JACK CADY

OUR GROUND AND EVERY FRAGRANT TREE IS SHADED

ON MOST DAYS WE THOUGHT of him as reliable, if we troubled to think of him at
all as we walked the streets of this small coastal town. Our northwest harbor
lies mostly wrapped with rain. Wind swirls the hallmark-mist of Pacific beaches
lying north of California. The reliable James would appear walking toward you
from the mist, like a specter risen from distant waves and on its course toward
the haunting of a maritime museum, or a moored ship, or to blow wraith-like
above rain-filled and empty streets. There seemed always something moist about
him. He gave the impression of being soaked, as though a sheen of water silvered
the sidewalks on which he strode. He would only, in fact, be on his way to work
at a general store where the main preoccupations dealt with groceries.

And groceries being what they are, and James being who he was-- which is to say,
reserved and distant --we townspeople could scarcely have realized how that
moist man might herald eternal sorrow. We do not exactly blame the reliable
James for our troubles; and we will certainly not blame ourselves, but blame
looks for somewhere to alight. We can say that trouble centers around the store,
and the center of that store expresses the 19th century. The store rises
Victorian and fanciful and filled with whispering shadows.

Today the place seems only a fey notion from long ago, but in 1870 its customers
delighted in cathedral stained-glass windows through which occasional northwest
sun painted sacks of feed with roseate glow, or bluely and greenly illuminated
racks of corn brooms, new harness, axes, flour barrels; the hodge-podge of items
either useful or ornamental on which Victorian lives depended.

And, if there is a curse on this town -- and if we are doomed in some peculiar
way-- (because we recognize that to be human is to be doomed, but not
necessarily in ways peculiar) doom began when Able Andrewes came to these parts
in the late 1860s. Guns of the Civil War stood stilled. Frontier spread before
settlers. Tall ships swam in our harbor surrounded by a babel of languages:
Italian, Chinese, Japanese, English, German, Norwegian, Swedish and French.
Andrewes traced his ancestry to English gentry; thus acted as a very proper type
of gentlemanly adventurer-- a bearer of the white man's burden -- and he existed
comfortably among Oriental faces, Mediterranean faces, Blacks, Indians,
Hawaiians, and Samoans.

His Trading Post, as he chose to style it, became the largest building north of
San Francisco. It rose four stories, with peaked Victorian roof and fanciful
gables. Although structurally a warehouse, ten cathedral windows offered the
impression of a church. The trading post stood more certainly, and certainly
more handsomely, than any of the town's several churches.

The main floor displayed foodstuffs in kegs, barrels, loaves, bundles, and
boxes. Spices and teas perfumed the store, while gas lamps provided light.
Stained glass windows portrayed frontier trades: Indians bartering skins of sea
otter, Chinese working lime, and, in this town, master builders erecting
Victorian mansions.

In the basement rested what was then a modern miracle, a pulley-operated
elevator capable of lifting a ton. The elevator carried new wood-burning
cookstoves, pumps, bollards, ship fittings, bull tongue plows, wrought iron
railings to surround widows' walks; heavy merchandise: ships' anchors to
carriage axles. Andrewes made claim that his Trading Post carried at least one
of every item manufactured.

The second floor displayed hardware, rifles, steel traps for gathering pelts.
The third carried furniture: Victorian love seats, armoires, beds with richly
carved roses, dressers, commodes, pier mirrors, hatstands in walnut and oak. On
the fourth floor Andrewes established living quarters.

There are still folk in this town who remember Andrewes as an old, old man
greeting dawn above the eastern range of mountains. By then, any consequences of
Andrewes' actions lived among us. None of us can say that he engaged in criminal
acts, but all of us know that he lived comfortably among those who did. He
financed ships that carried bond slaves as well as goods. He discounted large
orders of merchandise to men who dealt in marginally legal business, or in
business that was neither moral or legal. People who remember Andrewes picture
him standing on his fourth floor balcony, and he is clothed in proper Victorian
attire. His hands reach toward the mountains, beckoning in the dawn, or, as some
grumblers complain, calling for rooming light to dispel his self-inflicted
darkness.

By then and honorably, he was long married, siring sons Edward and Charles. And,
by then, he was more wraith than man. The fine English figure became diminutive
over years. Late one night he visited his sons in their rooms, spoke to his sons
kindly, then departed. His physician suggested that Andrewes wafted away on
winds because he weighed less than his clothes. Andrewes disappeared in 1935.

