“Between the idea


And the reality


Between the motion


And the act


Falls the Shadow


For Thine is the Kingdom



Between the conception


And the creation


Between the emotion


And the response


Falls the Shadow


Life is very long”
From The Hollow Men, T. S. Eliot

In my short story struggles, I am at the point where I just tossed thousands of words away. My story takes place adjacent to the monetary Panic of 1857. I’ve done a bit of research on panics, and this one in particular. However, none of that research is helpful in the story I am trying to tell. In a short story you get just a few short words, and you cannot encompass two overwhelming events within those limits. One per 5000 words. That’s all you get.

The event that matters in my story is the sinking of the S. S. Central America. If I want to write about the Panic and its relation to the sinking I’d have to find a character, or make one up, for whom the banking crisis itself was critical, and the sinking of the Ship of Gold was an event in that catastrophe.

I’m writing about a newly wed couple to whom the banking crisis is unimportant, but the action of the wind and waves is critical. Cut. Cut. Cut!

~+~+~+~+~

Also, according to the Vatican website today is the feast day of Saint Evaristus and Saint Frumentius.

Saint Evaristus is an early pope and martyr, dying around 108 A.D. In fact, in the list of saints from the Roman Canon of the Mass, he would arrive just after Linus, Cletus, Clement, and Sixtus. The list jumps instead to Cornelius, martyred in 253, and keeps going.

Saint Frumentius was an Apostle to the Ethiopians. The part of his story I like best is when Frumentius goes to Saint Athanasius and asks for people to teach and preach in Ethiopia. Saint Athanasius ordains Saint Frumentius and sends him back.

https://faith.nd.edu/saint/st-frumentius/ This link does well on Saint Frumentius’ early life.

https://covenantcatholic.org/calendar-feast-day/october-27-st-frumentius/ This link does well on the rest of his life.

https://faith.nd.edu/saint/st-evaristus/ Incredibly brief version of Saint Evaristus.

Sts. Chrysanthus & Daria; Sts. Crispin & Crispinian; St. Evaristus; St. Frumentius, 1632/1635. Jacques Callot.