And "half loaf" seems a very inadequate term for my share. I find
myself trying to "argue" about this—I am rather vexed by things I cannot
call either black or white. But so much of it was utterly unarguable.
If we are, as some say, to judge life by the pleasure it brings us, Ann
was beyond question the biggest and best thing in my life. I remember
one Sunday in the late fall, we were afoot with the first streak of
dawn; all day long we tramped through the Jersey mountains. The autumn
coloring of the maple groves was unutterably gorgeous. Just at sunset,
all the western sky brilliant with red and a hundred shades of hot
orange—even more brilliant than the frost nipped leaves had been—we
reached a little railroad station and so came back to Cromley and the
roaring wood fire and New England supper Mother Barton had prepared for
us. I would feel sorry for anyone to whom such a day would not seem
glorious. But to me, living six long days a week in the seething slums,
in the even gloomier shadow of the Tombs, such outings were a renewal of
life, a rebirth.
And besides the evident pleasure of these holidays, Ann brought me a
feeling of mental and physical wellbeing and healthfulness I had never
before known. My grip on life was surer, my vision clearer, my store of
energy was better adjusted, more economically utilized, because of her.
I believe that a man, who says he cannot live in celibacy, is lying.
But with equal emphasis, I believe that the circumstances which make it
wise for a man or woman to live out their lives alone are extremely
rare. The hours I spent at Cromley were recreation in the deepest sense
of the word.
The rides into town on the early train stick in my mind as a memory
apart from all the rest of my life. I seemed at those times to be in a
higher mood than usual. Speeding into the city, to my grim task in the
Tombs, from the sweet solace of her home, I found inspiration and hope
for my daily grind. There was an entirely special sensation,
experienced at no other time, when I found myself aboard the ferry,
leaning over the fore-rail, watching the sky-scrapers struggle up
through the morning mist. Perhaps all of us know some such exhilarating
environment, which makes us exult in life and work and purpose.
Standing forward on the upper deck, my lungs full of the sweet salt air
of the harbor, some foolish association always recalls the lines from
the speech of William Tell and makes me want to shout aloud—"Ye rocks
and crags, I am with you once again."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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