His sons, Edward and Charles, continued to mind the store and these two would,
through the years, come to depend on their reliable employee James.

This is a Victorian tale, Gentle Reader, and I am thus allowed to take you by
the arm as we stroll past echoes of horror. Although I tell the tale as if "we,"
the people of the town are speaking, it's obvious a single person pens these
words. I introduce myself as Baruch, a modem scribbler of records. During those
times when I do not scribble, I make my living selling old books from a
storefront on Ocean Street. Local opinion holds me as surly, aging, irascible,
crusty -- in short, a curmudgeon -- and I foster the illusion.

But, Gentle Reader, since we are unlikely ever to meet, I need not be
curmudgeonly with you. In fact, I beg your indulgence.

For a long time no one knew or cared where James spent his sleeping hours. If
asked, we might suspicion that he never left the store. After all, did he not
always range from cellar to fourth floor of that mammoth enterprise? Did he not
continually move, nearly ghost-like, between bundles of fresh asparagus and cans
of pie mix? The man and the store intermingled. Only recently did we townspeople
begin to fear. Inquiry brought discovery. James walks as a symbol of fear more
dreadful than any of us have, heretofore, owned the courage to imagine.

James, we now understand, steps nightly from his round of groceries, walks the
short distance to the harbor; is then swallowed by the tides, only to be spit
ashore half an hour before the store opens. James sleeps, or walks, or
God-knows-what beneath those waves. He in no manner resembles the living dead,
is not a zombie. Such creatures walk the realms of the fantastic. About that
reliable employee James, there is nothing fantastic.

We turn now, you and I, to a burden weighing heavy in this tale. That burden is
the entire Victorian period, and Victorian dreams that toil and churn and thrust
from the past; the calamities and the curse.

They saw themselves, those olden Englishmen, as bearers of the lamp of progress.
They, like Able Andrewes, set forth as missionaries to dark races, bringing
Bibles and rifles and machines. They acted, sometimes unwisely, and did not
understand the effects of their actions. Nations fell before them. In their
grandest hours they bowed to the highest forms of duty, for "duty" intertwined
them like strands of rope. The proper Victorian feared failure to his duty more
than he feared dying.

They also spoke of purity, were sternly fascinated with sex, and romantically
fascinated with death. They dreamed of progress as they fashioned the Industrial
Revolution. It takes no scribbler of antiquities to note Victorian styles still
alive within us. Are we not bound by duty, ofttimes obscene? Do we not bore the
world with eternal tut-tuts and quacks concerning sex? Have we not turned
technology into a hotly forged divinity? Are not most places close to them in
spirit? Do we not now pilfer souls, whereas Victorians boldly stole them? Which
brings us back to the reliable James.

Once the facts became known, our mayor, who administers the town after business
hours, visited the store and asked James, "Whatever in the bird-brained world
was he doing?"; which in this small town is the best we can manage in the way of
diplomacy. James replied, but not distantly, that he "paid attention to his own
business." He added that he was "minding the store."

The store has changed little during the 20th century, and to the store I went on
behest of the mayor, for I am the town historian. James stood beneath soft light
through stained glass. Fresh cabbages lay boxed at his feet. He made check marks
on a packing list. His employers worked elsewhere: Edward handling receipts and
deposits, Charles, who in his age is still sprightly, attending the cash
register. Fatigue lined James's face, but his erect posture denied tiredness
that drove bone deep. Groceries encircled him. In the cellar, beneath our feet,
ranged drill presses and parts for modern tractors. Above us the store held
sofas and china; screws, turnbuckles, manila rope and fishing gear.

"The mayor is a proud though foolish man," I told James. "He is also vexed."

"The mayor runs a feed lot," James replied in a soft voice. "He fattens stock.
Nothing foolish about it for as long as folks need beef." Always before, James
carried a Victorian reserve. Now his voice held quiet compassion. Thin brown
hair lay sideways across his skull in vague attempt to cloak a bald spot. Large
hands with stubby nails carried callus from years of stocking merchandise. Brown
eyes were guileless as a child's, though somehow moist. In any dry goods store
he would be directed to ready-made shirts and pants marked "medium."

His reply slowed me for a moment. Although I'm in trade, I've never regarded my
bookstore as a holy habitation. James spoke in Victorian terms. To him, the
mayor's feed lot justified the mayor's ambitions. Victorians truly believed that
commerce worked a missionary influence, and England was a great mercantile
nation.

