This chapter's epigraph is from a famous poem by a famous poet named Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. In this poem, Longfellow describes a world in which "pests will be pests" and "rob us" . In other words, people will try to steal from you, but you'll be able to fend them off. This is a quote from Longfellow's poem, "Invisible Man," in which he describes the world as a place where "peculiar pestilence" is common and "virtues will be pestilential pests." In this passage, Longfellow compares the world to a blood pool, where "every time we meet... there is a battle."