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The Platypus Waits

I have a tennis game at 11:00. "Tell the Dauphin that when we have played a set we shall strike his father's crown into the wager..." Ok, so I couldn't resist a little Henry V. Interestingly enough, tennis was already all the rage among nobles and spreading to the wealthy commons in the 14th century (100 years before Prince Hal). In many ways, that's what you might call the beginning of the modern era. Of course, in history, claims for the beginning of the modern era keep creeping backward until Ulysses' Trojan horse is the marker. That probably should tell us something about the unchanging nature of man in spite of his changing circumstances. Whatever the scene, man is the great spectacle, as G.K. Chesterton would say, and all of heaven clamours "let him play again!" Most of us resist that thought instinctively, but Chesterton actually makes it compelling. Goethe does that as well with his "Faust". These are the things I think of when I'm waiting. The Platypus just reads "Calvin and Hobbes".

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