I put it down with a short laugh, and smiling, shrugged my shoulders.
'Very well. There is nothing left for me now, I suppose, but to write my will after Chatterton, and invest inarsenic and water, was it? But I forget; I have no money! I must go out into the streets, even at this hour then, and beg a few pence to be able to kill myself, since in London, too, one can't die for nothing! There is the river. My old river at Glastonbury. If I could roll over and over in the long green weeds, why, it wouldn't matter much whether I was able to come back to the brown earth again, would it? And to look up through the dusky, jewelled light-shafts of the currents! Ha, there are flocks down there! I read about it in a story book once, and a man went down in a sack to find them. But he was drownded. No, drowned. Drownded is bad grammar; but what's the odds, I say? These idiotic wordmongers here talk about nothing but grammar …" For a good knowledge of the classics (especially of Cicero) is the foundation of all that is worth knowing in the humani.…"—You think so, my good fellow? You think Art's growing more and more of a drug, do you? And you think, too, that I shall be great—some day? But I've no ambition to be great, I tell you. Fools are great. When they die they rot and are eaten. We all shall die some day, and rot, and be eaten. I wish I were a worm.… Hush! Hush! What was that? Who's there? hi! who's there? Rayne? You, Rayne!—No, I assure you! Not starving! OnlyBut take care, or you'll have the boat over. Why are women done up like mummies? If ever I have a wife, Rayne, she shall wear knickerbockers, and race up Taygetus.… Hush, hush! Here's Christ come to see me. O dear Christ, O sweet Christ, give me your soft hand! I'll tell you all about it. I seem to know you so much better than God. And I haven't a friend in the world. I'm afraid they won't understand them … Poor little poems! Too mystic; too mystic! I must keep out my mysticism; but how can I, when my heart's breaking? breaking, breaking.… Chut, chut, there! You mustn't sit down on the bed like that. Why, you're