"Even were the mayor an angel," I replied, "you beg the question. You are
presently the only subject of conversation. Our ladies suggest iniquities, our
loafers make uncomfortable jokes, and our banker fears for business. You will
soon be the subject of sermons."

"Business picked up last month." James folded invoices and looked across racks
of foodstuff like a father regarding a favorite child.

"Because you are notorious."

"'Afflicted' is a better word. I could tell you more, but there's enough sorrow
in the world, so I'll not add to it. Let us please allow 'afflicted' to be the
last word." His was an anguished and weary spirit in a fatigued body, but only a
sharp eye could uncover his distress. Victorians never blinked before a downturn
in fortune. He lighted in me a spark of compassion.

"I am not as harsh as my reputation would have me," I told him. "It is not
ungentlemanly to accept assistance."

It was he who viewed me with compassion, looking beyond me finally to our quiet
streets. "There's enough trouble for everyone," he whispered. "I should say no
more."

Momentary terror walked across my soul. I stood among cabbages burnished with
light through stained glass windows. Only the banality of the store shone true,
for all else seemed filled with threat. The terror passed. My mind changed from
fear to hideous and alien knowledge that said I grow old in an alien country. I
age in a shameless nation of strange language, which has no respect for old men.

"I do not understand," I told James in parting, "but fear that I will." I
stepped from the store and into our streets.

Was James a modem Jonah-- swallowed by the tides then belched ashore --and was
not Jonah's sin the sin of Pride? I walked toward the harbor, walking by
congeries of houses and huts. Victorian mansions glowered in company with
rusting house trailers. A few split levels nested beside two storey frames; yet
Victorian houses dominated. Before the turn of the century this town lay awash
in wealth. Its fortunes saw decline when the first transcontinental railroad
drove to tidewater at a different port. These great houses rose from trade; but
trade not always luminous. Irish serving girls earned fifty cents a week, plus
stingy room and board. Chinese bond slaves cooked lime and died in thousands.
Indian and Malay prostitutes fell ravaged before sailors and disease. Fortunes
flowered from that infamous poppy, opium.

I felt the press of antique darkness. Andrewes' spirit still touches here. Too
many people died badly in these parts. Some townsfolk claim to hear spectral
voices in the wind, or distant weeping at the beginning of each new day. Dirges
moan beyond the cause of simple avarice. In the name of progress young boys died
from shanghai to merchant ships. Indian children saw their parents lynched. When
smugglers avoided apprehension by authorities, they bound illegal immigrants in
chain and dropped them screaming overboard; while in these great houses sounded
tinkling notes from harpsichords, sounded the assured voices of wealthy men, the
lyrical voices of their ladies.

At the harbor water moved like restless spirits. We live precariously beside
this sea. Darkness rises from all horizons, but it is dark waters that beckon
us. Every year a boat or two is drowned. Many, many hulks of sailing ships, coal
burning ships, and modern steamers moulder beneath these waters.

What must James see beneath the waves? Skeletons, no doubt, skeletons
representing failed hopes. He must see fortunes in cargo, even cargo once
destined for Andrewes' store. Perhaps he wanders beneath crystal chandeliers
waving in water above dance floors of ships' salons. Our remaining piers stand
above great darkness, and the pull of the sea draws that irrational part of our
minds to self destruction.

IT'S ABLE ANDREWES," Mamie Worthy told me when I encountered her at our Carnegie
library. "You young ones have no notion of the weight of things." Mamie is as
old as Edward and Charles, which is to say she is eighty; twenty years older
than I. She takes her last name more seriously than she ought. In her case, duty
asks inquiry into all of town life. She can trace the lineage of every cat and
dog, can predict births occurring fewer than nine months after marriage, and
knows when a preacher stumbles in prayer, and why. Mamie's is not the voice of
mirth, the voice of gladness. At the same time she is honest.

"I do not like you," she told me, "but that's not news. The news is why I do not
like you. You are a lonely man who protects himself with loneliness. The rest of
the town just thinks you're a snot."

"Yet, I like you," I replied with all truthfulness. "With the length of your
nose from prying I should not, but there it is. Able Andrewes disappeared three
years after I was born and two years after James saw life. By then Edward was
twenty, and Charles nineteen. How can Able Andrewes have aught to do with us?"

