat Field with Cypresses paintingIvan Constantinovich Aivazovsky The Ninth Wave paintingFrank Dicksee Portrait of Elsa painting
transportation to the plane is "absolutely free," and suggest brightly that you'll want to bring a "valid credit card." Cousin Sulie tells me that "it isn't half as bad as that place with the funny name in Florida that Sally Ann insisted on us going to. Honey, those people, they'll skin you."
On New Year's Island just before midnight (which I believe occurs every twelve hours, possibly every six) everybody who can still stand up flocks out to the great courtyard, where a three-story-tall TV screen shows the ball falling down in Times Square. Everybody holds hands and champagne glasses with the usual difficulty and sings "Auld Lang Syne." There are fireworks and more champagne, and the party goes on. And on, and on. I wonder how they clean the party rooms. Maybe they have duplicate rooms, one in use and one being cleaned. Maybe nobody notices. I wonder how they get drunks back to their airport of origin on time, and if they don't, do they get sued? Not that it's any use suing a corporation. I wonder what they give people to smoke at the Hippie Love-In Party and to use at the Punk

Thomas Kinkade Boston Celebration painting

Thomas Kinkade Boston Celebration paintingCamille Pissarro Still Life paintingCamille Pissarro Morning Sunlight on the Snow painting
dry, and hot all summer and fall. In spring, during the mild, steady rains, big awnings are stretched from one library arcade to the next, so that you can still sit outdoors, hearing the soft drumming on the canvas overhead, looking up from your reading to see the trees and the pale sky beyond the awning. Or you can settle down under the stone arches that surround a quiet, grey courtyard and see rain patter in the lily-dotted central pool. In winter it's often foggy, not a cold fog but a mist through which and in which the sunlight is always warmly palpable, like the color in a milk opal. The fog softens the sloping lawns and the high, dark trees, bringing them close, into a quiet, mysterious intimacy. So when I'm in Mahigul I go there, and greet the patient, knowledgeable librarians, and browse around in the findery until I find an interesting bit of fiction or history. History, usually, because the history of Mahigul outdoes the fiction of many other places. It is a sad and violent history, but in so sweet and lenient a place as the Reading it seems both possible and wise to open one's heart to

Eduard Manet paintings

Eduard Manet paintings
Edwin Austin Abbey paintings
Edward Hopper paintings
but spread out onto hundreds of different tracks, some taken by many, others by only a few, some clearly marked, others so cryptic that only people who have been on them before could ever trace the turnings. "That's when it's good to have a three-year-old along," Kergemmeg said. "Somebody who's been up the way twice." They travel very light and very fast. They live off the land except in the arid heights of the mountains, where, as he said, "They lighten their packs." And up in those passes and high canyons, the hard-driven rubac of the traders' caravans begin to stumble and tremble, perishing of exhaustion and cold. If a trader still tries to drive them on, people on the road unload them and loose them and let their own pack beast go with them. The little animals limp and scramble southward, back down to the desert. The goods they carried end up strewn along the wayside for anyone to take; but nobody takes anything, except a little food at need. They don't want stuff to carry, to slow them down. Spring is coming, cool spring, sweet spring, to the valleys of grass and the forests, the lakes, the bright rivers of the north, and they want to be there when it comes.

Philip Craig Boboli Gardens - Florence painting

Philip Craig Boboli Gardens - Florence paintingWassily Kandinsky Dominant Curve paintingWassily Kandinsky Several Circles painting
provided it was delivered, whether the postman was quiet and normal, or had an epileptic fit at the moment of delivery, so it would not matter what the woman, or the man either, did or did not do, provided the ovum and sperm-cell were safely gotten together. Their motives and emotional states, according to this theory, do not count. Which would explain how a woman could be impregnated by the semen from a syringe; or bear a normal child even if raped; or if in a drug-sleep.
Again it must not be forgotten that conception, scientifically speaking, is the penetration of the ovum by the sperm cell and their coalescing. This rarely, if ever, occurs at the moment when the carriers are having their orgasm, but sometime after, often hours or even days after, at the moment when the sperm cell reaches the waiting egg. How can the previous orgasm have any effect then to devitalize him?
The idea that a child begotten where the mother has an orgasm would be more passionate or robust than where the mother has none

