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276 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1954
“Elizabeth, Beth, Betsy, and Bess, they all went together to find a bird's nest...”
Elizabeth Richmond had a corner of an office on the third floor; it was the section of the museum closest, as it were, to the surface, that section where correspondence with the large world outside was carried on freely, where least shelter was offered to cringing scholarly souls. At Elizabeth's desk on the highest floor of the building, in the most western corner of the office, she sat daily answering letters offering the museum collections of pressed flowers, or sold old sea-chests brought back from Cathay. It is not proven that Elizabeth's personal equilibrium was set off balance by the slant of the office floor, nor could it be proven that it was Elizabeth who pushed the building off its foundations, but it is undeniable that they began to slip at about the same time.
"It is not proven that Elizabeth’s personal equilibrium was set off balance by the slant of the office floor, nor could it be proven that it was Elizabeth who pushed the building off its foundations, but it is undeniable that they began to slip at about the same time."
“Elizabeth, Beth, Betsy, and Bess, they all went together to find a bird’s nest . . . Perhaps, you handsome Doctor Wrong, you would care to rename us? We must surely not be the first children you have brought into the world.”
“Each life, I think,” said the doctor, “asks the devouring of other lives for its continuance; the radical aspect of ritual sacrifice, the performance of a group, its great step ahead, was in the organization; sharing the victim was so eminently practical.”
"And our responsibility, Morgen,” he went on, raising his voice slightly, “our responsibility is, clearly, to people this vacant landscape—fill this empty vessel, I think I said before—and, with our deep emotional reserves, enable the child to rebuild. We have a sobering duty. She will owe to us her opinions, her discriminations, her reflections; we are able, as few others have ever been, to re-create, entire, a human being, in the most proper and reasonable mold, to select what is finest and most elevating from our own experience and bestow!”