Page:My Friend Annabel Lee (1903).pdf/103

 There was a rare measure of bitterness for them when they found themselves without oil for their lamps at a time when oil was needed. They gained infinitely more than they lost. As for the five Wise Virgins—well, I wouldn't have been one of them under any circumstances," said my friend Annabel Lee. "Fancy the miserable, mean, mindless, imaginationless, selfish natures that could remain unmoved by the simplicity of the appeal, 'Give us of your oil, for our lamps are gone out.' It must now," said my friend Annabel Lee, "be a hundred times bitterer for them to think of being handed down in endless history as demons of selfishness—and they are now where they can not, presumably, measure their bitterness by milestones of progress."

"So then, yes," said my friend Annabel Lee—"whatever else you may do as you