Chapter XVI: In Retrospect

I once started a sonnet to “My Soul,” but, having written one line, I found that I had said all—

Cross-hatched with many a shameful scar.

It is doubtful if I have a soul, but if so, I am sure that if it shows scars of victory, they are the results of battles that should not have been fought.

We have never been a religious family, as I look back. The future? For me it is here. My mother understood. Think of the agony of a woman who had never had a hand laid upon her since she was a child, lying completely helpless, paralyzed for six years! The last time I saw her, I said:

“Mother, you and I know what we believe about a future life?”

She nodded feebly.

“You are unhappy here?”

Again the nod, with a pathetic look in her eyes. I leaned over and whispered in her ear.

“Mother, I hope you die to-night.”

No one knew of our conversation, but I was told afterward that she wrote on her slate that evening, “Edward has cheered me up greatly.”

I see that I have always felt this way and have tried to live the fullest life possible. When I think of the progress of mankind during my seventy years—from lamps to electricity, from horses to gasoline, from slow mails to wireless, and the aeroplane bringing the other continent as near to us to-day as the next town was in my boyhood—I marvel at those who say that the world is going backward.

The advance of one human being is comparable to the advance of the whole race—it is the resultant force of a spiral spring. At the bottom of the coil is Realism; at the top, Idealism and, although we are a long time in getting around the circle, the progress is as certain as the air we breathe.

All these changes should make me feel old, but they don’t. Like Barton Hill, who went to call upon an old friend and mistaking the daughter (who came to greet him) for her mother, said:

“Now I solve the wondrous question,

Now I find what I did lack.

You’ve stolen some years from your mother

And forgot to give them back.”

I do not wish to belong to my own generation. “Whom the gods love, die young” does not mean that they die when they are young, but that they are young when they die, and I could not ask anything finer from a generous Creator.

I have been happy from the time I was born. It may be that time covers with an ivy of forgetfulness the early wounds and renders them less hideous, but I do not think so in my own case. I am a lover; I am happy because I love all things. I feel like our Irish cook who brought in a fish from the river, cooked it, and proceeded to consume it all, clutching it at the tail and eating all the way up, saying,

“It’s all very swate; it’s all very swate.”

Since a boy, I have been able to take an interest in the crack in a granite stone and wonder “why”; in the lichen that grows upon it, and “why”; in the blackberry bushes around it, and “why”; in the earth underneath through its change into sand; in the weather and in the life of all the little things. After death, to furnish the manure for all these is enough of a future life for me.

Meanwhile, there is still beauty in the curve of a wave or a woman’s breast, there is liberty and there are friends. But best of all there is hope. I am still an optimist.

THE END

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

  1. P. [18], changed “pretending not so see me” to “pretending not to see me”.
  2. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
  3. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.