It's Better To Stand By Someone's Side

They Were Not Half Living, Or Quarter Living. They Were Simply So Many Bags Of Bones In Which Sparks Of Life Fluttered Faintly.

Do You Know The Only Value Life Has Is What Life Puts Upon Itself? And It Is Of Course Overestimated, For It Is Of Necessity Prejudiced In Its Own Favour. Take That Man I Had Aloft. He Held On As If He Were A Precious Thing, A Treasure Beyond Diamonds Of Rubies. To You? No. To Me? Not At All. To Himself? Yes. But I Do Not Accept His Estimate. He Sadly Overrates Himself. There Is Plenty More Life Demanding To Be Born. Had He Fallen And Dripped His Brains Upon The Deck Like Honey From The Comb, There Would Have Been No Loss To The World. The Supply Is Too Large.

Out Of This Pack-persecution He Learned Two Important Things: How To Take Care Of Himself In A Mass-fight Against Him; And How, On A Single Dog, To Inflict The Greatest Amount Of Damage In The Briefest Space Of Time.

The First Theft Marked Buck As Fit To Survive In The Hostile Northland Environment. It Marked His Adaptability, His Capacity To Adjust Himself To Changing Conditions, The Lack Of Which Would Have Meant Swift And Terrible Death. It Marked, Further, The Decay Or Going To Pieces Of His Moral Nature, A Vain Thing And A Handicap In The Ruthless Struggle For Existence.

Pictures! Pictures! Pictures! Often, Before I Learned, Did I Wonder Whence Came The Multitudes Of Pictures That Thronged My Dreams; For They Were Pictures The Like Of Which I Had Never Seen In Real Wake-a-day Life. They Tormented My Childhood, Making Of My Dreams A Procession Of Nightmares And A Little Later Convincing Me That I Was Different From My Kind, A Creature Unnatural And Accursed.