get other things, our childhood comes back to us.

CHAMBERLAIN. Yes?

JESSE COLLINGS. Now I wonder if that's true?

CHAMBERLAIN. I wonder.

JESSE COLLINGS. Mine hasn't begun to come back to me.

CHAMBERLAIN. You aren't old yet.

JESSE COLLINGS. I'm over eighty.

CHAMBERLAIN. Good for another twenty years. And once you were my senior.
We weren't quite boys together, Collings; but we've been good friends.

JESSE COLLINGS. Thank God for that!--Joe.

CHAMBERLAIN. Yes, I do. More now than I used to.

JESSE COLLINGS. All the same, you haven't so much cause to thank Him as we
have.

CHAMBERLAIN. No?

(_The listless monotone makes the little old man fear that he is not
succeeding_.)

JESSE COLLINGS. Is my talk tiring you?

CHAMBERLAIN. Not at all.... Please go on!

JESSE COLLINGS. I only want to say what I said just now: Don't be down,
dear friend. Your record will stand the test better than that of others.
Your work is still going on; it hasn't finished just because you are--laid
up.

CHAMBERLAIN. "Laid up" is a kind way of putting it, Collins.

JESSE COLLINGS. Why, I needn't even have said that; when here--it's
_sitting_ up I find you.

CHAMBERLAIN. Sitting _out_.

JESSE COLLINGS. Well, "sitting out," if you like, for the time being. But
do you imagine that this phrase or that phrase (true for the moment)
states the case, counts, is worth troubling about?

CHAMBERLAIN. Do I imagine? No, I don't. I don't imagine anything. I was
never a man of imagination.

JESSE COLLINGS. You are, when you say that!

CHAMBERLAIN. No, Collings. When I've done anything, it has been because
I've had it in my hands to do.... My hands are empty now. Some men manage
to think with their heads only; others do it--with their stomachs you
might almost say. I've never been able to think properly unless I had hold
of things--had them here in my hands.... Look at them, now! (_With a
slow, faint gesture he indicates their helplessness; then continues:_)
I was the man of business,... and now, I'm out of business; so I can't
think.

JESSE COLLINGS. But that business, as you call it, Chamberlain, which you
made so many of us understand for the first time--I was a "Little
Englander" myself, once--that's still going on.

CHAMBERLAIN (_bitterly_). Yes, it's a fine business!

JESSE COLLINGS (_startled)._ Don't you still believe in it?

CHAMBERLAIN. As a business? Yes. But it's going to fail all the same.
There's nobody to run it