I subtract myself from them and find life going on as usual—the land I love deteriorating, the world I adore growing ever more miserable.

I throw the papers and magazines on my coffee table and go to work.

7

Once, I laughed.

Not at the slapstick landslide of dirty dishes on the dowagers.

Not at the weird vanishing of Mrs. Doffin.

But at the matter of a baked apple.

O England—culture uncultivated!

Brave boors.