The Raven, from http://xkcd.com/
By Julia H. Jackson
Imagine that your significant other has recently fallen ill. You are an orphaned adult. Everyone who is close to you is slowly dying of tuberculosis, or as you call it, consumption. You can’t sleep. You fidget. You wait by your writing table and contemplate the slow descent of humanity. And suddenly, there is a knock at your door.
I should mention that you are a sometimes-successful editor of literary magazines. It is 1845.
“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`’Tis some visitor,’ I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.’”
