"Good old fish!" we cry, ecstatic. "Meet you at the corner of Tenth and
Chestnut in five minutes."

We tear up the unfinished letter. Bill will never know how much we love
him. Perhaps it is just as well. It is very embarrassing to have your
friends know how you feel about them. When we meet him we will be a
little bit on our guard. It would not be well to be betrayed into any
extravagance of cordiality.

And perhaps a not altogether false little story could be written about a
man who never visited those most dear to him, because it panged him so
to say good-bye when he had to leave.




A LETTER TO FATHER TIME


(NEW YEAR'S EVE)

Dear Father Time--This is your night of triumph, and it seems only fair
to pay you a little tribute. Some people, in a noble mood of bravado,
consider New Year's Eve an occasion of festivity. Long, long in advance
they reserve a table at their favorite café; and becomingly habited in
boiled shirts or gowns of the lowest visibility, and well armed with a
commodity which is said to be synonymous with yourself--money--they seek
to outwit you by crowding a month of merriment into half a dozen hours.
Yet their victory is brief and fallacious, for if hours spin too fast by
night they will move grindingly on the axle the next morning. None of us