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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor
+by Wallace Irwin
+(#2 in our series by Wallace Irwin)
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
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+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
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+**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor
+
+Author: Wallace Irwin
+
+Release Date: March, 2004 [EBook #5332]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on July 1, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE LOVE SONNETS OF A CAR CONDUCTOR ***
+
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Schwan <davidsch@earthlink.net>.
+
+
+
+The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor
+
+
+
+By
+Wallace Irwin
+
+Author of
+The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum
+The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, Junior
+Etc.
+
+
+
+With a harmless and instructive Introduction
+by
+Wolfgang Copernicus Addleburger
+
+Professor of Literary Bi-Products
+University of Monte Carlo
+
+
+
+Muse of my native land,
+am I inspir'd?
+- Keats.
+
+
+
+Paul Elder & Company
+San Francisco and New York
+
+
+
+Mark what I say!
+Attend me where I wheel!
+- Troilus and Cressida.
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1908
+by Paul Elder and Company
+
+
+
+Introduction
+
+
+
+Science may conquer the stars, but it does nothing by jumps. As a
+Scientist, as well as a philosopher, I am accustomed to reaching the
+Transcendental by winding paths. It is characteristic of me that I
+should have consented to preface this remarkable Sonnet Cycle only after
+supreme deliberation, and that I should at last have determined to speak
+in behalf of the Car Conductor for the following reasons:
+
+1. As a Botanist I am fascinated by the phenomenon of Genius flourishing
+from bud to flower, from flower to seed.
+
+2. As a Psychologist I am anxious to establish once and for all, both by
+plano-inductive and precoordinate systems of logic, the Status of Slang.
+
+What position does Slang occupy in the thought of the world? Let us turn
+to Zoology for an answer.
+
+No traces of Slang may be found among mollusks, crustaceans or the lower
+invertebrates. Slang is not common to vertebrate fishes or to whales,
+seals, reptiles or anthropoid apes - in a word, slang-speaking is
+nowhere prevalent among lower animals. It may, then, be definitely and
+clearly asserted that Slang is the natural, logical expression of the
+Human Race. If Man, then, is the highest of created mammals, is not his
+natural speech (Slang) the highest of created languages? It is generally
+conceded that Literature is the most exalted expression of Language.
+Would not the Literature, then, which employs the highest of created
+languages (Slang) be the supreme Literature of the world?
+
+By such logical, irrefutable, inductive steps have I proven not only the
+Status of Slang, but the literary importance of these Sonnets which it
+is at once my scientific duty and my esthetic pleasure to introduce.
+
+The twenty-six exquisite Sonnets which form this Cycle were written,
+probably, during the years 1906 and 1907. Their author was William Henry
+Smith, a car conductor, who penned his passion, from time to time, on
+the back of transfer-slips which he treasured carefully in his hat[1].
+We have it from no less an authority than Professor Sznuysko that the
+Car Conductor usually performed these literary feats in public, writing
+between fares on the rear platform of a Sixth Avenue car. Smith's
+devotion to his Musa Sanctissima was often so hypnotic, I am told, that
+he neglected to let passengers on and off - nay, it is even held by some
+critics that he occasionally forgot to collect a fare. But be it said to
+his undying honor that his Employers never suffered from such
+carelessness, for it was the custom of our Poet to demand double fares
+from the old, the feeble and the mentally deficient.
+
+Even as the illimitable ichor of star-dust, the mysterious Demiurge of
+the Universe, keeps the suns and planets to their orbitary revolutions,
+so must environment mark the Fas and Nefas of Genius. Plato's Idea of
+the Archetypal Man was due, perhaps, as much to the serene weather
+conditions of Academe as to the marvelous mentality of Plato. What had
+Job eaten for breakfast that he should have given utterance to his
+magnificent Lamentation? Was he the discoverer of Human Sorrow or the
+pioneer of Human Dyspepsia?
