Milford brought a jug of cider. "The devil's sympathy," said the old man, drinking. "More, give me more—promises heaven, but slippers the foot that treads its way to hell. But I will not take too much. Did I tell you that I had lost my place at the mill?"
"No, you didn't say anything about it."
"I was discharged the evening before I went to town, but it made no impression on me then."
"Well, don't let it make any now. Everything will come all right."
"Yes, it will. I have walked with many an experiment, but at last there is such a thing as facing a certainty."
"Have you anything in view?"
"Oh, yes. And everything will be all right."
"I hope so."
"I don't hope—I know. But enough of that. It is a philosopher who can say, 'Ha! old Socrates, pass your cup this way.' They have hushed their song. Even the poor and the ignorant grow weary of singing; then who can expect music from the wise? What have you there? Old Whittier? He died, and they gave him a stingy column in the newspapers, squeezed by the report of the prize fight at New Orleans. If a poet would look to his fame, let him die when there is no other news. But some have died in a spread of newspaper glory—Eugene Field, the sweetest lisper of a boy's mischief, the tuner of tenderest lyrics, but with a laugh for man that cut like a scythe. And some of the rich whom he had laughed at, scrambled for a place at his coffin to bear it to the grave—tuneless clay, scuffling over tuneful dust! Oh, hypocrisy, stamp thy countenance with a dollar!"
"It's raining now," said Milford, seeking to draw his mind from the darkness of its wandering.