“There’s magic in love and smiles. Use them every day, in all you do, and see what wonderful things happen,” Brown Owl used to say chirpily, reading it from her little book. I’d believed that slogan, I’d believed that the absence of wonderful things happening had been due to my own failure, my insufficient love. Now it seemed to me that the name of a furniture polish could be substituted for “love” in this maxim without at all violating its meaning. Love was merely a tool, smiles were another tool, they were both just tools for accomplishing certain ends. No magic, merely chemicals. I felt I’d never really loved anyone, not Paul, not Chuck the Royal Porcupine, not even Arthur. I’d polished them with my love and expected them to shine, brightly enough to return my own reflection, enhanced and sparkling.

 
Lady Oracle,  M. Atwood