+
+It is not altogether radical on my part, then, for me to assert that
+many of the stylistic peculiarities found in these Sonnets are
+attributable to the locale of their inspiration the rear platform of a
+Sixth Avenue car. One can plainly hear the jar and jounce of the
+elliptical wheels, the cry, "Step lively!" the six o'clock stampede, the
+lament of the strap-hanging multitude in such lines as these:
+
+"Three days with sad skidoo have came and went,
+Yet Pansy cometh nix to ride with me.
+I rubber vainly at the throng to see
+Her golden locks - gee! such a discontent!
+Perhaps she's beat it with some soapy gent - "
+
+Where are lines like these to be found in the Italian of Petrarch? Where
+has Tasso uttered an impassioned confession to resemble this:
+
+"But when I ogle Pansy in the throng
+My heart turns over twice and rings a gong"?
+
+Of the human or personal record of William Henry Smith very little has
+been discovered. Looking over the books of the Metropolitan Street
+Railway I unearthed the following entry:
+
+"Nov. 1, 1907:"
+
+"W. H. Smith, conductor, discharged."
+
+"Remarks: - Car No. 21144, William Smith, conductor, ran into large
+brewery truck at So. E. cor. Sixth Ave. It is reported that Smith, to
+the neglect of his duty, was reading poetry from a book called 'Sonnets
+of de Heredia' at the time of the accident. Three Italians were slightly
+injured by the accident, and Ethelbert Pangwyn, an actor starring in
+'The Girl and the Idiot,' a musical comedy, was killed."
+
+"Smith was held for manslaughter, but Judge O' Rafferty, who had seen
+'The Girl and the Idiot,' discharged the defendant, averring that the
+killing of Pangwyn did not constitute a crime."
+
+What, then, has become of this minstrel who sang the Minnelieder of the
+Car-barns? Like Homer, like Omar, like Sappho, like Shakespeare, he is a
+Voice singing out of the mists. He was but a Name to his employers; and
+his friends, if he has friends, remember him not. These Sonnets, written
+neatly on twenty-six violet transfer-slips, were discovered, together
+with a rejection blank from a leading magazine, in the Dead Letter
+office. According to the current folk-lore in Harlem and the Bronx,
+Smith is now living in California employed as a brakeman on the Southern
+Pacific Railroad. Some aver that Pansy fell heiress to a sausage
+establishment and moved to Italy with her Poet. Still others maintain
+that Pansy, Gill the Grip and Maxy the Firebug never existed in real
+life - were merely the mind-children of a Symbolist and a dreamer of
+dreams.
+
+To the latter theory I incline at a scholarly angle. This Cycle may be
+taken, perhaps, not so much as a living record of human experience as a
+lofty parable sounding the key-note of all human life. Gill the Grip is
+the Iago, the Mefistofele, the symbolism of a malevolent destiny. Maxy
+the Firebug may be the Poet's interpretation of the Social Unrest, of
+Doubt, of progressive irresponsibility. Would it be going too far, then,
+to say that Pansy stands to us as the symbol of Pan-girlism - as an
+almost Anacreontic yearning for the type? Or may not these Sonnets be
+taken, in a way, as a modern Vita Nuova wherein a Sixth Avenue Alighieri
+calls to his Beatrice and mourns within when,
+
+"Pansy-girl refuses to occur?"
+
+So much for the Poet and his Purpose. Should any one of the readers of
+this Cycle doubt the enduring greatness of the lines, let him consider
+that I, Wolfgang Copernicus Addleburger, have seen fit to introduce them
+to immortality.
+
+
+
+[1] Since the salary-books of the Metropolitan Street Railways show,
+during the year 1906, 182 conductors named Smith in their employ, 38 of
+whom were named William Smith and 12 William Henry Smith, it is easy for
+the reader to conceive my task in establishing the identity of our Poet.
+W. C. A.
+
+
+
+The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor
+
+
+
+Prologue
+
+
+
+Did some one ask if I am on the job?
+I sure am to the pay-roll with my lay,
+A hot tabasco-poultice which will stay
+Close to the ribs and answer throb-to-throb.
