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Inventory. Resolve. This week I have as many years as a year has weeks or a deck, cards and 1837 comes up ajoker, banks & businesses fail & blame van Buren, my Birds falter, Subscribers tire at ten years, a guinea a number. Lucy I tire too. I think no longer this Work will be the end of work, my efforts sound as ever but profit taken by the Panic. Texas was huge & dirty & poor, I walked to the President's mansion in water to my ankles, a log house of two rooms. Mr Houston is taller even than me, abrupt & generous. We drank a glass of grog to Independence. Returned, desiring the comfort of family & friends, I am still Dull remembering the Indians I saw in Alabama, two thousand Cree in chains. My trip to the Rockies is delayed. A stranger on a London street once gave me a paper bag with two live Passenger pigeons in it to free in English woods and return the favor of colonization. The King joined my list that day, of course he never paid a Penny royal, and the species didn't settle England. At Mill Grove, at twenty, I thought I didn't know how to grow older, 50 nor thee, Lucy. Now our two sons have taken wives, welcome daughters. When I earned a living by dancing I had to push the shuffling students like balky subscribers, singing to assist them—finally, desperate, dancing out the steps & they applauded much, called for me to dance & play at once & I did, long hair tossed back from the fiddle, I danced at Bayou Sara, in Louisiana— Lucy my wren, my cabbage, I'll do it again, minuet us, trick us, mint us new. Si ...

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