【正文】 ficulties, your disappointments and all the things that once have caused you fear, and you will find yourself laughing at most of them. My Perfect House My house is perfect. By great good fortune I have found a housekeeper no less to my mind, a lowvoiced, lightfooted woman of discreet age, strong and deft enough to render me all the service I require, and not afraid of loneliness. She rises very early. By my breakfasttime there remains little to be done under the roof save dressing of meals. Very rarely do I hear even a clink of 4 crockery。 just that superfluity of inner space, to lack which is to be less than at one39。 the work in wood and plaster tells of a more leisurely and a more honest age than ours. The stairs do not creak under my step。 I can open or close a window without muscleache. As to such trifles as the color and device of wallpaper, I confess my indifference。s home is fort。 but never till now with that sense of security which makes a home. At any moment I might have been driven forth by evil accident, by disturbing necessity. For all that time did I say within myself: Some day, perchance, I shall have a home。 but, if I did, even so long should I have the money to pay my rent and buy my food. I am no cosmopolite. Were I to think that I should die away from England, the thought would be dreadful to me. And in England, this is the place of my choice。 he39。t follow the catastrophe on the Gulf Coast as closely as I might have, but those weeks taught me some things about catastrophe and about the kindness of strangers. All catastrophes are personal. Some in the Gulf Coast sought survival。 some prayed upon others. At the hospital, we watched our son Owen sleep. Despite the tubes dripping and the monitors beeping, he still slept his baby sleep. My wife asked for the pastor。s health should not ruin us, upon the doctors and clerks and ambulance drivers. We depended upon a mitment made to helping others. This mitment is a web that holds us together in times of need. By the time we took Owen home, the worst effects of Katrina were evident. I watched the images from the Gulf Coast, images of munities, lives and families whose fabric had been torn apart. I thought of that web of strangers that had embraced my family in our time of need, and that it is the most fortunate among us who are served best by it. I can only hope this web will be strong enough, that it will be spun wide, that it will hold and care for many, that we can all depend upon the kindness of strangers. “ Packing” a Person A person, like a modity, needs packaging. But going too far is absolutely undesirable. A little exaggeration, however, does no harm when it shows the person39。s exuberance enough to retain selfconfidence and pursue pioneering work, you are unique in your natural qualities, and your charm and grace will remain. Elderly people are beautiful if their river of life has been, through plains, mountains and jungles, running its course as it should. You have really lived your life which now arrives at a placent stage of serenity indifferent to fame or wealth. There is no need to resort to hairdyeing。s pany is like reading a thick book of deluxe edition that fascinates one so much as to be reluctant to part with. As long as one finds where one stands, one knows how to package oneself, just as a modity establishes its brand by the right packaging. Sorrow of the Millionaire The unfortunate millionaire has the responsibility of tremendous wealth without the possibility of enjoying himself more than any ordinary rich man. Indeed, in many things he cannot enjoy himself more than many poor men do, nor even so much, for a drum major is better dressed, a trainer’s stable lad often rides a better horse。 everybody who goes down to Brighton for Sunday rides in the Pullman car。 I do not expect the house to fall。s because I believe in disrupting my fort zone. When I started out in the entertainment business, I made a list of people that I thought would be good to me. Not people who could give me a job or a deal, but people who could shake me up, teach me something, challenge my ideas about myself and the world. So I started calling up experts in all kinds of fields. Some of them were worldfamous. Of course, I didn39。t always friendly. And even when they agreed to give me some of their time, the results weren39。m not that interesting to a physicist with no taste for our pop culture. Over the last 30 years, I39。m successful and, in my business, pretty well known. So why do I continue to subject myself to this sort of thing? The answer is simple: Disrupting my fort zone, bombarding myself with challenging people and situations— this is the best way that I know to keep growing. And to paraphrase a biologist I once met, if you39。re dying. So maybe I39。s okay. The disfort, the uncertainty, the physical and mental challenge that I get from this— all the things that too many of us spend our time and energy trying to avoid— they are precisely the things that keep me in the game. Two Ways of Thinking of History There are two ways of thinking of history. There is, first, history regarded as a way of looking at other things, really the temporal aspect of anything, from the universe to this nib with which I am writing. Everything has its history. There is the history of the universe, if only we knew it— and we know something of it, if we do not know much. Nor is the contrast so great, when you e to think of it, between the universe and this pennib. A mere pennib has quite a considerable history. There is, to begin with, what has been written with it, and that might be something quite important. After all it was probably only one quillpen or a couple that wrote Hamlet. Whatever has been written with the pennib is part of its History. In addition to that there is the history of its manufacture: this particular nib