The Country of the Pointed Firs

The old poets little knew what comfort they could be to a man.

Tact is after all a kind of mind-reading.

The road was new to me, as roads always are, going back.

Captain Littlepage had overset his mind with too much reading.

'Tain't worthwhile to wear a day all out before it comes.

Yes'm, old friends is always best, 'less you can catch a new one that's fit to make an old one out of.

So we die before our own eyes; so we see some chapters of our lives come to their natural end.

In the life of each of us, I said to myself, there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness.