CHAPTER XIX
It is a mercy one cannot see the future. In that New York misery, present and to follow, had I known that some fifteen years later I should be my own master, living more or less "like a gentleman," earning my livelihood, though a very bare one, by writing, I could never have faced what I did face. Any value that may have lain in the experiences would certainly have been missed, at any rate. If one knew that the future promised better things, there is no patience in human beings that could hold and wait for it; if, on the other hand, it promised worse, I have met no courage that could bear the present. Those who preach "live in the present only" have common sense on their side.
With the memory of the past, similarly, such folk show wisdom. Reincarnation is an interesting theory to many; yet to recall past lives could have but one effect—to render one ineffective now. To recall the failures of a mere forty years is bad enough; to look back over a hundred lives would be disastrous: one could only sit down and cry.
December had come with its cold and bitter winds, and the doctor, ever faithful, had let me up. I went for my first little walk, leaning on Boyde's arm. Round Grammercy Park we crawled slowly, and that first taste of fresh air, the sound of wind in the leafless trees, a faint hint of the sea that reaches even the city streets, gave me an unforgettable happiness and yearning. The plan to settle in the backwoods again obsessed me. A little later I had almost persuaded the doctor, and Kay in my letters, to take up a claim north of the Muskoka Lakes where we had spent such a happy summer. Boyde was to come too—"as a sort of excitement, I suppose!" was the doctor's bitter comment.
