which later he will insist on reading to the tittering
schoolboys and girls who come into the library to do
their courting and reference work. Presently, when it
grows dusk, Old Man Randall will put away his book, throw
his coat over his shoulders, sleeves dangling, flowing
white locks sweeping the frayed velvet collar. He will
march out with his soldierly tread, humming a bit of a
tune, down the street and into Vandermeister's saloon,
where he will beg a drink and a lunch, and some man will
give it to him for the sake of what Old Man Randall might
have been.

All these things you know. And knowing them, what is
left for the imagination? How can one dream dreams about
people when one knows how much they pay their hired girl,
and what they have for dinner on Wednesdays?





CHAPTER V


THE ABSURD BECOMES SERIOUS

I can understand the emotions of a broken-down war horse
that is hitched to a vegetable wagon. I am going to
Milwaukee to work! It is a thing to make the gods hold
their sides and roll down from their mountain peaks with