Brightness faded briefly from her eyes. Her black dress, clean pressed and ankle
length, seemed more alive than she. Sadness overcame her face. "I do not give a
holy hoot what people do," she told me. "If you think there's a contradiction
I'll remind you that you are a grown man who digs at the past like a dog after
small bones. You figure it out."

"I like you," I told her, "not because you offer pleasure or charm, but because
until now you have always been honest."

"You chose to remain in this town," she said in a voice a little larger than a
whisper. "Why?"

"It has always been my home." My response was not sufficient, but I had never
pondered the question.

"No dream took you away. Your answer will be found in the realm of Able
Andrewes' dreams. I'll Say no more." She turned from me. Her black skirts
whispered like the tears of widowhood.

Victorian secrecy caused loneliness, and I returned to Victorian streets. Mamie
is acute, though I resented her comments. I reminded myself that a man with
books is never lonely. Because a man chooses not to marry, or sit at the local
cafe and talk crops or business spells nothing. And, all men age in a strange
land because styles change and youth is ignorant. The landscape of memory
becomes more real than modem landscape.

Mamie seemed inhibited. I sought one who is not. Our town drunk in no manner
resembles the humorous Irishman so beloved by storytellers. He is Swede
Andersen, a tall and broad man in his day, who in other days fisted sail.
Vessels with auxiliary sail coasted these shores into the 1930s.

"Mamie takes things personal," he told me, "but it isn't Able Andrewes, it's the
store. Come to think of it, it's both." His diminished frame anchored the comer
stool of our only tavern. Beyond windows, gray light walked the horizon. It
wrapped around a fishing vessel swimming moderately heavy seas. Swede's hands
swell large around a beer glass, his knuckles dislodged in old accidents and
fights. The rest of him seems no more than a cameo.

"How inebriated are you?"

"As well as can be expected," he told me, "but suds don't make me talk. I'd tell
you anyway." Eyes of thin blue, decorated with lines of red, watched the fishing
vessel. "Damn fools," he said about the fishermen, but his voice was filled with
longing for the sea. "This business of getting old sure makes a leila think."

"I have all afternoon," I told him, "and the will to listen."

"So James pokes around under the harbor, and it's a wonder most of us ain't with
him for the stroll. We're part of the store. You think I drink for fun ?" Swede
watched a young couple with a small child as they passed along the boardwalk.
"Kids figure the world got made an hour before they were born," Swede said about
the couple. "James sure thought that way."

Swede's tale meandered, but gradually told of waste and sorrow. It centered on a
daily round of innocuous tasks and perceptions. At eighteen James left for
college and found no joy. He returned claiming study as impractical. The
reliable James took a job at Andrewes store. He became reserved and distant.

"So he made a punk's decision at eighteen," Swede said, "and never looked back.
He became the world's leading expert on that store; every nook and cranny and
item in stock. To this day he can still find button hooks that ain't been used
since World War I."

"Which does not explain his actions."

"It likely does," Swede told me, "if you think about the Andrewes store and
Andrewes. You probably figure that store stays alive because of the town, and
you figure wrong. The store is what holds all the power here. The town stays
alive because of the store."

For a moment it seemed I owned someone else's memory, or someone else owned
mine. Once, long ago, I wished to really study history, and really write it. Now
I only record the events of a Victorian town gone stale.

"We all stayed too long," Swede said, "we stayed too long. Check with Mad Willie
for the rest of it. He's the only sane man in town."

"And you are not?"

"I'm part of the store," Swede said, and said it sadly. "So are you, but Willie,
nope." Swede returned to drink and silence as I departed.

Unlike most village idiots, Willie is not easily found. I walked, knowing a day
or two might pass before we met. One generally discovers Mad Willie in search
for mushrooms and roots and herbs, or conversing with cattle in a near valley.
His Indian and Filipino forebears combine in his sturdy frame. He strolls
costumed in ragtag clothing from charity bins of churches. Animals delight in
his presence, and children follow him until called away by fearful parents.

Gentle Reader, some Victorians were honest men and true, as, sometimes, are we.
I must not debase a hundred years of toil without exceptions. And, when the
rapacious 19th century gave way to the 20th, only the century changed. Victorian
minds and values did not disappear because of dates on a calendar. Notions of
"progress" continued. Nineteenth century trading posts would be replaced by a
beatitude of goods in 20th century shopping malls.

