Originally Posted by ThomasMcKean
Time to get technical about this. Looking over the file ("A Fine and Private Place"), I found this in the FB2:
"Yes," Mr. Rebeck said, turning back, "but if life is the only distinction between the living and the dead?I don't think I'm alive. Not really." </p><p>
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<p> "You're alive," the raven said. "You hide behind gravestones, but it follows you. You ran away from it nineteen years ago, and it follows you like a skip-tracer." He cackled softly. "Life must love you very much." </p><p>
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<p> "I don't want to be loved," Mr. Rebeck cried. "It's a burden on me." </p><p>
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<p> "Well, that's your affair," the raven said. "I got my own problems." His black wings beat in a small thunder. "I gotta get moving. Let's have the bags and stuff." </p><p>
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<p> Mr. Rebeck went into the mausoleum and came out a few moments later with five empty paper bags and an empty milk container. The raven took the bags in his claws and waved aside the container. "I'll pick that up later. Carry it now and I'll have to walk home." He sprang into the air and flapped slowly away over Central Avenue. </p><p>
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<p> "Good-by," Mr. Rebeck called after him. </p><p>
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<p> "See you," the raven croaked and disappeared behind a huge elm. Mr. Rebeck stretched himself, sat down again on the steps, and watched the sun climb. He felt a bit disconcerted. Usually, the raven brought him food twice a day, they exchanged some backchat, and that was that. Sometimes they didn't even talk. I don't know that bird at all, he thought, and it's been all these years. I know ghosts better than I know that small bird. He drew his knees up to his chin and thought about that. It was a new thought, and Mr. Rebeck treasured new thoughts. He hadn't had too many lately, and he knew it was his fault. The cemetery wasn't conducive to new thoughts; the environment wasn't right. It was a place for counting over the old, stored thoughts, stroking them lovingly and carefully, as if they were fine glassware, wondering if they could be thought any other way, and knowing deeply and securely that this way was the best. So he examined the new thought closely but gingerly, stood close to it to get the details and then away from it for perspective; he stretched it, thinned it, patted it into different shapes, gradually molding it to fit the contours of his mind. A rush of wings made him look up. The raven was circling ten or fifteen feet above him, calling to him. </p><p>
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Clearly the double spacing IS in the file. How do I strip out the extra spaces and still leave one space between paragraphs?
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