+Here have I chewed my Music from the cob
+And followed Passion from the get-away
+Past the big Grand Stand where the Pousse-Café
+Christens my Muse as Jennie-on-the-Daub.
+
+Hark ye, all marks who break the Pure Fool Law,
+How I, the Windy Wonder of the Age,
+Have fought the Tender Passion to a draw
+And got my mug upon the Sporting Page,
+Since Love and I collided at the curve
+And left me with a Dislocated Nerve.
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+
+Am I in bad? upon the tick of nine
+Today the Pansy got aboard my ship
+And sprung the Trans-Suburban for a trip.
+Say, she's the shapely ticket pretty fine!
+Next to her pattern Anna Held looks shine
+And Lilly Russell doesn't know the grip.
+But oh! she's got a deep ingrowing tip
+That she must shy at honks like yours and mine.
+
+I says to her, "Fare, please!" out loud like that,
+But she pipes, "Fade, Bill, fade! you pinched my fare."
+That get-back tripped your Oswald to the mat,
+And yet I yelled, "Cough up here, Golden Hair!"
+Eh, what? I got the zing from Pansy's orb
+Which says, "Dry out now, Shorty, - please absorb!"
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+
+A True McGlook once handed this to me:
+When little Bright Eyes cuts the cake for you
+Count twenty ere you eat the honey-goo
+Which leads to love and matrimony - see?
+A small-change bunk what's bats on spending free
+Can't four-flush when he's paying rent for two.
+The pin to flash on Cupid is 'Skidoo!'
+The call for Sweet Sixteen is 23."
+
+But say! Life looks goshawful on the stretch
+Without a Ray of Sunshine in my flat,
+With no one there to call me "Handsome wretch,"
+And dust the fuzz and mildew off my hat.
+If she was waiting at the church tonight
+You'd find me there with wedding-bells all right!
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+
+Pansy got on at Sixteenth Street last night,
+And some one flipped a handspring in my heart.
+She snickered once, "Oh look, here's Mr. Smart!"
+Was I there Henry Miller? guess you're right!
+I did the homerun monologue as bright
+As any scrub that ever learned the art.
+I plum forgot the signals, "Stop" and "Start!"
+And almost wrecked the car once - guess I might!
+
+I took one Mike six blocks beyond the place
+He flagged for his. He got as red as ham
+And yodelled through his apopleptic face,
+"I think you're dips!" I says, "I know I am - "
+When Pansy starts to send a wireless wave
+She simply just can't make her eyes behave!
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+
+On every car there's always one fat coot
+What goes to sleep and dreams he's paid his fare.
+And when you squeak he gets the Roosevelt glare,
+And hoots, "I won't be dickied with - I'll shoot!"
+Then all the passengers get in and root.
+Loud cheers of, "Put him off!" and "Make him square!"
+Till Mr. Holdfast with an injured air
+Pungles his nick and ends the bum dispute.
+
+It's ever thus on this here rolling ball -
+You've got to pop your coin to ride so far.
+The yap that kicks and rings a deadhead call
+Must either spend or else get off the car.
+On Life's Street Railway wealth may cut the cheese,
+But Death rings up and says, "Step lively, please!"
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+
+"There'll be some fancy steps at Car-Barn Hall,"
+Gilly the Gripman pipes me off today,
+"This won't be any gabberfest - for say!
+Nix but the candy goes to this here ball.
+You've got to flash your union card, that's all,
+To circulate the maze with Tessie May,
+And all the Newport push out Harlem way
+Will slip on wax till sunrise, - do you call?"
+
+I told him that I pulled the gong for that!
+If Pansy would be there 'twas was Me for It.
+I'd burnish up my buttons, mop my hat,
+Polish my pumps and blow in for a hit.
+"All to the Fritz," says Gill, "if you get jolly
+Around the curves - you're apt to slip your trolley!"
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+
+The lemon-wagon rumbled by today
+And dropped me off a sour one - are you on?
