when she tore her dress they loked her in the closet for 2 days and if the boys on the blok hear about it they will say dirty things like they did on Peewee Conors sister the time she got caught in the lots. So please what would you do if the same hapened in your family .
Yours truly,
Harold S.
He stopped reading. Christ was the answer, but, if he did not want to get sick, he had to stay away from the Christ business. Besides, Christ was Shrike’s particular joke. “Soul of Miss L, glorify me. Body of Miss L, save me. Blood of…” He turned to his typewriter.
Although his cheap clothes had too much style, he still looked like the son of a Baptist minister. A beard would become him, would accent his Old-Testament look. But even without a beard no one could fail to recognize the New England puritan. His forehead was high and narrow. His nose was long and fleshless. His bony chin was shaped and cleft like a hoof. On seeing him for the first time, Shrike had smiled and said, “The Susan Chesters, the Beatrice Fairfaxes and the Miss Lonelyhearts are the priests of twentieth-century America.”
A copy boy came up to tell him that Shrike wanted to know if the stuff was ready. He bent over the typewriter and began pounding its keys.
But before he had written a dozen words, Shrike leaned over his shoulder. “The same old stuff,” Shrike said. “Why don’t you give them something new and hopeful? Tell them about art. Here, I'll dictate:
“Art Is a Way Out .
“Do not let life overwhelm you. When the old paths are choked with the débris of failure, look for newer and fresher paths. Art is just such a path. Art is distilled from suffering. As Mr. Polnikoff exclaimed through his fine Russian beard, when, at the age of eighty-six, he gave up his business to learn Chinese, ‘We are, as yet, only at the begining….’
“Art Is One of Life’s Richest Offerings .
“For those who have not the talent to create, there is appreciation. For those…
“Go on from there.”
Miss Lonelyhearts and the Dead Pan
When Miss Lonelyhearts quit work, he found that the weather had turned warm and that the air smelt as though it had been artificially heated. He decided to walk to Delehanty’s speakeasy for a drink. In order to get there, it was necessary to cross a little park.
He entered the park at the North Gate and swallowed mouthfuls of the heavy shade that curtained its arch. He walked into the shadow of a lamp-post that lay on the path like a spear. It pierced him like a spear.
As far as he could discover, there were no signs of spring. The decay that covered the surface of the mottled ground was not the kind in which life generates. Last year, he remembered, May had failed to quicken these soiled fields. It had taken all the brutality of July to torture a few green spikes through the exhausted dirt.
What the little park needed, even more than he did, was a drink. Neither alcohol nor rain would do. Tomorrow, in his column, he would ask Broken-hearted, Sick-of-it-all, Desperate, Disillusioned-with-tubercular-husband and the rest of his correspondents to come here and water the soil with their tears. Flowers would then spring up, flowers that smelled of feet.
“Ah, humanity…” But he was heavy with shadow and the joke went into a dying fall. He tried to break its fall by laughing at himself.
Why laugh at himself, however, when Shrike was waiting at the speakeasy to do a much better job? “Miss Lonelyhearts, my friend, I advise you to give your readers stones. When they ask for bread don’t give them crackers as does the Church, and don’t, like the State, tell them to eat cake. Explain that man cannot live by bread alone and give them stones. Teach them to pray each morning: ‘Give us this day our daily stone.’”
He had given his readers many stones; so many, in fact, that he had only one left—the stone that had formed in his gut.
Suddenly tired, he sat down on a bench. If he could only throw the stone. He
Yours truly,
Harold S.
He stopped reading. Christ was the answer, but, if he did not want to get sick, he had to stay away from the Christ business. Besides, Christ was Shrike’s particular joke. “Soul of Miss L, glorify me. Body of Miss L, save me. Blood of…” He turned to his typewriter.
Although his cheap clothes had too much style, he still looked like the son of a Baptist minister. A beard would become him, would accent his Old-Testament look. But even without a beard no one could fail to recognize the New England puritan. His forehead was high and narrow. His nose was long and fleshless. His bony chin was shaped and cleft like a hoof. On seeing him for the first time, Shrike had smiled and said, “The Susan Chesters, the Beatrice Fairfaxes and the Miss Lonelyhearts are the priests of twentieth-century America.”
A copy boy came up to tell him that Shrike wanted to know if the stuff was ready. He bent over the typewriter and began pounding its keys.
But before he had written a dozen words, Shrike leaned over his shoulder. “The same old stuff,” Shrike said. “Why don’t you give them something new and hopeful? Tell them about art. Here, I'll dictate:
“Art Is a Way Out .
“Do not let life overwhelm you. When the old paths are choked with the débris of failure, look for newer and fresher paths. Art is just such a path. Art is distilled from suffering. As Mr. Polnikoff exclaimed through his fine Russian beard, when, at the age of eighty-six, he gave up his business to learn Chinese, ‘We are, as yet, only at the begining….’
“Art Is One of Life’s Richest Offerings .
“For those who have not the talent to create, there is appreciation. For those…
“Go on from there.”
Miss Lonelyhearts and the Dead Pan
When Miss Lonelyhearts quit work, he found that the weather had turned warm and that the air smelt as though it had been artificially heated. He decided to walk to Delehanty’s speakeasy for a drink. In order to get there, it was necessary to cross a little park.
He entered the park at the North Gate and swallowed mouthfuls of the heavy shade that curtained its arch. He walked into the shadow of a lamp-post that lay on the path like a spear. It pierced him like a spear.
As far as he could discover, there were no signs of spring. The decay that covered the surface of the mottled ground was not the kind in which life generates. Last year, he remembered, May had failed to quicken these soiled fields. It had taken all the brutality of July to torture a few green spikes through the exhausted dirt.
What the little park needed, even more than he did, was a drink. Neither alcohol nor rain would do. Tomorrow, in his column, he would ask Broken-hearted, Sick-of-it-all, Desperate, Disillusioned-with-tubercular-husband and the rest of his correspondents to come here and water the soil with their tears. Flowers would then spring up, flowers that smelled of feet.
“Ah, humanity…” But he was heavy with shadow and the joke went into a dying fall. He tried to break its fall by laughing at himself.
Why laugh at himself, however, when Shrike was waiting at the speakeasy to do a much better job? “Miss Lonelyhearts, my friend, I advise you to give your readers stones. When they ask for bread don’t give them crackers as does the Church, and don’t, like the State, tell them to eat cake. Explain that man cannot live by bread alone and give them stones. Teach them to pray each morning: ‘Give us this day our daily stone.’”
He had given his readers many stones; so many, in fact, that he had only one left—the stone that had formed in his gut.
Suddenly tired, he sat down on a bench. If he could only throw the stone. He
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