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My teacher is subject to flights of fancy, and over the years we've
made allowances for this. Last night, for instance, he started talking
about his teacher, a Mr. Benson, and David's experiences at Franklin
Farms in Mendham, New Jersey, which seems to have been a place where
Madame Ouspensky and others tortured people (those are my words).
In any event, I know David's teachers were brutal.
So the first thing they had David do, when he arrived, was go into
some greenhouse, which had evidently been shot up by one of Ouspensky's
grandchildren, who was blind, and paint. The greenhouse, according
to David, who chuckled at the recollection, was pretty messed up.
Then, according to David, Mr. Benson comes in and sees David swiping
his brush up and down and says, "Mr. Daniels! No violence!"
Well, this was the first time anyone had ever actually seen
David, and to actually hear, "No violence!" was sort of
a shock. So from then on, David told us in last night's secret meeting,
he became like the bull in the children's story ... The
Bull Who Ate Flowers. And the rest of the time he spent at Mendham,
under the tutelage of Martin and Rita Benson and Sophia Ouspensky,
that's what everybody called him.
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