I

The salesmen, disguised as befuddled policemen, waveringly surrounded the art collector.
They had driven capably all the way from The Hague to East Harlem.
The owners shrewdly viewed their plight with this distorting but comforting disposition:
Turned upside down, whatever its form, the picture acquired greater reality.
Although fully responsible, they waived membership in the drought administration: “Not our kind of time.”