The cop on their corner stopped them, examined the tree and solemnly offered to buy it: "Ten cents – fifteen cents if you'll deliver it to my house."
Francie nearly burst with pride although she knew that he was joking. She said she wouldn't sell it for a dollar, even. He shook his head and said she was foolish not the grab the offer. He went up to:
"A quarter!"
But Francie kept smiling and shaking her head, "no."
It was like acting in the Christmas play where the setting was a street corner and the time, a frosty Christmas Eve and the characters: a kind cop, her brother and herself.
 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
One day a handsome and rich young man named Wu Fang was climbing in the trees near Chen Lien's home, looking for birds' nests, when he happened to look down over her father's wall, and saw the young lady sewing in her garden.  Her good eyebrow was toward him, and he thought her the most beautiful girl he had ever seen.  The more he looked and the more he thought about her, the more he knew he was in love, so that night he begged his parents to arrange for marriage to the girl in the garden.  He begged them so pitifully that they consented.  They sent for a matchmaker of the neighborhood, and after many gifts and many journeys back and forth the marriage was arranged. 
But the matchmaker said to Wu Fang: ''The young maiden is good, she is rich and she is beautiful.  Still, there is one flaw in her beauty, and you should know about it before you go ahead and finish all the arrangements.''
''I have seen the young woman, and I know her beauty,'' said the young man, and would listen no further.
 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
Ages ago in a wasteland of time and a wilderness of space, Man, in uppercase, and dinosaur, in lower, first came face to face.  They stood like stones for a long while, wary and watchful, taking each other in.  Something told the dinosaur that he beheld before him the coming glory and terror of the world, and he seemed to catch the faint smell of his own inevitable doom.
"Greetings, stupid!" said one of the men. "Behold in me the artfully articulated architect of the future, the chosen species, the certain survivor, the indestructible one, the monarch of all you survey, and of all that everyone else surveys, for that matter. On the other hand, you, (curiously enough for all your size) are a member of the inconsequential ephemera."