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"Conversation. What is it? A Mystery! It's the art of never seeming bored, of touching everything with interest, of pleasing with trifles, of being fascinating with nothing at all. How do we define this lively darting about with words, of hitting them back and forth, this sort of brief smile of ideas which should be conversation?" Guy de Maupassant

Friday, December 31, 2004

Thought for the Day

Rohit shared this poem with me ....

I Am The People, The Mob
by Carl Sandburg, Chicago Poems. New York, N.Y.: Henry Holt, 1916.

I am the people--the mob--the crowd--the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world's food and clothes.
I am the audience that witnesses history.
The Napoleons come from me and the Lincolns.
They die.
And then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.
I am the seed ground.
I am a prairie that will stand for much plowing.
Terrible storms pass over me.
I forget.
The best of me is sucked out and wasted.
I forget.
Everything but Death comes to me and makes me work and give up what I
have. And I forget.
Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red drops for
history to remember.
Then--I forget.
When I, the People, learn to remember,
when I, the People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer forget
who robbed me last year, who played me for a fool
--then there will be no speaker in all the world
say the name: "The People," with any fleck of a sneer in his voice
or any far-off smile of derision.
The mob--the crowd--the mass--will arrive then.



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