because of its humble and
evanescent foam.

Ginger-pop beer is it that you scoff? Verily, you do an unconsidered
deed. When one remembers all the liquids, medicinal, soporific, insipid,
poisonous, which flood the throat of humanity, one may deem himself a
favorite of Fortune to be placed so high in the catalogue. Though upon
his lowliness gleam down the rosy and purple lights of rare old wines
aloft, yet from his altitude he can look below upon a profane crowd in
thick array of depth immeasurable, and rejoice that he is not stagnant
water nor exasperated vinegar nor disappointed buttermilk. Nay, I am not
only content, but exultant. It may be an ignoble satisfaction, yet I
believe I would rather flash and fade in one moment of happy daylight
than be corked and cob-webbed for fifty years in the dungeons of an
unsunned cellar, with a remote possibility, indeed, of coming up from my
incarceration to moisten the lips of beauty or loosen the tongue of
eloquence, but with a far surer prospect of but adding one more to the
potations of the glutton and wine-bibber.

And what, after all, is this oblivion which you flaunt so threateningly?
Even if I do encounter it, no misfortune will happen unto me but such as
is common unto men. Of all the souls of this generation, the number that
will sift through the meshes of the years is infinitesimately small. The
overwhelming majority of names will turn out to be chaff, and be blown
away. I shall be forgotten, but I shall be forgotten in very good
company. The greater part of my kin-folk and acquaintance, your own
self, my critic, and your family and friends, will go down in the same
darkness which ingulfs me. When I am dead, I shall be no deader than the
rest of you, and I shall have been a great deal more alive while I _was_
alive.

I am not afraid to be forgotten. Posterity will have its own
soothsayers, and somewhere among the stars, I trust, I shall be living a
life so intense and complete that I shall never once think to lament
that I am not mulling on a bookshelf down here. Besides, if you insist
upon it, I am not going to be forgotten. You don't know anything more
about it than I do. Knowledge is not always prescience. "This will never
do," ruled Jeffrey from his judgment-seat. "Order reigns in Warsaw,"
pronounced Sebastiani. "I have now gone through the Bible," chuckled Tom
Paine, "as a man would go through a wood with an axe on his shoulder,
and fell trees. Here they lie, and