And we, like they, write history every day while horror walks. We plant gardens
as ghettos rise in flame. We task over dry cleaning bills while statesmen name
themselves honorable men. This augers ill. Able Andrewes, gentleman, did not
intentionally join in corruption, but corruption reaches forth and implicates.
Victorians killed hundreds of thousands, while Andrewes' trade built this town.
Victorian houses, once gorgeous, line our streets. We live in them, preserve
them, and our century kills millions.

I stood before dawn outside Andrewes' store. James would soon arrive, and
through the early streets our people passed: Paul Stenkey trudging toward the
post office where he will sort and curse colorful flyers advertising goods,
Madge Plummer to the weekly paper where she will report quibbles from city hall,
and Jason Preston, young developer who is always three dollars short and two
days late. I thought of long nights of correspondence at my store. Much of my
income derives from rare books sold by mail to collectors.

Lights flared from the store as the Andrewes boys prepared for the business day.
The store towered in darkness, and stained glass windows seemed to leap toward
the mist. The windows rose like candles, or like colorful lamps of Victorian
pride. Red and purple and blue mixed with oranges, yellows, greens, and browns.
Here and there a spark of crystal twinkled, and here and there other glass shone
black as polished ebony. Figures in stained glass-- fishermen and loggers,
carpenters and peat miners, draftsmen and bartenders -- seemed to move because
of the mist, slowly counting days of endless toil. Far away a church bell
tolled.

"Willie heard you calling," a voice said behind me. I turned to find Mad Willie
dressed as a harlequin; faded yellow pants, red shirt, green cap. Willie may be
mad, but he is well read, having mooched my castoff books for years. His broad,
olive-colored face shone with enthusiasm. He carried bunches of wild carrots and
wild celery.

"I didn't call."

"You did," he said, "or else it's magic. But, just think of cows, just think of
them. Cows don't miss much. Some are even Methodist." He perfervidly began to
explain bovine doctrines.

"We have a mystery unlikely solved by cows," I told him.

"Unlikely solved by anyone else," he told me, "plus some are Presbyterian." He
watched through dark mist as a milk truck pulled up before the store. The driver
stepped slowly down, as if in dispraise of cows. "Miraculous," Willie breathed.
"You put in grass, and out comes milk and cheese and ice cream." His delight
sounded as large as his wonder.

"Something dark stalks this town," I said. "James has become peculiar in his
way. His reserve is gone and he speaks most kindly. Swede drinks but doesn't
care for it. Mamie is indifferent to events, and yet she pries. No one claims to
fully understand. If someone does understand, that someone isn't talking."

"James does his eternal job," Willie said seriously. "You do yours. Able
Andrewes does his, and maybe some of what happens is wonderful." For a moment
the man seemed sane. His lips lost their silly smile, and his broad forehead
furrowed with concentrated thought.

"There's wonderment to it," I said with grim voice, "but other words occur.
Horror and death, for two."

"Celery," said Willie, and not unhappily. "Apium graveolens. In the wild state
it is as rank as me, but with broader leaves. It is indigenous to marshy places
near the sea. With breeding and blanching celery tums tame. Three varieties are
cultivated, green, white, and red. Green is best, but James is white. Very
little of the red shows up around here."

"You must be feigning madness," I told him, "while playing court jester spinning
riddles." It is impossible to dislike Willie, but also impossible not to become
impatient with him.

"James is a master of inventory," Willie said with dignity. "Do not speak of
sanity and riddles in the same breath. Your sanity disappeared when you stopped
fiddling. When questions cease, people buy someone else's dream."

"As James bought Andrewes' dream?"

"And Andrewes, no doubt, bought an even older dream," Willie murmured, sounding
his sadness. "Steam power was first used in 1698 by Englishmen, the same year
Daniel Defoe suggested better roads and insane asylums." Willie looked toward
cathedral windows still illuminated by electricity, more than by the first thin
light of dawn. "Borrow all good dreams," he whispered, "but in the name of holy
spirits don't buy them. When you buy, you may own something good, but you also
own whatever evil those dreams spawned."

"James is not without honor," I said, feeling somehow that I defended myself
more than I defended James.

"James is in the thrall of the store," Willie said. "He changes because he has
nothing left to lose. And, the store is in the thrall of an elder dream." He
cocked his head as if hearing distant voices in the mist. "They sometimes wail
at sunrise," he trilled. "Sad spirits call from shallow graves where progress
placed them. Oh, this town once produced evil, evil, evil, yes it did."

