=== Bitter Grounds ===
Power himself. He smelled it in his cotton. He'd been in the business for four years. The first three years were hopeful ones. There was a world war, and unlike coffee, cotton prices rose steadily, thanks to the growth of the local textile industry. Alvaro Tobar gripped the wheel of his convertible and leaned into the approaching curve. He loved the sense of power he experienced when he was in the driver's seat. He'd owned the car since before the war, and maybe now that the war had ended, he would buy a newer model. This convertible he would not sell, however. He patted the wheel as if reassuring the vehicle of his loyalty. It was a late afternoon in early November. The air was heavy with coming rain, surely one of the last downpours before the dry season. Alvaro would wait for the first drops to fall before he stopped to raise the questions. He was only a few kilometers from San Salvador and, once inside the city limits, only minutes from home. Alvaro's thoughts turned to his cotton harvest. For the past week, he'd been on the eastern coast, at his plantation outside Usulutan. On this trip, he had helped ready the hacienda for the harvest, which would start at month's end, Much was riding on his cotton. He always referred to it as 'mi algodon'; My cotton, a venture that he, not his mother, controlled. He pictured his mother's strong, handsome face. Eugenia Herrera de Tobar. At seventy-three, doña Eugenia was still the undisputed ruler of the Tobar family. As the doyenne, she controlled her business and private affairs with as much vigor as she had since her husband's death. Because she had Alvaro and his four older sisters to help, she took over the reins of her husband's cattle-ranching operation and her vast property holdings and never relinquished them. Under her control, her husband's enterprises prospered. Oh, there were moments when she cried out against the fate that had sent her down a path strewn with so much responsibility, 'It's a heavy burden life has handed me,' she liked to say. 'A burden I long to have lifted from my shoulders.' Even as a youngster, however, when Alvaro heard his mother's lamentations, he had glimpsed into her heart as if her chest were made of glass. In her heart, he had seen the pleasure the burden gave her: It was power that obsessed her. And could he blame her? He had had a whiff of the heady scent of cash flow, of money transferred from one account to another, of bank loans and promissory notes. This year, because of insecticides, would bring his first bumper crop.
=== Passage A by Lla Purpura ===
The miniature is mysterious. We wonder how all those parts work, when they're so small. It's why we linger over tiny infants' fingers and toes, those astonishing replicas: we can't quite believe they work. Miniatures offer changes of scale by which we measure ourselves anew. ... The miniature in question was commissioned for Queen Claude of France. Nearly three generations after the invention of printing, there was no practical reason to commission this work. Rather, it was the delight in luxury itself, as well, perhaps, as the spirit of sacrifice that brought this work into existence.
=== Passage B by James Gardner ===
Without meaning to do so, the Morgan Library has created a triumph of conceptual art: the smallest art exhibition in the world. The Prayer Book of Claude de France... But to some extent, a dollhouse can encourage people to live life at a slower pace.