CHAMBERLAIN. Not at all…. Please go on!
JESSE COLLINGS. I only want to say what I said just now: Don't be down, dear friend. Your record will stand the test better than that of others. Your work is still going on; it hasn't finished just because you are—laid up.
CHAMBERLAIN. "Laid up" is a kind way of putting it, Collins.
JESSE COLLINGS. Why, I needn't even have said that; when here—it's sitting up I find you.
CHAMBERLAIN. Sitting out.
JESSE COLLINGS. Well, "sitting out," if you like, for the time being. But do you imagine that this phrase or that phrase (true for the moment) states the case, counts, is worth troubling about?
CHAMBERLAIN. Do I imagine? No, I don't. I don't imagine anything. I was never a man of imagination.
JESSE COLLINGS. You are, when you say that!
CHAMBERLAIN. No, Collings. When I've done anything, it has been because I've had it in my hands to do…. My hands are empty now. Some men manage to think with their heads only; others do it—with their stomachs you might almost say. I've never been able to think properly unless I had hold of things—had them here in my hands…. Look at them, now! (With a slow, faint gesture he indicates their helplessness; then continues:) I was the man of business,… and now, I'm out of business; so I can't think.
JESSE COLLINGS. But that business, as you call it, Chamberlain, which you made so many of us understand for the first time—I was a "Little Englander" myself, once—that's still going on.