“Patronize!” sez I, lookin’ several icy cold daggers through him. “I have to stand Martin’s demeanors and acts, though they are harrowin’ to my soul and sickenin’ to the stumick, but I won’t stand by and have my own pardner talk about patronizin’ Coleridge and Wordsworth.” Sez I, “Talk about patronizin’ the man that wrote ‘The Ancient Mariner.’”
My tone chilled him to the veins.
My tone chilled him to the veins, and he walked off some distance away. And my mind roamed on that weird and matchless poem I had heard Thomas J. read so much, that I wuz as familiar with as I wuz with the Almanac.
How the Ancient Mariner—
“Held the wedding guests with his glittering eye.”
And how that belated guest “beat his breast” as he heard the weddin’ guests pass in, and he havin’ to set out on a stun by the side of the road, and had to hear this “gray beard loon” tell his story. For the old Mariner knew the one he had to tell it to when the fit come on, and so that weddin’ guest had to set and hear that most weird and wonderful story ever told.
And at last, jest as he released that poor, tuckered-out guest (when the weddin’ wuz all over, poor dissapinted creeter!), how he ended with these lines, so noble they must have mollified that poor, belated creeter—
“He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things, both great and small,