No More Learning

Why are you questioning me? You are asking me things that I have told
to no one but my confessor.

MARTIN.

We must gather the crowds together, you and I.

FATHER JOHN.

I have dreamed your dream, it was long ago. I had your vision.

MARTIN.

And what happened?

FATHER JOHN [_harshly_].

It was stopped; that was an end. I was sent to the lonely parish where
I am, where there was no one I could lead astray. They have left me
there. We must have patience; the world was destroyed by water, it has
yet to be consumed by fire.

MARTIN.
Why should we be patient? To live seventy years, and others to come
after us and live seventy years it may be; and so from age to age, and
all the while the old splendour dying more and more.

[_A noise of shouting. ANDREW, who has been standing at
the door, comes in. _

ANDREW.

Martin says truth, and he says it well. Planing the side of a cart or
a shaft, is that life? It is not. Sitting at a desk writing letters to
the man that wants a coach, or to the man that won't pay for the one he
has got, is that life, I ask you? Thomas arguing at you and putting
you down--'Andrew, dear Andrew, did you put the tyre on that wheel yet? '
Is that life? Not, it is not. I ask you all, what do you remember
when you are dead? It's the sweet cup in the corner of the widow's
drinking-house that you remember. Ha, ha, listen to that shouting! That
is what the lads in the village will remember to the last day they live.