A turmoil of regrets (Mitchell)

In the summer of 1902 I came real close to getting in serious trouble with a married woman, but I had a fight with my conscience and my conscience won, and what's the result? I had two wives, good Christian women, and I can't hardly remember what either of them looked like, but I can remember the face of that woman so clear it hurts, and there's never a day passes I don't think about her, and there's never a day passes I don't curse myself. "What kind of a timid, dried up, weevily fellow were you?" I say to myself. "You should've said to hell with what's right and what's wrong, the devil take the hindmost. You'd have something to remember, you'd be happier now." She's out in Woodlawn, six feet under, and she's been there twenty-two years, God rest her, and here I am, just an old, old man with nothing left but a belly and a brain and a dollar or two.

Joseph Mitchell, Old Mr. Flood