"But now the enemy is people," John O'Hara wrote in a novel about the Pennsylvania elite in the early 20th century, people whom you'll find "trading...the ophidian [serpent-like] devious for the classic simple."
"A parent is sweepingly protective of his infant's existence; but after the baby days are over, the threats become single threats, calling for defensive measures singly, a measure to a threat; vigilance and defensiveness always, but each threat of harm dealt with individually. And, of course, each hope to be dreamed and planned over by tiself. In the beginning years the father's fears are for bugs, and the less visible the worse the fear, but not much can be done about them. In the later years the bugs are still there, but now the enemy is people, and some of them no more visible than the most dangerous bugs, and as little to be done about them. But of course there are the good and the kind and the loving among the people, the serenely good, the impetuously kind, the continually loving, who trust their own goodness and kindness and loving without suspicious questioning or ultimately contemptuous analysis, or denying the positive, glorifying the evil, marketing the poison, or trading nothing for something, the gag for the joke, the sneer for the laugh, the fancy lie for the plain truth, the ophidian devious for the classic simple. But of course of the good, the kind, the loving, there are exactly too few, exactly, and among them are traitors as well as converts."
— John O’Hara (1905-1970), Ten North Frederick (1955)
