Kindness is a virtue neither modern nor urban. One almost unlearns it in a city. Towns have their own beatitude; they are not unfriendly; they offer a vast and solacing anonymity or an equally vast and solacing gregariousness. But one needs a neighbor on whom to practice compassion.

Frigidity is largely nonsense. It is this generation's catchword, one only vaguely understood and constantly misused. Frigid women are few. There is a host of diffident and slow-ripening ones.

Shunning the upstart shower, / The cold and cursory scrub, / I celebrate the power / That lies within the Tub.

God knows that a mother needs fortitude and courage and tolerance and flexibility and patience and firmness and nearly every other brave aspect of the human soul. But because I happen to be a parent of almost fiercely maternal nature, I praise casualness. It seems to me the rarest of virtues. It is useful enough when children are small. It is useful to the point of necessity when they are adolescents.

Praise is warming and desirable. But it is an earned thing. It has to be deserved, like a hug from a child.

Sometimes I have a notion that what might improve the situation is to have women take over the occupations of government and trade and to give men their freedom.

O, merry is the Optimist, With the troops of courage leaguing. But a dour trend In any friend Is somehow less fatiguing.