Why , I 'm full of it -- it 's bubbling in every pore of me . I mean to make the department store of Marshall & Company famous from ocean to ocean . Father started in life as a poor boy from a Nova Scotian farm . He has built up a business that has a provincial reputation . I mean to carry it on . In five years it shall have a maritime reputation , in ten , a Canadian . I want to make the firm of Marshall & Company stand for something big in the commercial interests of Canada . Is n't that as honourable an ambition as trying to make black seem white in a court of law , or discovering some new disease with a harrowing name to torment poor creatures who might otherwise die peacefully in blissful ignorance of what ailed them ? '' `` When you begin to make poor jokes it is time to stop arguing with you , '' said David , with a shrug of his fat shoulders . `` Go your own gait and dree your own weird . I 'd as soon expect success in trying to storm the citadel single-handed as in trying to turn you from any course about which you had once made up your mind . Whew , this street takes it out of a fellow ! What could have possessed our ancestors to run a town up the side of a hill ? I 'm not so slim and active as I was on MY graduation day ten years ago . By the way , what a lot of co-eds were in your class -- twenty , if I counted right . When I graduated there were only two ladies in our class and they were the pioneers of their sex at Queenslea . They were well past their first youth , very grim and angular and serious ; and they could never have been on speaking terms with a mirror in their best days . But mark you , they were excellent females -- oh , very excellent . Times have changed with a vengeance , judging from the line-up of co-eds to-day . There was one girl there who ca n't be a day over eighteen -- and she looked as if she were made out of gold and roseleaves and dewdrops . ''
`` The oracle speaks XXXXX poetry , '' laughed Eric .
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