It all came about like this. Poppy, whose religious activity had been intense all through the Lenten season (at times Cass had thought that if she brought one more fish into the house he would throttle her), reached a kind of peak of fervour during Holy Week; unremittingly, she had addressed herself to all sorts of complicated rites and offices, in pouring rain dashing out to see the various Stations—whatever that meant—and it was at one of these, Cass knew not where—at the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, perhaps, or that other one, with the Giotto fresco, San Giovanni in Laterano—that she encountered an American couple, the McCabes.

The signs out front faced down the highway, lettered on both sides so they could be read from either direction, east or west. WESTERN CURIOS—INDIAN JEWELRY—GOOD GRADE GAS—CLEAN REST ROOMS—ICE WATER—FREE ZOO.

There were moments in the life of Leavious Throop when she was all herself and all to herself. These moments had no relation to any other human being. They were not necessarily the highest or the best or even the most truthful. They simply appeared and had to be realized as such.

I am sitting near Perth Amboy, N.J. on the port quarter of the scow whose starboard side is swinging just free of one of the Colonial docks. The water is dung-coloured and slides away smoothly, horizontally before the eye. A tanker. Low brown and green countryside, low bridges. 

When not tending New York holdings, Guy Grand was generally, as he expressed it, “on the go.” He took cross- country trips by train: New York to Miami, Miami to Seattle—that sort of thing—always on a slow train, one that makes frequent stops. 

Some Saturdays the two white men did not hunt, but would sit nearly motionless on the front porch of the little lodge, with the bourbon and the bucket of ice cubes between them on the floor, staring somberly off toward the rows of houses which had crept out from the city to menace their land. 

The first time I saw Brenda she asked me to hold her glasses. Then she stepped out to the edge of the diving board and looked foggily into the pool; it could have been drained, myopic Brenda would never have known it. She dove beautifully, and a moment later she was swimming back to the side of the pool.

At first Shige Yamahara and Hamuro Iguchi took only passing interest in the construction of the Kobe-Kansai Bank Building. They sometimes peered through apertures in the red fence surrounding the hollowed lot to watch the steam shovels and, later, a mighty pile driver

Almost every morning lately the beginning of light, rainy day or fair, would fall upon the eyelids flatly, tiredly, and the arms and legs like blocks of stone and the ache deep in the bones for the secret of comfort buried inside the unsolicitous mattress

Michael, the weekend guest, was to spend the night in one of the twin beds in Herbie’s old room, where the baseball pictures still hung on the wall. Lou Epstein slept with his wife in the room with the bed pushed catter-corner. His daughter Sheila’s bedroom was empty; she was at a meeting with her fiancé, the folk-singer.