He's just, your cousin, ay, abhorrently, He'd wash his hands in blood, to keep them clean.

Books, books, books! I had found the secret of a garret room Piled high with cases in my father’s name; Piled high, packed large,--where, creeping in and out Among the giant fossils of my past, Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there At this or that box, pulling through the gap, In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, The first book first. And how I felt it beat Under my pillow, in the morning’s dark, An hour before the sun would let me read! My books!

OF writing many books there is no end; And I who have written much in prose and verse For others' uses, will write now for mine,- Will write my story for my better self, As when you paint your portrait for a friend, Who keeps it in a drawer and looks at it Long after he has ceased to love you, just To hold together what he was and is.

God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers, And thrusts the thing we have prayed for in our face, A gauntlet with a gift in it.

A man may love a woman perfectly, and yet by no means ignorantly maintain a thousand women have not larger eyes. Enough that she alone has looked at him with eyes that, large or small, have won his soul.

Like to write? Of course, of course I do. I seem to live while I write - it is life, for me.

May the good God pardon all good men.