His usually calm voice was raised with emotion. "I got word the serial was done and Bob Durfree called before I sent for it. I've got some bad news for you, Phil. They've been dissatisfied with Durfree's editorial policy for quite a while. Over the weekend, the Board met and they've hired a new editor. Serials are out, from now on. I reminded the new editor that the characters in your story belong to them--and you can't sell it anywhere else. He said he was sorry; said he wanted short stories about Cynthia, as usual. But no serials. You know, they never consider a request as a commitment. I'm as sore as I can be! I realize you were counting on the money for your new house. But--can't you change the characters and do it over and let me try it on somebody else? It's a mighty good story!" Harold is not just my literary representative. He is my friend. I didn't want him to guess how I really felt. I told him I'd decide later whether to write the serial over or to chuck it. I hung up. Went to the desk. The carbon copy of my summer's work was sitting there, mute and blurry in its box. I took it out and fingered it and wondered how long it would be before I'd get to that sober book which would try to tell what certain men had learned of human instinct and how different it was from what most of the rest of mankind believed. Quite a while, I thought. There were other things to do first. A wife to heal, a kid to send to school, a house to finish, taxes to pay, trips to make, furniture to buy. Maybe a war to fight at some frustrated desk. But then the future didn't belong to me, anyway. It doesn't belong to you. It belongs to our children and their children; to God--whom I call instinct--whom you may never call or call upon--or whom you may prayerfully confuse with your own good opinion of yourself. Look and see. I went down to the Knight's Bar alone. I was hungry. (This is one of the marvels of Nature.) Jay brought a menu. "Terrible, about your nephew," he said. "It's all right, now. He'll pull out of it." "That kind of thinking, I guess, is more than men can stand." "It's the thinking they don't do that they can't stand." Jay smiled a little. "Then they aren't any different from the rest of us." "They aren't. Only--they don't know it." Jay glanced down at the menu. "Sole," I said, "and parsley potatoes Tartar sauce and a baked apple." My mind flared and guttered over the anticlimaxes of the day. Soon, it commenced to take its ribald revenge. I sent a message to the neurologists: Gentlemen: