"Have no water in cleek," says Fu Shan, aristocratic and peaceful.
"Dlied up."
"Dried up. Played out," says Sadler, not understanding him. "Fu
Shan's a dry-rotted Asiatic. Doesn't anything make any difference to
him. Got any nerves? Not one. Got any seethin' emotions? Not a seeth.
He's a wornout race in the numbness of decrepitude."
Fu Shan chuckled.
"But me, I'm different," says Sadler, "The uselessness of things
bothers me. Look at 'em. I been in Saleratus five years, partner with
Fu Shan. Sometimes I had a good time. Where is it now? You laugh, or
you sigh. Same amount of wind, nothing left either way.
What's the use?
You chew tobacco and spit out the juice.
What's the use?
If there's anybody with a destiny that's got any assets at all, and
he wants to swap even, bring him along. Look at this town! Is it any
sort of a town? No honesty, for there ain't a man in it that can
shuffle a pack without stackin' it. No ability, for there ain't
more'n one or two can stack it real well. No seriousness, for they
start in to drown a Chinaman in a dry creek, and they cut away as
happy as if they'd succeeded. I sits up here on my porch, and I says,
'What is it but a dream? Fu Shan,' I says, 'this here life's a
shadow!' Then that forsaken, conceited, blank heathen, he says one of
his ancestors discovered the same three thousand years ago.
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