"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here." -- from Lincoln's Gettysburg address.

as for the red-headed whore, it sounded familiar but I had to do some digging. It's from a poem by Irish poet Oliver St. John Gogarty.


Ringsend

(after reading Tolstoy)

I will live in Ringsend
With a red-headed whore,
And the fan-light gone in
Where it lights the hall-door,
And listen each night
For her querulous shout,
As at last she streels in
And the pubs empty out.
To soothe that wild breast
With my old-fangled songs,
Till she feels it redressed
From inordinate wrongs,
Imagined, outrageous,
Preposterous wrongs,
Till peace at last comes,
Shall be all I will do,
Where the little lamp blooms
Like a rose in the stew;
And up the back garden
The sound comes to me
Of the lapsing, unsoilable,
Whispering sea.

BTW, thanks for the compliment, Mickey, but I'm pretty easily stumped: I just don't answer the one's I can't get -- which are, as this point, better than half. It's fun trying though. You're right: a good thread.

michael