In fact, here I am these current years 1890 and ’91, (each successive fortnight getting stiffer and stuck deeper) much like some hard-cased dilapidated grim ancient shellfish or time-bang’d conch (no legs, utterly non-locomotive) cast up high and dry on the shore-sands, helpless to move anywhere⁠—nothing left but behave myself quiet, and while away the days yet assign’d, and discover if there is anything for the said grim and time-bang’d conch to be got at last out of inherited good spirits and primal buoyant centre-pulses down there deep somewhere within his gray-blurr’d old shell.⁠ ⁠… (Reader, you must allow a little fun here⁠—for one reason there are too many of the following poemets about death, etc. , and for another the passing hours (July 5, 1890) are so sunny-fine. And old as I am I feel today almost a part of some frolicsome wave, or for sporting yet like a kid or kitten⁠—probably a streak of physical adjustment and perfection here and now. I believe I have it in me perennially anyhow.)