I will buy,
buy, buy! deference, respect, esteem, worship--every pinchbeck
grace of life the market of a trivial world can furnish forth.
I have lost much time, and chosen badly heretofore, but let that pass;
I was ignorant then, and could but take for best what seemed so."
Three short years went by, and a day came when the man sat shivering
in a mean garret; and he was gaunt and wan and hollow-eyed,
and clothed in rags; and he was gnawing a dry crust and mumbling:
"Curse all the world's gifts, for mockeries and gilded lies!
And miscalled, every one. They are not gifts, but merely lendings.
Pleasure, Love, Fame, Riches: they are but temporary disguises for
lasting realities--Pain, Grief, Shame, Poverty. The fairy said true;
in all her store there was but one gift which was precious,
only one that was not valueless. How poor and cheap and mean I
know those others now to be, compared with that inestimable one,
that dear and sweet and kindly one, that steeps in dreamless and
enduring sleep the pains that persecute the body, and the shames
and griefs that eat the mind and heart. Bring it! I am weary,
I would rest."
Chapter V
The fairy came, bringing again four of the gifts, but Death was wanting.
She said:
"I gave it to a mother's pet, a little child. It was ignorant,
but trusted me, asking me to choose for it. You did not ask me
to choose.
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