Now I will do nothing but listen to accrue what I hear into this song. To let sounds contribute toward it. I hear the sound I love. The sound of the human voice. I hear all sounds running together.

The Past -- the dark unfathomed retrospect! The teeming gulf --the sleepers and the shadows! The past! the infinite greatness of the past! For what is the present after all but a growth out of the past?

Future years will never know the seething hell and the black infernal background, the countless minor scenes and interiors of the secession war; and it is best they should not. The real war will never get in the books.

This face is a dog's snout sniffing for garbage, snakes nest in that mouth, I hear the sibilant threat.

As soon as histories are properly told there is no more need of romances.

Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.

In all people I see myself - none more, and not one a barleycorn less; And the good or bad I say of myself, I say of them.