"
"Look, here!" said Sheridan. "Bibbs might 'a' kept goin' on over
there the rest of his life, moonin' on and on, but what he heard Sibyl
say did one big thing, anyway. It woke him up out of his trance.
Well, he had to go and bust clean out with a bang; and that stopped
his goin' over there, and it stopped his poetry, but I reckon he's
begun to get pretty fair pay for what he lost. I guess a good many
young men have had to get over worries like his; they got to lose
SOMETHING if they're goin' to keep ahead o' the procession nowadays
--and it kind o' looks to me, mamma, like Bibbs might keep quite a
considerable long way ahead. Why, a year from now I'll bet you he
won't know there ever WAS such a thing as poetry! And ain't he funny?
He wanted to stick to the shop so's he could 'think'! What he meant
was, think about something useless. Well, I guess he's keepin' his
mind pretty occupied the other way these days. Yes, sir, it took a
pretty fair-sized shock to get him out of his trance, but it certainly
did the business." He patted his wife's shoulder again, and then,
without any prefatory symptoms, broke into a boisterous laugh.
"Honest, mamma, he works like a gorilla!"
CHAPTER XXI
And so Bibbs sat in the porch of the temple with the money-changers.
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