"Unstable as water," he said (I am sure he did)--"unstable as water,
thou shalt not excel. Man, where are YOUR cabbages?"
I shrank back. Then I waxed rebellious. I refused to answer the
question. He had no right to ask it, and his presence was an affront
upon the landscape. And a dignity entered into me, and my neck was
stiffened, my head poised. I gathered together certain certificates
of goods and chattels, pointed my heel towards him and his cabbages,
and journeyed townward. I was yet a man. There was naught in those
certificates to be ashamed of. But alack-a-day! While my heels
thrust the cabbage-man beyond the horizon, my toes were drawing me,
faltering, like a timid old beggar, into a roaring spate of humanity-
-men, women, and children without end. They had no concern with me,
nor I with them. I knew it; I felt it. Like She, after her fire-
bath in the womb of the world, I dwindled in my own sight. My feet
were uncertain and heavy, and my soul became as a meal sack, limp
with emptiness and tied in the middle.
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