"To renounce when it shall be necessary and not be embittered." A woman
with a baby carriage comes by. Something tender and sane and everyday
and basic about her and her baby. A Chinese woman passing looks for all
the world like a black and iridescent purple grackle in her shiny black
coat and shiny black pants and shiny black shoes and shiny black hair,
although the grackle has a prouder strut than her dancing little trot.
"To keep a few friends and those without capitulation." Where, oh where,
do all the men come from who lie stretched out on the grass? I've seen
the very same men lying on Boston Common, and when my father was a boy
he said he saw them there. Hats over their eyes or else blinking up at
the blue sky. Then on the curb facing the Hall of Justice, philosophers
up from the water front or fresh from box cars, everyone with a story
that Stevenson would have got from them.
"Above all on the same grim conditions to keep friends with himself." On
the bench an enormous woman with a hat that looks like a schooner atop
of a great pompadour wave and on the very same bench a mummied old
Chinese as thin as a wafer. An aeroplane hums above and Stevenson's
little boat looks envious. Where did Captain Montgomery of the sloop
Portsmouth stand when he planted the flag in 1848? The Mission bell, so
many miles to Dolores, so many miles to Rafael.
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