"Whatever you do, boy, whatever you do, make a Plan. Make agood

Plan and stick to it. Find out what life is about-I never have-

and setyourself to do whatever you ought to do. I admit it's a

puzzle…

"Those damned houses have been the curse of my life. Stucco white

elephants! Beastly cracked stucco with stains of green-black and

green. Conferva and soot… Property, they are!… Beware

of Things, Dick, beware of Things! Before youknow where you are

you are waiting on them andminding them. They'll eat your life up.

Eat up your hours and your blood and energy! When those houses came

to me, I ought to have sold them-or fled the country. I ought to

have cleared out. Sarcophagi-eaters of men! Oh! the hours and

days of work, the nights of anxiety those vile houses have cost me!

The painting! It worked up my arms; it got all over me. I stank of

it. It made me ill. It isn't living-it'sminding…

"Property's the curse of life. Property! Ugh! Look at this

country all cut up into silly little parallelograms, look at all

those villas we passed just now and those potato patches and that

tarred shanty and the hedge! Somebody'sminding every bit of it

like a dog tied to a cart's tail. Patching it and bothering about

it. Bothering! Yapping at every passer-by. Look at that notice-

board! One rotten worried little beast wants to keep us other

rotten little beasts off HIS patch,-Godknows why! Look at the

weeds in it. Look at the mended fence!… There's no property

worth having, Dick, but money. That's onlygood to spend. All

these things. Humansouls buried under a cartload of blithering

rubbish…

"I'm not a fool, Dick. I have qualities, imagination, a sort of go.

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