This page needs to be proofread.
than my life over there 'mong the Charleston merchants.
- There was something hollow in the whole affair,
- something foreign at the bottom, something dubious behind it;-
- I was never at home in their company,
- nor felt myself really one of the guild.
- What tempted me into that galley at all?
- To grub and grub in the bins of trade-
- as I think it all over, I can't understand it;-
- it happened so; that's the whole affair.-
- To be oneself on a basis of gold
- is no better than founding one's house on the sand.
- For your watch, and your ring, and the rest of your trappings
- the good people fawn on you, grovelling to earth;
- they lift their hats to your jewelled breast-pin;
- but your ring and your breast-pin are not your person.-
- A prophet; ay, that is a clearer position.
- At least one knows on what footing one stands.
- If you make a success, it's yourself that receives
- the ovation, and not your pounds-sterling and shillings.
- One is what one is, and no nonsense about it;
- one owes nothing to chance or to accident,
- and needs neither licence nor patent to lean on.-
- A prophet; ay, that is the thing for me.
- And I slipped so utterly unawares into it,-
- just by coming galloping over the desert,
- and meeting these children of nature en route.
- The Prophet had come to them; so much was clear.
- It was really not my intent to deceive-
- there's a difference 'twixt lies and oracular answers;
- and