IX 
HAMMOCK NIGHTS 
THERE is a great gulf between pancakes and 
truffles: an eternal, fixed, abysmal cafion. 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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