First Voice: A ten-thousand-footed serpent, every foot a feeler out to feel something.
Second Voice: A maw in the middle of it, the chief part, the chief part set in the middle, a hungry enlargement in the alimentary gut.
Third Voice: Another maw in the lower middle, the chiefest chief part, another hungry entrail, if you don’t like the short word.
First Voice: A little knob, a very little knob on the top. I saw the true likeness. An infinite number of feelers running out all ways, shaped like a serpent, and a very little knob on the top.
Theodosia: You couldn’t blaspheme the human mind, you couldn’t ever. To try to lower yourself by your own bootstraps. It wouldn’t operate, that’s all. You might try ever so hard, but you couldn’t do it. Stumble? Fall over your own boots and stumble, yes, but if you did you’d never know it. What you didn’t know couldn’t happen.
Second Voice: Oh talk! Which of the commandments have you not broken? Every last God’s ten of the lot.
First Voice: There ought to be more than ten, ought to be about ten thousand more commandments. One for every nerve-end.
Third Voice: A man could keep all ten and still be a writhing devil in hell.
Second Voice: The whole thing draws itself inside its own maw, lies down to sleep in its snake’s nest, replete, when it has enough.
First Voice: Yellow hair, Annie, and gentle ways. Loved everybody. The angel whiteness of the grave on her from the first. “How He took little children as lambs to His fold.” The song.