In this confession I am afraid
I shall seem hard and selfish to some; that will be because many
people lack imagination, or the leisure to try to understand that
there are not only many degrees of sensibility, but many kinds, and it
is doubtful if any reader can say with truth any more than that my
sensibility is not his or hers. It is my privilege to be sympathetic
with ideas I do not share, and in certain moods I approach those who
take a sad pleasure in last words, good-byes, and at looking on the
dead. In my present mood it seems to me that it is not unlikely that
my mother's last good-bye and her death appeared to me more awful in
imagination than it would have ever done in reality. Indeed, there can
be hardly any doubt that this is so, for we are only half-conscious of
what is happening. Reality clouds, our actions mitigate, our
perception; we can see clearly only when we look back or forwards.
There is something very merciful about reality; if there were not, we
should not be able to live at all.
But to the journey. How shall I tell it? The third part must have been
the most painful, so clearly do I remember it: the curious agony of
mind caused by a sudden recognition of objects long forgotten--a tree
or a bit of bog-land.
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