Remembrance, like Rembrandt, is dark but festive. Remembered ones dress up for the occasion and sit still. Memory is a photo-studio de luxe on an infinite Fifth Power Avenue.

While a few pertinent points have to be marked, the general impression I desire to convey is of a side door crashing open in life's full flight, and a rush of roaring black time drowning with its whipping wind the cry of lone disaster.

And what is death, if not a face at peace - its artistic perfection.

Neither in environment nor in heredity can I find the exact instrument that fashioned me, the a.non.y.muse roller that passed upon my life a certain intricate watermark whose unique design becomes visible when the lamp of art is made to shine through life's foolscap.

Why should I tolerate a perfect stranger at the bedside of my mind?

I know more than I can express in words, and the little I can express would not have been expressed, had I not known more.

I always call him Lewis Carroll Carroll, because he was the first Humbert Humbert.