Champagne arrived in flûtes on trays, and we emptied them with gladness in our hearts... for when feasts are laid and classical music is played, where champagne is drunk once the sun has sunk and the season of summer is alive in spicy bloom, and beautiful women fill the room, and are generous with laughter and smiles... these things fill men's hearts with joy and remind one that life’s bounty is not always fleeting but can be captured, and enjoyed. It is in writing about this scene that I relive this night in my soul.
Speechless is not even a good enough word to describe what I feel when I see the pictures of how we have transformed the world from the good to bad, from natural to artificial, physical appearance to daily makeup. I think I want to go with the word ENRAGED, DISGUSTED, or better yet INSULTED .
Where would tourism be without a little luxury and a taste of night life? There were several cities on Deanna, all moderate in size, but the largest was the capital, Atro City. For the connoisseur of fast-foods, Albrechts’ famous hotdogs and coldcats were sold fresh from his stall (Albrecht’s Takeaways) on Lupini Square. For the sake of his own mental health he had temporarily removed Hot Stuff Blend from the menu. The city was home to Atro City University, which taught everything from algebra and make-up application to advanced stamp collecting; and it was also home to the planet-famous bounty hunter – Beck the Badfeller. Beck was a legend in his own lifetime. If Deanna had any folklore, then Beck the Badfeller was one of its main features. He was the local version of Robin Hood, the Davy Crockett of Deanna. The Local rumor mill had it he was so good he could find the missing day in a leap year. Once, so the story goes, he even found a missing sock.
Somewhere I’d heard, or invented perhaps, that the only pleasures found during a waning moon are misfortunes in disguise. Superstition aside, I avoid pleasure during the waning or absent moon out of respect for the bounty this world offers me. I profit from great harvests in life and believe in the importance of seasons.
They drew their net to shore, and there was a fire of coals, and fish laid thereon, another fish. When they had enough, one that was better than all was added. Have you not sometimes wished that you could have had that hundred and fifty-fourth fish? This was Christ's way all the while, and is His way still. He fills the net as full as it will hold, that our life may be sustained, and then He adds more, that His love may be gratified, and that which He adds is the "royal bounty.
For Alwyn's grandfather, who was known as "the greatest talker in the country," used words which no one else understood, words which he did not understand, and words which do not exist, to swell a passionate theme, to confound his neighbors in an argument, and for their own sake. He would say, for example, "My farm was the very apocalypse of fertility, but the renter has rested on his oars till it is good for nothing," or "Manifest the bounty to pass the salt shaker in my direction." Something of the Bible, something of an Irish inheritance, something of a liar's anxiety, made of his most ordinary remark a strange and wearisome oratory.