May 25, 1890.
One sees a house, like the house we now live in, from a road as one
passes, from the windows of a train. It seems to be set at the end
of the world, with the earth's sunset distance behind it--it seems
a fortress of quiet, a place of infinite peace; and then one lives
in it, and behold, it is a centre of a little active life, with all
sorts of cross-currents darting to and fro, over it, past it.
Or again one thinks, as one sees such a house in passing, that
there at least one could live in meditation and cloistered calm;
that there would be neither cares nor anxieties; that one would be
content to sit, just looking out at the quiet fields, pacing to and
fro, receiving impressions, musing, selecting, apprehending--and
then one lives there, and the stream of life is as turbid, as
fretful as ever. The strange thing is that such delusions survive
any amount of experience; that one cannot read into other lives the
things that trouble one's own.
A little definite scheme opens before us here; old friends of
Maud's find us out, simple, kindly, tiresome people. There is an
exchange of small civilities, there are duties, activities,
relationships.
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