His bondage had softened him. Irresponsibility had weakened him. He had forgotten how to shift for himself. The night yawned about him.

A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of laughter more terrible than any sadness-a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the Sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild.

My life shall be free and broad and great, and I will not be the slave to the sense delights which chained my ancient ancestry. I reject the heritage. I break the entail. And who are you to say I am unwise?

I am first of all a white man, and only then a socialist.

Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate, down out of the depths of Time.

And at the instant he knew, he ceased to know.

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.