What a vile and loathsome profanation,
deserving indeed of a grim punishment, to make a picturesque
background out of such things! At length I had had my bitter taste
of grief, and drew in to my trembling spirit the shuddering chill
of despair. I had stepped, like the light-hearted maiden of the old
story, within the forbidden door, and the ugly, the ghastly reality
of the place had burst upon me, the huddled bodies, the basin
filled with blood. One had read in books of men and women whose
life had been suddenly curdled into slow miseries. One had half
blamed them in one's thought; one had felt that any experience,
however dark and deep, must have its artistic value; and one had
thought that they should have emerged with new zest into life. I
understood it now, how life could be frozen at its very source, how
one could cry out with Job curses on the day that gave one birth,
and how gladly one would turn one's face away from the world and
all its cheerful noise, awaiting the last stroke of God.
February 20, 1889.
There is a story of a Cornish farmer who, returning home one dark
and misty night, struck across the moorland, every yard of which he
knew, in order to avoid a long tramp by road.
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