She loved
beggin', pore dear!'
'Texts from the Bible?' I said, staggering under a new thought that
seemed to strike through me like a bar of hot metal. 'Can you
remember any one of them?'
'It was allus the same tex', an' I ought to remember it well enough,
for I've 'eerd it times enough. She wur like you for poll-parritin'
ways, and used to say the same thing over an' over ag'in. It wur
allus, "Let his children be wagabones and beg their bread; let them
seek it also out of desolate places." Why, you're at it
ag'in--gurnin' ag'in. You _must_ be drunk.'
Again there came upon me the involuntary laughter of heart-agony at
its tensest. I cried aloud: 'Faith and Love! Faith and Love! That
farce of the Raxton crypt with the great-grandmother's fool on his
knees shall be repeated for the delight of Nin-ki-gal and the Danish
skeletons and the ancestral ghosts from Hugh the Crusader down to the
hero of the knee-caps and mittens; and there shall be a dance of
death and a song, and the burden shall be--
As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods:
They kill us for their sport.
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