An auld man like me may say that
to yer face. Sae I'll awa' to my bed, and sing the lave o' my psalm as
I gang."
Mr Cupples had a proclivity to garrets. He could not be comfortable if
any person was over his head. He could breathe, he said, when he got
next to the stars. For the rats he cared nothing, and slept as if the
garret were a cellar in heaven.
It had been a sore trial of his manhood to keep his vow after he knew
that Alec was safe in the haven of a sick-bed. He knew that for him, if
he were once happy again, there was little danger of a relapse; for his
physical nature had not been greatly corrupted: there had not been time
for that. He would rise from his sickness newborn. Hence it was the
harder for Mr Cupples, in his loneliness, to do battle with his
deep-rooted desires. He would never drink as he had done, but might he
not have just one tumbler????-That one tumbler he did not take. And--rich
reward!???-after two months the well of song within him began to gurgle
and heave as if its waters would break forth once more in the desert;
the roseate hue returned to the sunsets; and the spring came in with a
very childhood of greenness.???-The obfuscations of self-indulgence will
soon vanish where they have not been sealed by crime and systematic
selfishness.
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