re some so wonderful
you do not understand how the dead COULD die. How could they let
themselves? A falling building does not care who falls with it.
It does not choose who shall be upon its roof and who shall not.
Silence CAN be golden? Yes. But perhaps if a woman of the world
should find herself by accident sitting beside a man for the length
of time it must necessarily take two slow old horses to jog three
miles, she might expect that man to say something of some sort!
Even if she thought him a feeble hypochondriac, even if she had
heard from others that he was a disappointment to his own people,
even if she had seen for herself that he was a useless and
irritating encumbrance everywhere, she might expect him at least
to speak--she might expect him to open his mouth and try to make
sounds, if he only barked. If he did not even try, but sat every
step of the way as dumb as a frozen fish, she might THINK him a
frozen fish. And she might be right. She might be right if she
thought him about as pleasant a companion as--as Bildad the Shuhite!

Bibbs closed his note-book, replacing it in his trunk. Then, after a
period of melancholy contemplation, he undressed, put on a dressing-gown
and slippers, and went softly out into the hall--to his father's door.
Upon the floor was a tray which Bibbs had sent George, earlier in the
evening, to place upon a table in Sheridan's room--but the food was
untouched. Bibbs stood listening outside the door for several minutes.
There came no sound from within, and he went back to his own room and to
bed.

In the morning he woke to a state of being hitherto unknown in his
experience. Sometimes in the process of waking there is a little
pause--sleep has gone, but coherent thought has not begun. It is
a curious half-void, a glimpse of aphasia; and although the person
experiencing it may not know for that instant his own name or age or
sex, he may be acutely conscious of depression or elation. It is the
moment, as we say, before we "remember"; and for the first time in
Bibbs's life it came to him bringing a vague happiness. He woke to a
sense of new riches; he had the feeling of a boy waking to a birthday.
But when the next moment brought him his memory, he found nothing that
could explain his exhilaration. On the contrary, under the circumstances
it seemed grotesquely unwarranted. However, it was a brief visitation
and was gone before he had finished dres