a black and rotten heart

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“What began the afternoon as a piece of tree ended it as the rib of a ship
     It was backbreaking work and subject to cruel disappointment. The crosscuts might reveal a black and rotten heart. The old sayings about men and women, that their hearts were black or rotten, come from this disappointment and exhaustion.”

—William Bryant Logan, Oak: The Frame of Civilization, 2005.

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