And then (how did he keep from laughing in my face?) Imagination egged me on into writing plays—many of them. If he made me think the “actable,” he well deserved the name.
It was all my own fault: the smoke from my older friend often got up into my eyes and warned me. This old pipe of mine played the cynic and was perfectly frank about my dramas. But I wouldn’t listen. I blundered on until I found a “fidus Achates” to help and guide me. Together we hope to restrain this strenuous fellow a little.
It’s all over now. My pipe, Imagination, and a faithful friend, I have found them all, and I “found myself” in the Death-Chamber.
CHAPTER XXII
The Last Story
This is the story I can never tell, yet will spend all the rest of my life in telling—but how hopelessly. I cannot even think of it without something coming up into my throat to choke me. It is about my love for the soldier father, and the mother almost divine, who have suffered with and for me.
I can no more express this emotion than the sorrow they have borne for me can be told. Ah, but both are written—written in the deeper lines upon their dear faces, and illustrated in their grayer hairs; while how and why I love them, is imprinted eternally upon my heart.