IX 

 HAMMOCK NIGHTS 



THERE is a great gulf between pancakes and 

 truffles: an eternal, fixed, abysmal canon. It 

 is like the chasm between beds and hammocks. 

 It is not to be denied and not to be traversed; 

 for if pancakes with syrup are a necessary of 

 life, then truffles with anything must be, by the 

 very nature of things, a supreme and undisputed 

 luxury, a regal food for royalty and the chosen 

 of the earth. There cannot be a shadow of a 

 doubt that these two are divided; and it is not 

 alone a mere arbitrary division of poverty and 

 riches as it would appear on the surface. It is 

 an alienation brought about by profound and 

 fundamental differences; for the gulf between 

 them is that gulf which separates the prosaic, 

 the ordinary, the commonplace, from all that is 

 colored and enlivened by romance. 



The romance of truffles endows the very word 

 itself with a halo, an aristocratic halo full of 

 mystery and suggestion. One remembers the 



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