+I went and gave the boss a cooney con
+About the Car-Barn Kick - what did he say?
+"Back to your platform, Clarence light and gay,
+Jingle the jocund fares, nor think upon
+The larks of Harry Lehr or Bath House John,
+For they are It and you are still on pay."
+
+So I have been sky-prancing all night long
+A-dragging car-conductors and their queens
+Clad in their laughing-robes to join the throng
+That makes the Car-Barn function all the beans.
+And say! I had a brainstorm just last trip
+When I took Pansy's fare from Gill the Grip.
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+
+At Midnight when I got a gasp for lunch
+I mushed it for the Car-Barns just to lamp
+And see the Creamy Charlies do the vamp
+And swing their Fancy Floras in the crunch.
+I piped my Pansy in among the bunch
+And asked her would she mix it with the Champ,
+Wouldn't she like to join me in a stamp?
+She saw me first and stopped me with a punch.
+
+I saw her hook a loop with Gill the Grip,
+With Pinky Smith and Handsome Hank she heeled;
+With all the dossy bunks she took a skip
+Each time the German tune-professor spieled.
+But nix with me the lightsome toe she sprung -
+As Caesar said to Cassius, "Ouch! I'm stung!"
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+
+Forsooth that was a passing lusty clout
+That chopped me off with Pansy - don't you fret!
+There's quite a blaze inside my garret yet,
+And all the Dipper Corps can't put it out.
+Gilly the Grip's a pretty ricky tout -
+Under the old rag-rug for him, you bet,
+When I put on my Navajo and get
+One license to unloose my soul and shout.
+
+Perhaps he thinks I'm old Molasses Freight
+Sidetracked at Pokey Pond and filled with prunes
+Waiting for Congress to appropriate
+The nuggets draped around me in festoons.
+Wait till I ticket Pansy, then I guess
+Slow Freight will switch to Honeymoon Express!
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+
+Today I gave a serenade to Gill;
+I says, "To put it pleasant you're a screech,
+Your smile would shoo the seagulls off the beach,
+Your face would give Vesuvius a chill.
+You're just what Mr. Shakespeare calls 'a pill
+Trying to keep company with a peach.'
+Now, if you want to answer with a speech,
+Open your trap at once, or else lie still."
+
+But when I handed Gill the Grip this cluster
+He simply clamped his language-mill down tight,
+Strangled his guff and acted rather fluster
+Although I'm sure I spoke to him polite.
+I guess that Mr. Gilly ain't the kind
+That understands when people talk refined.
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+
+Three days with sad skidoo have came and went,
+Yet Pansy cometh nix to ride with me.
+I rubber vainly at the throng to see
+Her golden locks - gee! such a discontent!
+Perhaps she's beat it with some soapy gent -
+Perhaps she's promised Gill the Grip to be
+His No. 1 till Death tolls "23!"
+While I am Outsky in the supplement.
+
+Now and anon some Lizzie flags the train
+And I, poor dots, cry, "Rapture, it is her!"
+Yet guess again - my hope is all in vain
+And Pansy girl refuses to occur.
+If this keeps up I think I'll finish swell
+Among the jabbers in a padded cell.
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+
+My Trolley hikes to Harlem p.d.q.,
+And picks up pikers all along the beat.
+At six o'clock the aisles are full of feet,
+The straps with fingers, and the entire zoo
+Boils on the platform with a mad huroo
+Reckless as Bronx mosquitoes after meat.
+The widow stands, the fat man gets the seat
+And Satan smiles like Foxy M. Depew.
+
+And as we hikes along I thinks, thinks I,
+"The human race is like the ocean foam,
+Roaring and discontented, peevish, fly - "
+Say, why in blazes don't they stay to home?
+This travel-sickness is a danger which
+Keeps hoboes poor and corporations rich.
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+
+Today I piped my future Ma-in-law.
+She got aboard my Pullman and she scared
+Three babies into fits the way she glared.
