Deadlock : $b Pilgrimage, Volume 6 — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Deadlock : $b Pilgrimage, Volume 6
John Stuart Mill · en
Yet it _would_ be wonderful to wake up at a little inn in the city and
suddenly see St. Paul’s for the first time. Perhaps it was one of those
journey moments of suddenly seeing something celebrated, and missing the
impression through fear of not being impressed enough; and trying to
impress your impression by telling of the thing by name ...... everybody
had that difficulty. The vague shimmer of gas-lit people round the table
all felt things without being able to express them ...... she glowed
towards the assembled group; towards everyone in the world. For a moment
she looked about in detail, wanting to communicate her thought and share
a moment of general agreement. Everybody was talking, looking spruce and
neat and finished, in the transforming gaslight. Each one something that
would never be expressed, all thinking they were expressing things and
not knowing the lonely look visible behind the eyes they turned upon the
world, of their actual selves as they were when they were alone. But
they were all saying things they wanted to say ....... they _did_
express themselves, in relation to each other; they grew in knowledge of
each other, in approval or disapproval, tested each other and knew,
behind their strange immovable positive conversations about things that
were all matters of opinion perpetually shifting, in a marvellous way
each others’ characters. They also knew after the first pleasant moment
of meeting eyes and sounding voices when one tried to talk in their way,
that one was playing them false. The glow could live for awhile when one
had not met them for some time; but before the end of the meeting one
was again condemned, living in heavy silence, whilst one’s mind whirled
with the sense of their clear visions and the tantalising inclination to
take, for life, the mould of one or other point of view.