But on
the road to fame he met Drink, and she grasped his arm,
and led him down by-ways, and into crooked lanes, and
finally into ditches, and he never arrived at his goal.
There in that library window nook it is cool in summer,
and warm in winter. So he sits and dreams, holding an
open volume, unread, on his knees. Some times he writes,
hunched up in his corner, feverishly scribbling at
ridiculous plays, short stories, and novels
which later he will insist on reading to the tittering
schoolboys and girls who come into the library to do
their courting and reference work. Presently, when it
grows dusk, Old Man Randall will put away his book, throw
his coat over his shoulders, sleeves dangling, flowing
white locks sweeping the frayed velvet collar. He will
march out with his soldierly tread, humming a bit of a
tune, down the street and into Vandermeister's saloon,
where he will beg a drink and a lunch, and some man will
give it to him for the sake of what Old Man Randall might
have been.
All these things you know. And knowing them, what is
left for the imagination? How can one dream dreams about
people when one knows how much they pay their hired girl,
and what they have for dinner on Wednesdays?
CHAPTER V
THE ABSURD BECOMES SERIOUS
I can understand the emotions of a broken-down war horse
that is hitched to a vegetable wagon.
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