He lights his pipe and settles back in the big, overstuffed easy chair with the flowered slip-cover that Marge made, still frowning. "It's an unhappy world," he repeats. "It all depends on what side of the picture you want to look at," I says, trying to cheer him up. "Maybe you been reading too many newspaper headlines." Joe wasn't listening. "What makes people unhappy, Harry?" Now, son, there's a million things that make people unhappy. Given half the night, I could maybe list a couple of hundred. But to narrow it down to one or two, I couldn't do it. So I just shook my head and let Joe carry the ball. "It's a complex world, Harry. A lot of people never adjust to it. Some of them turn the tables and try to adjust the world to them, which makes a lot of other people unhappy. No, I'd say there's a certain number of people who just don't fit in this world of ours. Maybe at a different time and on another world, they might fit. But they don't fit on this one, not right here and now." * * * * * That was a way of looking at it that I had never thought of before. And Joe had a point. Now you take old Barney Muhlenberg, the town drunk. I knew Barney when he was a boy, and a more sober, adventure-seeking young rascal you never saw. But by then all the frontiers had dried up, it was between wars, and the only adventure Barney could find was in the bottom of a bottle. Barney was one of those poor folks born fifty years too late. Or you take Miss Alice Markey, the history teacher at Fremont High. She's an old spinster--frail, white-haired, and a little bit crabby now. You'd never believe it but she used to be the romantic type. Somehow, the right man just never came along, but she's never given up hoping either. Sure, you wouldn't believe it to look at them. But that's how people are, down underneath. All dreams and wishful thinking. "It's tough, Joe," I says, "but what can you do about it?" It always seemed to me that you weren't going to help people by letting them fall asleep on a couch at fifty dollars a nap and trying to convince them they should give up their dreams. "You've got to give people something _positive_!" Joe says, hitting an end table with his fist so an ashtray jumps off. I sat up and began to take notice. Once Joe had an idea, he usually did something about it. "You got something in mind," I accused. He stopped pacing and pointed his pipe at me like it was the working end of a twenty-two rifle. "I got an idea, Harry," he says, the genius showing in his eyes like the dollar signs in a cash register. "I'm going to make a machine during my vacation and...." And then Marge is in the doorway, dishtowel in her hand and little anger spots in her cheeks. "Joseph Shannon!" she says, stamping her foot. "You know perfectly well what we're going to do and where we're going to go on your vacation!"