Albert Bierstadt The Last of the Buffalo painting

Albert Bierstadt The Last of the Buffalo paintingAlbert Bierstadt Lake Mary California paintingAlbert Bierstadt Beach at Nassau painting
be of little value or satisfaction. It appears to be perfect or poor, just about in proportion to the greater or less amount of heart-love involved. At least it imperatively demands kindness, tenderness, chivalry on the man's part, a pleased acceptance and relaxation on the woman's; and the more refinement, poetry of feeling and mutual romance the better - any amount can be utilized. The gross, reckless and lustful may as well let it alone - it is not for them.
As a nerve sedative its effect is remarkable. I have known it to instantly cure a violent, even agonizing nervous headache, a restful nap following upon the cessation of pain. Under a strong, gentle magnetic man, a nervous woman often falls into a baby-like sleep, in the very midst of the embrace, and this is felt to be a peculiar luxury and coveted experience. Many women call Karezza "The Peace"; others call it "Heaven." This alone is a testimony worth volumes.
S. G. Lewis, of Grass Valley, California, in his Hints and Keys to Conjugal Felicity, is especially rich in testimony to the spiritual and romantic value of Karezza, but his fine little work is long out of print.
Now I do not apprehend, from all I have

Juarez Machado Art Deco Evening painting

Juarez Machado Art Deco Evening paintingPhilip Craig Boboli Gardens - Florence paintingWassily Kandinsky Dominant Curve painting
Scrimgeour hesitated, then said, in what was evidently
supposed to be a tone of delicacy, The Ministry can offer you all sorts of protection, you know, Harry. I would be delighted to place a couple of my Aurors at your service -'
Harry laughed.
'Voldemort wants to kill me himself and Aurors won't stop him. So thanks for the offer, but no thanks.'
'So,' said Scrimgeour, his voice cold now, 'the request 1 made of you at Christmas -'
'What request? Oh yeah ... the one where I tell the world what a great job you're doing in exchange for —'
'- for raising everyone's morale!' snapped Scrimgeour.
Harry considered him for a moment.
'Released Stan Shunpike yet?'
Scrimgeour turned a nasty purple colour highly remin-iscent of Uncle Vernon.
'1 see you are -'
'Dumbledore's man through and through,' said Harry. 'That's right

Thomas Kinkade New York 5th Avenue painting

Thomas Kinkade New York 5th Avenue paintingThomas Kinkade Mountains Declare his Glory paintingThomas Kinkade HOMETOWN MEMORIES painting
Yeah, but still, if you can avoid it . . ." said Harry, who had ex-perienced enough pain not to be keen for more.
"Sometimes, however, it is unavoidable," said Dumbledore, shaking back the sleeve of his robes and exposing the forearm of his injured hand.
"Professor!" protested Harry, hurrying forward as Dumbledore raised his knife. "I'll do it, I'm —" He did not know what he was going to say — younger, fitter?
But Dumbledore merely smiled. There was a flash of silver, and a spurt of scarlet; the rock face was peppered with dark, glistening drops.
"You are very kind, Harry," said Dumbledore, now passing the tip of his wand over the deep cut he had made in his own arm, so that it healed instantly, just as Snape had healed Malfoy's

Filippino Lippi Madonna with Child and Saints painting

Filippino Lippi Madonna with Child and Saints paintingLouis Aston Knight A Bend in the River painting
Ginny did not seem at all upset about the breakup with Dean; on the contrary, she was the life and soul of the team. Her imitations of Ron anxiously bobbing up and down in front of the goal posts as the Quaffle sped toward him, or of Harry bellowing orders at McLaggen before being knocked out cold, kept them all highly amused. Harry, laughing with the others, was glad to have an innocent reason to look at Ginny; he had received several more Bludger injuries during practice because he had not been keeping his eyes on the Snitch.
The battle still raged inside his head: Ginny or Ron? Sometimes he thought that the post-Lavender Ron might not mind too much if he asked Ginny out, but then he remembered Ron's expression when he had seen her kissing Dean, and was sure that Ron would consider it base treachery if Harry so much as held her hand. . . .

John Singer Sargent House and Garden painting

John Singer Sargent House and Garden paintingJohn Singer Sargent Girl Fishing painting
Voldemort's expression remained impassive as he said, "Greatness inspires envy, envy engenders spite, spite spawns lies. You must know this, Dumbledore."
"You call it 'greatness,' what you have been doing, do you?" asked Dumbledore delicately.
"Certainly," said Voldemort, and his eyes seemed to burn red. "I have experimented; I have pushed the boundaries of magic further, perhaps, than they have ever been pushed —"
"Of some kinds of magic," Dumbledore corrected him quietly. "Of some. Of others, you remain . . . forgive me . . . woefully ignorant."
For the first time, Voldemort smiled. It was a taut leer, an evil thing, more threatening than a look of rage.
"The old argument," he said softly. "But nothing I have seen in the world has supported your

Edgar Degas After the Bath painting

Edgar Degas After the Bath paintingFrida Kahlo What the Water Gave Me painting
and then I got the bezoar down his throat and his breathing eased up a bit, Slughorn ran for help, McGonagall and Madam Pomfrey turned up, and they brought Ron up here. They reckon he'll be all right. Madam Pomfrey says he'll have to stay here a week or so ... keep taking essence of rue . . ."
"Blimey, it was lucky you thought of a bezoar," said George in a low voice.
"Lucky there was one in the room," said Harry, who kept turning cold at the thought of what would have happened if he had not been able to lay hands on the little stone.
Hermione gave an almost inaudible sniff. She had been exceptionally quiet all day. Having hurtled, white-faced, up to Harry outside the hospital wing and demanded to know what had happened., she had taken almost no part in Harry and Ginny's obsessive discussion about how Ron had been poisoned, but merely stood beside them, clench-jawed and frightened-looking, until ai last they had been allowed in to see him.

Frederic Edwin Church Landscape with Waterfall painting

Frederic Edwin Church Landscape with Waterfall paintingWilliam Merritt Chase View from Central Park painting
ensuring that he is near enough to strike. He plans it all. And this is the man Voldemort is using to marshal the werewolves. I cannot pretend that my particular brand of reasoned argument is making much headway against Greyback's insistence that we werewolves deserve blood, that we ought to revenge ourselves on normal people." "But you are normal!" said Harry fiercely. "You've just got a — a
problem —"
Lupin burst out laughing. "Sometimes you remind me a lot of James. He called it my 'furry little problem in company. Many people were under the impression that I owned a badly behaved
rabbit."
He accepted a glass of eggnog from Mr. Weasley with a word of thanks, looking slightly more cheerful, Harry, meanwhile, felt a rush of excitement: This last mention of his father had reminded him that there was something he had been looking forward to ask-ing Lupin.

Thomas Kinkade Autumn Lane painting

Thomas Kinkade Autumn Lane paintingThomas Kinkade A Perfect Red Rose paintingThomas Kinkade A New Day Dawning painting
Neither of them mentioned Ginny or Hermione again; indeed, they barely spoke to each other that evening and got into bed in si-lence, each absorbed in his own thoughts,
Harry lay awake for a long time, looking up at the canopy of his four-poster and trying to convince himself that his feelings for Ginny were entirely elder-brotherly. They had lived, had they not, like brother and sister all summer, playing Quidditch, teasing Ron, and having a laugh about Bill and Phlegm? He had known Ginny for years now. ... It was natural that he should feel protective . . . natural that he should want to look out for her . . . want to rip Dean limb from limb for kissing her... No ... he would have to control that particular brotherly feeling. . . .
Ron gave a great grunting snore.
She's Ron's sister, Harry told himself firmly. Ron's sister. She's out-of-bounds. He would not risk his friendship with Ron for anything. He punched his pillow into a more comfortable shape and waited for sleep to come, trying his utmost not to allow his thoughts to stray anywhere near Ginny.