Mr Cornelius Recites

“I have lived in Valley Fields all my life, and would not live anywhere else if you offered me a million pounds.”

“I won’t.”

“I was born in Valley Fields, Mr Shotter, and I love the place, and I am not ashamed to say so.”

Caspar David Friedrich - Wanderer above the sea of fog
“‘Breathes there a man with soul so dead,'” inquired Mr Cornelius. “‘Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land! Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d as home his footsteps he hath turn’d from wandering on a foreign strand?'”

“Ah!” said Sam. “That’s what we’d all like to know, wouldn’t we?”

“‘If such there breathe,'” proceeded Mr Cornelius, “‘go, mark him well! For him no minstrel raptures swell. High though his titles, proud his name, boundless his wealth as wish can claim, despite those titles, power and pelf, the wretch, concentrated all in self—'”

“I have a luncheon engagement at 1:30,” said Sam.

“‘—Living, shall forfeit fair renown, and, doubly dying, shall go down to the vile dust from whence he sprung, unwept, unhonour’d and unsung.'”

from Sam the Sudden by P. G. Wodehouse

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