footsteps, and (4) I am literally not the man who wrote
it, and, despise him as I may, I have no right to interfere
with his work.
But I will not be haunted by the ghost of a Banquo
that another man has failed to lay; and this kind of
ghost knows but one exorcism.
One should bury him decently in fine fat type, and
erect nice boards over him, and collect the criticisms of
an enlightened press, and inscribe them on the tomb.
Then he is buried beyond resurrection ; oblivion takes
him, and he will never haunt the author or anybody else
again.
So I have asked Messrs Turnbull & Spears to dig the
grave and provide the coffin; the S.P.R.T. will oblige
with the funeral service.
Old Man of the Sea, these three years you have
drummed your black misshapen heels upon me; I have
had no ease because of you; I am bepissed and conskited
of your beastliness; and now you are drunk with the idea
that you are finished and perfect, I shall roll you off and
beat your brains out upon that hardest of flints, the
head of the British Public. I am shut of thee. Allah
forget thee in the day when he remembereth his friends!
August 14, 1904.
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