B IS FOR BOXES?

“No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human breast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can expect to come through the struggle unscathed.” 
 - Sigmund Freud


The ghost of Mark Twain had wandered off in search of pretty young girls with innocent, trusting eyes. 

I looked back to the ghost of Freud.

He looked younger.  Meilori's was like that. 

Few ghosts remained the same during a conversation with them.

His lips wrinkled as if expecting trouble.  "All right, young man, what first enters your mind when I say B?"

"Boxes," I said.

He glared at the retreating form of Mark Twain. 

"No wonder he left.  He was afraid I would upbraid him for contaminating this exercise!"

"It's more like braids than upbraids, sir.  He's after Alice Liddell over there."

Freud sighed, "The man's obsession with his Angel Fish Club saddens me."

"I know it might strike you as a perversion, sir.  But it isn't. 

Towards the end of his life, he suffered quite a lot of loss.  In 1896 his favorite daughter, Susy, died. 

His wife passed away in 1904 and a second daughter, Jean, followed in 1909."

I looked sadly at Twain making Alice Liddell giggle. 

"So he created a club of sorts made up of surrogate granddaughters he called the Angel Fish Club."

Mark Twain and Dorothy Quick 

Freud glowered, "You are naïve."

"I choose to think of it as believing the best of a friend."

Freud snorted as if to blow away irritating gnats. 

"What is this nonsense of you thinking Boxes when I say B?"

I said, "You left the Library of Congress 153 boxes of your correspondence.   Of those, 19 boxes can’t be opened until 2020, 2050 or 2057.

Another 8 boxes are sealed forever.  Why would you give them boxes that could not be opened?  And why on earth would they accept them?"

Freud showed me his teeth in what wasn't in the same galaxy as a real smile.  "Why indeed?"

He showed me a mortician's face.  "Shall we proceed to C?"