"But Andrewes only bought and sold:"

"And Andrewes wished to honorably work, and honorably raise children, and
honorably grow old, and honorably die. But when a man begins to slide it seems
like all creation gets greased up for the occasion. Andrewes became implicated.
The store became greater than he. The store became the dream." Willie pointed to
cathedral windows aglow with Victorian ideals, and with work of Victorian hands.
His face wrenched with a silly smile, but his voice sounded low, bereaved,
whispering horror. "And there he sits, there he sits, he sits . . . Andrewes."
Willie choked, and pointed to a small space high on one window, a window
overlooking the harbor. "See how slowly he works because he is old," Willie said
bemused, though still muttering as if through pain. "He is old, old, old, and
yet he will never die because his sentence is not death, but dying." Willie
continued to point. "Dying but never dead for as long as dreams that put him
there exist."

Like cattle, we do not look up, yet walk beneath the stars. I turned to those
windows I have passed for six decades, seeing but not seeing; turned toward
glass which held the small, black-suited figure of Able Andrewes, his soul
become one with his windows. Andrewes, disappearing, but forever present. The
dark figure hunched before an account book. A quill pen moved with glacial
slowness, yet moved. About him other figures moved, but glacially.

It is the mist I told myself, only mist, and knew I lied. Did Mamie know of
this, did Swede? How many knew, yet feared to give their knowledge voice? Did
James know ? And Charles and Edward, working each day beside this grim eternity?

And yes, James knew, but with charity of newly discovered kindness kept quiet.

"Andrewes tends the store," Willie said, "and so does James. The wild carrot,
Daucus carota, a member of the family Umbelliferae. . . . "

I turned from Willie, knowing that I would soon be shaking; knowing also,
because I am old, that this horror must soon pass into a greater horror.
Andrewes' quill pen moved, although one must concentrate to see it, for the life
of the windows breathes slowly; ancient vapors; Victorian men and ladies caught
in near stasis between half-known dreams.

And, yes, James knew. I thought of my own daily round, and the rounds of others
in this town while understanding James; that master of inventory.

Who walked, I had no doubt, within the holds of sunken ships, and beside
skeletons that once knew dreams. James, a creature of the store, inventorying
drowned cargo destined for the store. James, a creature stepping always in
behalf of the store, stepping more slowly each year; but always stepping. That
genius of inventory.

And yes, I knew that all of us are creatures of the store. We bought Andrewes'
dream. The store could not have gained such power otherwise. Now a violent
circle closes with quiet violence. When the store became the dream, it made the
dream immortal. We are trapped. The future becomes a dirge, helling through heat
of day and frost of night above the bones of our fathers.

I might have been a prophet instead of a scribbler, or a true historian rather
than a recorder of facts. I might not have been lonely. And, my fellow townsmen,
what might they have been? No matter. In a way I am not lonely, for all of my
townsmen are encased like Andrewes in his stained glass -trapped with less grace
than a bee embalmed in amber, for the bee is dead--while we are only, and
eternally-- dying. Mamie will eternally gossip. Swede will eternally drink. I
will eternally sell old dreams as the newspaper prints old news. Able Andrewes,
green grocer, will keep accounts. I turned toward the harbor.

The reliable James appeared, walking toward me through mist to become my comrade
as we plod through time. From somewhere in the mist Willie hummed a hymn to
morning. James stopped before me.

"It isn't so bad," he said quietly. "But it does go on and on." His moist eyes
dulled beyond horror, could no longer see horror. For a moment he trembled, thus
still knew some emotion. "People do need things," he said, and visibly
controlled his trembling, "but I suppose we should warn the children." Then he
tasted the futility of his statement. "They wouldn't listen," he said vaguely,
and moved toward the store.

I felt not fear, but anger, and the need to strike. It was a loathsome need. No
man of honor, no gentleman, could answer this blow with cruelty. When there is
nothing left to lose, one must at least answer as James does, with kindness.

Thin sunlight cut the mist, and stained glass windows dulled before me, Gentle
Reader; dulled before me like slow movement through slow aeons. There was aught
to say except give thanks -- thanks -- that -- at least-- you are spared: for
surely you are wise, and do not buy other people's dreams. Surely you, unlike
we, are not tending the store; are not, because of the store, enthroned by time
forever, or, because of the store, forever perishing.