There! -- I'm glad you've put it back; for I don't like it.
Shut the drawer now.
No -- no -- don't cancel anything. I'll dance until I drop.
I can't walk yet, but I'm going to. . . . Go away somewhere,
and leave me. . . .
Oh, you children! Oh, you children! . . . God, will they never stop!"
Tasker Norcross
"Whether all towns and all who live in them --
So long as they be somewhere in this world
That we in our complacency call ours --
Are more or less the same, I leave to you.
I should say less. Whether or not, meanwhile,
We've all two legs -- and as for that, we haven't --
There were three kinds of men where I was born:
The good, the not so good, and Tasker Norcross.
Now there are two kinds."
"Meaning, as I divine,
Your friend is dead," I ventured.
Ferguson,
Who talked himself at last out of the world
He censured, and is therefore silent now,
Agreed indifferently: "My friends are dead --
Or most of them."
"Remember one that isn't,"
I said, protesting. "Honor him for his ears;
Treasure him also for his understanding."
Ferguson sighed, and then talked on again:
"You have an overgrown alacrity
For saying nothing much and hearing less;
And I've a thankless wonder, at the start,
How much it is to you that I shall tell
What I have now to say of Tasker Norcross,
And how much to the air that is around you.
But given a patience that is not averse
To the slow tragedies of haunted men --
Horrors, in fact, if you've a skilful eye
To know them at their firesides, or out walking, --"
"Horrors," I said, "are my necessity;
And I would have them, for their best effect,
Always out walking.
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