as a terrier chases a smell, in and out, up and down, every nerve bent
and quivering. There is a problem of the teaching art which the
College at Spring Grove made no attempt to solve while I was there.
You either played football and cricket or you were negligible. I was
bad at both, was negligible, and neglected.

I suspect that my experiences are very much those of other people, and
that is why I have taken the trouble to articulate them, and perhaps
to make them out more coherent than they were. We don't feel in images
or think in words. The images are about us, the words may be at hand;
but it may well be that we are better without them. This world is a
tight fit, and life in it, as the Duke said of one day of his own
life, is "a devilish close-run thing." If the blessed Gods and the
legions of the half-gods in their habit as they live, were to be as
clear to us as our neighbour Tom or our chief at the office, what
might be the lot of Tom's wife, or what the security of our high stool
at the desk? As things are, our blank misgivings are put down to
nerves, our yearning for wings to original sin. The policeman at the
street corner sees to it, for our good, that we put out of sight these
things, and so we grow rich and make a good appearance. It is only
when we are well on in years that we can afford to be precise and,
looking back, to remember the celestial light, the glory and the
freshness of the dream in which we walked and bathed ourselves.




THE SOUL AT THE WINDOW