After all, landmarks, in the course of a journey, are more frequently
observed and noted as landmarks, when looking back along the journey,
than when actually passing them. They belong generically to the past
tense; one rarely says, "This is a landmark"; usually "That was a
landmark."


IV

The bookcases were of Sabre's own design. He was extraordinarily fond of
his books and he had ideas about their arrangement. The lowest shelf was
in each case three feet from the ground; he hated books being "down
where you can't see them." Also the cases were open, without glass
doors; he hated "having to fiddle to get out a book." He liked them to
be just at the right height and straight to his hand. In a way he could
not quite describe (he was a bad talker, framing his ideas with
difficulty) he was attached to his books, not only for what was in them,
but as entities. He had written once in a manuscript book in which he
sometimes wrote things, "I like the feel of them and I know the feel of
them in the same way as one likes and knows the feel of a friend's hand.
And I can look at them and read them without opening them in the same
way as, without his speaking, one looks at and can enjoy the face of a
friend. I feel towards them when I look at them in the shelves,--well,
as if they were feeling towards me just as I am feeling towards them."
And he had added this touch, which is perhaps more illuminating. "The
other day some one had had out one of my books and returned it upside
down. I swear it was as grotesque and painful to me to see it upside
down as if I had come into the room and found my brother standing on his
head against the wall, fastened there. At least I couldn't have sprung
to him to release him quicker than I did to the book to upright it."