+Rattle my baggage if I ever saw
+A cracker-box to equal Mother's jaw,
+A hardwood-finish face all nailed and squared.
+She ossified the gripman when she stared -
+And me? Well, I was overcame with awe.
+
+But, being Pansy's Ma, 't was up to me
+To hand her something pit-a-pat and swell,
+And so I says, "Hello, Queen Cherokee!
+What ho! for Pansy? hope she's feeling well."
+And Ma responds, a trifle tart but game,
+"She minds her bizness - hope you feel the same."
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+
+I don't think Mother chalked me out to win,
+To be the steady of her darling child.
+She thinks I am a kick-up, something wild,
+And no sweet girl should wear my college pin.
+She thinks I'm some too piffly with my chin
+And my soft prattle simply gets her riled.
+I've lost my keys with her, to put it mild,
+I don't belong, because I am not In.
+
+Say how, with such an iceberg on the track,
+Can I conduct my car to married bliss?
+I hoped that I could whistle Pansy back,
+And lo! I got a frostbite off of this!
+I'd wrastle Death for Her, I'd fight her Pa, -
+But stab me if I'll syrup to her Ma!
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+
+E'en as I stood with cobwebs in my tower
+A candy vision came and flagged the boat -
+Give forty rah-rah-rahs! O joy, O gloat!
+'Twas Pansy like a fairy in a bower
+Warbling, "Hi, stop the car!" With all my power
+I yanked the bell. My brain was all afloat,
+My heart cut pin-wheels, stole a base at throat,
+Sang "Tammany" - and knighthood was in flower.
+
+I helped her on. My shoes were full of feet.
+I says, "How's Ma?" She answers, "Going some."
+I doffed my lid and ventured to repeat
+The breeze had put the weather on the bum.
+Then she replied, not seeming sore or vexed,
+"It may not be so punk on Sunday next."
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+
+The Sinful Rich go whizzing by all day
+In wealthy wagons, looking pert and swell;
+They get the ride, the Commons get the smell
+And full of thought and microbes wend their way.
+Maxy the Firebug says that Mammon's sway
+Is stringing Virtue to a fare-ye-well,
+But wait, he says, till Labor with a yell
+Soaks Mam a crack forninst the vertebray.
+
+The Rich, says Max, are simply dips and yeggs
+That lift the headlight beads from yaps like us;
+They pinch your pie, sew up our ham and eggs
+And leave us minus all that they are plus.
+The world, says Max, belongs to me and Bill
+And Mrs. Casey - whoa! let's roll a pill!
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+
+At Mrs. Casey's hunger-killing shop
+Whither I hie thrice daily for my stew,
+I dream I'm Mr. Waldorf as I chew
+My prunes or lay my Boston-baked on top.
+Growley and sinkers, slum and mutton sop,
+India-rubber jelly known as "glue,"
+A soup-bone goulash with a spud or two,
+Clatter below until I signal "Stop!"
+
+There may be chefs in France or Albany
+Can knock a poem from a wedge of pie;
+But just give me a check on Mrs. C.,
+For rapid-filling ballast, murmurs I.
+Kings may prefer some tasty wads of hash,
+But they don't feed at fifteen cents per crash!
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+
+Pansy and me for Coney Sunday noon
+To see a perfect lady bump the bumps;
+We rubbered at the lions with the chumps
+And took the Wellman special to the moon.
+She asks me, "Dance?" I answers, "Just as soon,"
+And so we clutched and whirled into the gumps,
+But every time I went to stir my stumps
+They stuck like gum-drops to a macaroon.
+
+"I could die dancing, Danny!" murmurs she.
+(I gambolled on her corns, she hollered, "Don't!")
+"I could die dancing also" (this from me),"
+"But if you'll pass me up, I guess I won't."
+Just then some lemon-sport observed my glide
+And warbled, "Slide, you frozen chicken, slide!"
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+
+I next sprung Pansy for a four-bit feed -
+It was a giddy tax, but what care I?
+We shot the bill-of-fare from soup to pie
+And lemonade (that cost an extra seed).
