The morning was one of the most beautiful I had ever seen, and I used
to catch myself thinking out a picturesque expression to describe it.
It seemed to me that the earth might be compared to an egg, it looked
so warm under the white sky, and the sky was as soft as the breast
feathers of a dove. This sudden bow-wowing of the literary skeleton
made me feel that I wanted to kick myself. Nature has forgotten to
provide us with a third leg whereby we may revenge ourselves on
instincts that we cannot control. A moment afterward I found myself
plunged in reflections regarding the impossibility of keeping one's
thoughts fixed on any one subject for any considerable length of time.
At the end of these reflections I fell back, wondering, again asking
if I were really destined to watch by my mother's death-bed. That day
I seemed to become a sheer mentality, a sort of buzz of thought, and I
could think of myself only as of a fly climbing a glass dome. It
seemed to me that I was like a fly climbing and falling back, buzzing,
and climbing again. "Never," I said to myself, "have I been more than
a fly buzzing in a glass dome. And, good Lord, who made the glass
dome?" How often did I ask myself that question, and why it was made,
and if it were going to endure for ever!
In such sore perplexity of mind questions from anybody would be
intolerable, and I shrank back into the corner of the carriage
whenever a passer-by reminded me, however vaguely, of anybody I had
ever known; the mental strain increased mile after mile, for the names
of the stations grew more familiar.
Pages:
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374