第10章

- I want to make a literary confession now, which I believe nobody has made before me.You know very well that I write verses sometimes, because I have read some of them at this table.(The company assented, - two or three of them in a resigned sort of way, as I thought, as if they supposed I had an epic in my pocket, and was going to read half a dozen books or so for their benefit.) - Icontinued.Of course I write some lines or passages which are better than others; some which, compared with the others, might be called relatively excellent.It is in the nature of things that Ishould consider these relatively excellent lines or passages as absolutely good.So much must be pardoned to humanity.Now Inever wrote a "good" line in my life, but the moment after it was written it seemed a hundred years old.Very commonly I had a sudden conviction that I had seen it somewhere.Possibly I may have sometimes unconsciously stolen it, but I do not remember that I ever once detected any historical truth in these sudden convictions of the antiquity of my new thought or phrase.I have learned utterly to distrust them, and never allow them to bully me out of a thought or line.

This is the philosophy of it.(Here the number of the company was diminished by a small secession.) Any new formula which suddenly emerges in our consciousness has its roots in long trains of thought; it is virtually old when it first makes its appearance among the recognized growths of our intellect.Any crystalline group of musical words has had a long and still period to form in.

Here is one theory.

But there is a larger law which perhaps comprehends these facts.

It is this.The rapidity with which ideas grow old in our memories is in a direct ratio to the squares of their importance.Their apparent age runs up miraculously, like the value of diamonds, as they increase in magnitude.A great calamity, for instance, is as old as the trilobites an hour after it has happened.It stains backward through all the leaves we have turned over in the book of life, before its blot of tears or of blood is dry on the page we are turning.For this we seem to have lived; it was foreshadowed in dreams that we leaped out of in the cold sweat of terror; in the "dissolving views" of dark day-visions; all omens pointed to it;all paths led to it.After the tossing half-forgetfulness of the first sleep that follows such an event, it comes upon us afresh, as a surprise, at waking; in a few moments it is old again, - old as eternity.

[I wish I had not said all this then and there.I might have known better.The pale schoolmistress, in her mourning dress, was looking at me, as I noticed, with a wild sort of expression.All at once the blood dropped out of her cheeks as the mercury drops from a broken barometer-tube, and she melted away from her seat like an image of snow; a slung-shot could not have brought her down better.God forgive me!

After this little episode, I continued, to some few that remained balancing teaspoons on the edges of cups, twirling knives, or tilting upon the hind legs of their chairs until their heads reached the wall, where they left gratuitous advertisements of various popular cosmetics.]

When a person is suddenly thrust into any strange, new position of trial, he finds the place fits him as if he had been measured for it.He has committed a great crime, for instance, and is sent to the State Prison.The traditions, prescriptions, limitations, privileges, all the sharp conditions of his new life, stamp themselves upon his consciousness as the signet on soft wax; - a single pressure is enough.Let me strengthen the image a little.

Did you ever happen to see that most soft-spoken and velvet-handed steam-engine at the Mint? The smooth piston slides backward and forward as a lady might slip her delicate finger in and out of a ring.The engine lays one of ITS fingers calmly, but firmly, upon a bit of metal; it is a coin now, and will remember that touch, and tell a new race about it, when the date upon it is crusted over with twenty centuries.So it is that a great silent-moving misery puts a new stamp on us in an hour or a moment, - as sharp an impression as if it had taken half a lifetime to engrave it.

It is awful to be in the hands of the wholesale professional dealers in misfortune; undertakers and jailers magnetize you in a moment, and you pass out of the individual life you were living into the rhythmical movements of their horrible machinery.Do the worst thing you can, or suffer the worst that can be thought of, you find yourself in a category of humanity that stretches back as far as Cain, and with an expert at your elbow who has studied your case all out beforehand, and is waiting for you with his implements of hemp or mahogany.I believe, if a man were to be burned in any of our cities tomorrow for heresy, there would be found a master of ceremonies that knew just how many fagots were necessary, and the best way of arranging the whole matter.

- So we have not won the Goodwood cup; AU CONTRAIRE, we were a "bad fifth," if not worse than that; and trying it again, and the third time, has not yet bettered the matter.Now I am as patriotic as any of my fellow-citizens, - too patriotic in fact, for I have got into hot water by loving too much of my country; in short, if any man, whose fighting weight is not more than eight stone four pounds, disputes it, I am ready to discuss the point with him.Ishould have gloried to see the stars and stripes in front at the finish.I love my country, and I love horses.Stubbs's old mezzotint of Eclipse hangs over my desk, and Herring's portrait of Plenipotentiary, - whom I saw run at Epsom, - over my fireplace.