THE HUNDRED-AND-THIRTY-FIFTH PAGE

John dos Passos had once said something to the effect that a young person who is not a liberal is a fool and an older person who is not a conservative is also a fool--a very rough translation not improved by fading memory in the passage of my years to “older.”

I found it difficult to consider that I, who had vigorously opposed capital punishment, had recently come to think of it as correct and that I, who had supported rigid gun control legislation, was sitting in the comfort of my living room while loading a gun for protection of dog, books, and my own person. My house was now my fortress. Should I mine the front yard? Not a bad idea, but the sound of exploding deer in the night might disturb the dog’s slumbers, to say nothing of the neighbors’.

The thought of a shoot-out seemed ridiculous until I remembered that I had sent My Editor the gun, and perhaps had sent him the instrument of my own destruction. I didn’t matter, but the unprotected books could be badly damaged by a stray bullet. Condition, condition, condition.

The problem was easily solved with the largest expenditure (save books, of course) I’d made in a long time. Should have done it years before to protect the books from sunlight. In one morning, I boarded over all the downstairs windows.