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Yes, plucked!-Phew! I'm plucked clean enough indeed.
- Well, well, I've a trifle still left in reserve;
- I've a little in America, a little in my pocket;
- so I won't be quite driven to beg my bread.-
- And at bottom this middle condition is best.
- I'm no longer a slave to my coachman and horses;
- I haven't to fret about postchaise or baggage;
- I am master, in short, of the situation.-
- What path should I choose? Many paths lie before me;
- and a wise man is known from a fool by his choice.
- My business life is a finished chapter;
- my love-sports, too, are a cast-off garment.
- I feel no desire to live back like a crab.
- "Forward or back, and it's just as far;
- out or in, and it's just as strait,"-
- so I seem to have read in some luminous work.-
- I'll try something new, then; ennoble my course;
- find a goal worth the labour and money it costs.
- Shall I write my life without dissimulation,-
- a book for guidance and imitation?
- Or stay-! I have plenty of time at command;-
- what if, as a travelling scientist,
- I should study past ages and time's voracity?
- Ay, sure enough; that is the thing for me!
- Legends I read e'en in childhood's days,
- and since then I've kept up that branch of learning.-
- I will follow the path of the human race!
- Like a feather I'll float on the stream of history,
- make it all live again, as in a dream,-
- see the heroes battling for truth and right,
- as
