(IRMA'S JOURNAL.)
Cast ashore--what is there left me, but to live on, because I am not dead?
For days and nights, this unsolved question kept me, as it were, hovering between heaven and earth, just as it was in the terrible moment when I glided down from the rock.
I have solved the problem.
I am working. I shall remain resolved, no matter what the result. I find it a relief to note down my thoughts and feelings.
I was ill,--of a fever, they tell me,--and now I am at work.
I had told the grandmother of what I could do, but there was no chance to apply it here. She took me out into the garden, and we gathered up the apples that Uncle Peter shook down from the tree. Then the old, blind pensioner, whose room is over mine, came out and told us, with angry cries, that a certain portion of the apples belonged to him. He tried to find one, so that he might taste it, and thus ascertain which tree we were shaking. I handed him an apple, and told him that I lived in the room under his.
We were still in the garden, when a man came who wanted to purchase two maple-trees that were standing by the cross road, in order to use them for carving. This seemed like a ray of hope. I told the grandmother that I knew how to mold in clay, and that I thought I could easily learn how to carve in wood. And now I'm in the workshop, as a pupil.
This is my first free Sunday, and, while all are away at church, I am writing this.