"There was no softenin' yesterday," he murmured, trying to reassure himself. "Why should there be to-day? Softenin' comes by degrees. Let us try again. Great Jehoshaphat!"
He stood up to his work, leaning against a window-post, and took two pages first, which he read very slowly. And then he dropped the volume in dismay, because he understood less than nothing.
It was the most disheartening thing he had ever attempted.
"I'd rather fight John Halkett over again," he said. "I'd rather sit with my finger on a trigger for a week, expecting Mr. Huggins to call upon me."
Then he began to construe it line by line, thinking every now and then that he saw daylight.
It is considered rather a mark of distinction, a separating seal upon the brow, by that poet's admirers, to reverence his later works. Their creed is that because a poem is rough, harsh, ungrammatical, and dark, it must have a meaning as deep as its black obscurity.
"It's like the texts of a copybook," said Gilead. "Pretty things, all of them, separate. Put them together and where are they? I guess this book would read better upsy down."
He poured cold water on his head for a quarter of an hour or so, and then tried reading it aloud.
This was worse than any previous method, because he comprehended no more of the poet's meaning, and the rough hard words made his front teeth crack and fly about the room in splinters.
"Cæsar's ghost!" he exclaimed, thinking what he should do if Robert Browning talked as he wrote. "The human jaw isn't built that could stand it."