He can lead us to the heights, but he cannot keep us there, else would we all be devotees.
And there is no devotee but pays for the mad dances John Barleycorn pipes.
Yet the foregoing is all in after wisdom spoken.

It was no part of the knowledge of the lad, fourteen years old, who sat in the Idler's cabin between the harpooner and the sailor, the air rich in his nostrils with the musty smell of men's sea-gear, roaring in chorus: "Yankee ship come down de ribber--pull, my bully boys, pull!" We grew maudlin, and all talked and shouted at once.

I had a splendid constitution, a stomach that would digest scrap-iron, and I was still running my marathon in full vigour when Scotty began to fail and fade.
His talk grew incoherent.

He groped for words and could not find them, while the ones he found his lips were unable to form.

His poisoned consciousness was leaving him.