the general public enjoys reading any book, of any kind, that is being read by the public generally, through much that herd instinct for doing what e… - James Branch Cabell

With the passage of time, whatever a man had done, whether for good or evil, with the man's bodily organs, left the man's parish unaffected: only a man's thoughts and dreams could outlive him, in any serious sense, and these might survive with perhaps augmenting influence: so that Kennaston had come to think artistic creation in words — since marble and canvas inevitably perished — was the one, possibly, worth-while employment of human life. But here was a crude corporal deed which bluntly destroyed thoughts, and annihilated dreams by wholesale. To Kennaston this seemed the one real tragedy that could be staged on earth....

"Meanwhile I tell you candidly, you brown man, there is something in Jurgen far too admirable for any intelligent arbiter ever to fling into the dustheap. I am, if nothing else, a monstrous clever fellow: and I think I shall endure, somehow. Yes, cap in hand goes through the land, as the saying is, and I believe I can contrive some trick to cheat oblivion when the need arises," says Jurgen, trembling, and gulping, and with his eyes shut tight, but even so, with his mind quite made up about it. "Of course you may be right; and certainly I cannot go so far as to say you are wrong: but still, at the same time — "

They of Poictesme narrate that in the old days when miracles were as common as fruit pies, young Manuel was a swineherd, living modestly in attendance upon the miller's pigs. They tell also that Manuel was content enough: he knew not of the fate which was reserved for him.