I have owed you this letter for a very long time-but my fingers have avoided the pencil as though it were an old and poisoned tool.
Death is a personal matter, arousing sorrow, despair, fervor, or dry-hearted philosophy. Funerals, on the other hand, are social functions. Imagine going to a funeral without first polishing the automobile. Imagine standing at a graveside not dressed in your best dark suit and your best black shoes, polished delightfully. Imagine sending flowers to a funeral with no attached card to prove you had done the correct thing. In no social institution is the codified ritual of behavior more rigid than in funerals. Imagine the indignation if the minister altered his sermon or experimented with facial expression. Consider the shock if, at the funeral parlors, any chairs were used but those little folding yellow torture chairs with the hard seats. No, dying, a man may be loved, hated, mourned, missed; but once dead he becomes the chief ornament of a complicated and formal social celebration.
Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.
Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it.
If you're in trouble, or hurt or need - go to the poor people. They're the only ones that'll help - the only ones.
Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.
