This page needs to be proofread.
glasses with him].
- How strengthening it is to hear
- a principle thus acted out,
- freed from the night of theory,
- unshaken by the outward ferment!
PEER [who has been drinking freely during the preceding passages]
- We Northland men know how to carry
- our battle through! The key to the art
- of life's affairs is simply this:
- to keep one's ear close shut against
- the ingress of one dangerous viper.
MR. COTTON
- What sort of viper, pray, dear friend?
PEER
- A little one that slyly wiles you
- to tempt the irretrievable.
- [Drinking again.]
- The essence of the art of daring,
- the art of bravery in act,
- is this: To stand with choice-free foot
- amid the treacherous snares of life,-
- to know for sure that other days
- remain beyond the day of battle,-
- to know that ever in the rear
- a bridge for your retreat stands open.
- This theory has borne me on,
- has given my whole career its colour;
- and this same theory I inherit,
- a race-gift, from my childhood's home.
MONSIEUR BALL
