Explore "Getting Acquainted" by Gelett Burgess on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Two lives moving in mysterious orbits are drawn together, and for an instant, or maybe for ever after, whirl side by side. We call the encounter an introduction, and we usually proceed to stifle the wonder of it by impersonal talk of art, books or the drama. It is an every-day affair and does not commonly stir the imagination. And yet to the connoisseur in living the meeting may be an event as well as an episode. He is a discoverer come to an unknown shore -- it may be the margent of a boundless sea or not, but of a certain it is swung by new tides and currents to be adventured and plumbed.
How can we, supercivilized out of almost all real emotion, develop the potential charm of this first glimpse of a new personality? It is guarded by conventionality; the shutters are down, the door is barricaded; you may knock in vain with polite interrogations, and no one appears at the window. Must we perforce set the house afire, smite or shriek aloud to bring this stranger's soul to his eyes for one searching gaze, face to face? The time is so short -- we must greet, and pass on to the next; we exchange easy commonplaces, and so the chance vanishes. Why not defy custom and boldly snatch in that magic moment some satisfactory taste of warm human intercourse?