* * * * *
Ah, the smug and oblivious ones under umbrellas! It rains, but the
umbrellas keep off the rain. The world pours its distinctions and elations
over their souls, but other umbrellas, invisible, keep off distractions
and elations. And each of them, scurrying along outside the window of the
great financier's club, is an omniscient world center to himself. The
great play was written around him, a blur of disasters and ecstasies, a
sort of vast and inarticulate Greek chorus mumbling an obbligato to the
leitmotif which is at the moment the purchase of a pair of suspenders or a
dinner invitation for the evening.
None so small under these umbrellas outside the window but fancies himself
the center of the cosmos. None so stupid but regards himself as the oracle
of the times. And they scurry along without a glance at one another, each
innately convinced that his ideas, his prejudices, his ambitions, his
tastes are the Great Standard, the Normal Criterion. Puritan, paranoiac,
sybarite, katatoniac, hardhead, dreamer, coward, desperado, beaten ones,
striving ones, successful ones--all flaunt their umbrellas in the rain,
all unfurl their invisible umbrellas to the world.
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