2.E.

one

Darlings,

I know you hate having people write to you with bad opinions and new ideas, at least I would hate having it happen to me. My name is Jessica Farr, I read your magazine, and right nowI have a very big thorn in my craw.

Imagine standing in a bar and having a lonely drink, feeling on the blue side of things, on the rocks like ice thats melted in the drink you nurse too long. Minding your own business when wham,

"The Jaberwock with eyes of flame Came whiffing through the tulgy wood And burbled as it came-"

So, she fixes you with this bright &

beady eye and says What's the matier with you? you look lonely. Then comes a windstorm of advice and remonstrancesthe person is a perfect stranger-which strikes at note for brass in this horny, old world that would be hard to better. Imagine it being you, standing there and trying to think what to say and not saying it-

I know many lonely people, and not one of them likes it. Nobody tries to get that way, it happens like, being born with hair that won't comb or a nervous laugh. Only worse, much, much worse. Show me the "I Want To Be Lonely Club Of America" or any other country for that matter? Who told Miss Jaberwock that we who have known loneliness are playing a game? That we store up great rocks of heartache and wait for some unsuspecting gal or guy to avalanche to death or whatever? Did I detect a sniffle at the last? How pathetic. I think the Joe she must be writing to has been dead for some yearsJoe Stalin-and that program she says will help put your life on a constructive upgrade, is so much green cheese from the other side of the Moon.

We need love, we are human. In what shape it will come we do not know, and what time it may choose to come we are helpless to say; but we must believe, we have to go on believing that it will come, that it must come-

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