+"You're the cute plunge," says Pans', and I agreed
+That at a spenderfest I wasn't shy, -
+That when it came to rolling nickels by,
+Willie the Cowboy was a perfect bleed.
+
+She said that Thomas Lawson on a lark
+Would faint away to see the way I blew;
+She said I'd be the whizz in Central Park,
+And Ready Cash to me seemed very few.
+I asked her, Did she need a Valentine?
+And she responded, "You're the pink for mine!"
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+
+We took the iron-clad wave-tub home at ten,
+And as we sat conversing on the deck
+A certain Hester-street spaghetti-neck
+Pipes through the darkness, "Who's yer ladyfren'?"
+There might have been a hoe-down there and then
+(That war-ship never came so near a wreck);
+The dog-eye boy got just as pale as heck
+And made a duck behind the trenches, when -
+
+Pansy boiled up and clamped me by a flip.
+"Nixie the kindergarten!" murmurs she.
+"Gents," I replied out loud, "Get off the ship
+And walk, or else nail down that repartee.
+This yard of lace I'm holding, so to speak,
+Is pinned on tight - or will be in a week."
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+
+A-lopping on a car-barn bench I spied
+Gilly the Grip, quite recent this g. m.,
+Just like a lily on a broken stem
+Or like a Salt Lake buck without a bride.
+"Chirk, Gilly, chirk!" I says in tones of pride,
+"Perhaps this unhinged heart is just pro tem.
+The world is full of pompadours for them
+That keep their search-lights peeled from side to side."
+
+But Gill remarked, "Eh, what? Say, I'm so slow
+I couldn't catch the hour-hand on a clock.
+I'm simply stationary as they grow;.
+A lamp-post race could beat me round the block.
+You needn't think you're such an Alfred G.,
+To motor by a quarry-cart like me!"
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+
+Next week the wedding-bells won't do a thing,
+For I'll be there, I guess, to fill the set,
+And Pansy's Ma, she won't be late, you bet,
+To see the Reverend Mr. pull the string.
+Me for a spike-tailed scabbard and a ring,
+A shell-back shirt, forsooth a peacherette.
+I'll be the daintiest bridegroom ever yet;
+Nothing to do but take the count, then - bing!
+
+Love in a cottage run on union pay -
+Can Teddy Roosevelt do a sum like that?
+Two can eat cheap as one, perhaps, but say,
+You've got to beat a quarter pretty flat
+To cork three squares, make Little Two Shoes snug
+And keep the Wolf from chewing up the rug.
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+
+Methinks I'm tagged to join the Worry Club,
+To chase the fleeting rhino through the gloom,
+To bag the boodle, trap the wild mazume
+And scratch for corn when Pansy hollers "Grub!"
+They say I'll turn as sickly as a chub
+When on the First, with dull and deadly boom,
+The Rent comes round and walks into the room,
+Remarking, "Peel or else file out, you scrub!"
+
+But when your arms are full of girl and fluff
+You hide your nerve behind a yard of grin;
+You'd spit into a wild cat's face or bluff
+A flock of dragons with a safety pin.
+Life's a slow skate, but Love's the dopey gum
+That puts a brewery horse in racing trim.
+
+
+
+Epilogue
+
+
+
+Kind reader, when you 'phone don't ask for me
+Enquiring how a Flossie should be won -
+There isn't any Rule Book, are you on?
+And Queenie can't be coaxed by recipee.
+Some girls like hard-luck music, minor key,
+Some like the Gas-car Gussie act, hot ton,
+Others are simply fierce for Jolly John
+Who loves to make a noise like repartee.
+
+None but the Nerve, say I, deserves the Fair,
+And stony hearts can't stand up long to chin.
+If Willie-on-the-doormat lingers there
+The chances are he'll be Invited In.
+Up against Love the Candy Kid is nix;
+The Porous Plaster wins because it sticks
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE LOVE SONNETS OF A CAR CONDUCTOR ***
+
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