DOI article:
Thompson, Charles Miner: In an American newspaper
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27805#0199
By Charles Miner Thompson 195
ceased, the inattentivei “night locals” asked what box it was.
Master answered him—correctly. Yet he was unconscious or
the striking bell, of the question, of his own answer, and in this
curious state, known to all who have been stunned by sudden mis-
fortune, in which the mind, though it seems occupied wholly with
its sense of leaden sorrow, still does its usual, familiar task, Master
worked on through the evening.
What he was conscious of was his misery. Its dull ache was
in his brain, which it numbed, and in his body, which felt heavy and
weak. His future was black. The metaphor is outworn ; but
the darkness which it has ceased to make visible to our accustomed
imagination was palpable to him. In the night you see dimly,
perhaps not at all ; but you know where your path is leading, you
know that familiar and well-loved objects—trees, hills, the houses
of men—are about you, that your home is before you, that the
ground is firm under your feet. Not more dark than this is the
future of most of us. But imagine yourself set down in a
spacious blackness of which you know nothing, where the first
step may hurl you into an infinite abyss or bring you full against
some slimy wall, the horrid breadth and height of which are illimit-
able ; where, finally, what you stand upon is neither turf nor stone,
hillside nor plain, private path nor public way, but mysterious
unnameable ooze. In such a place Master was now set down.
Hard as his lot had been before, now it was harder. While hi
old mother lived—a withered yet active dame, to think prim, small
thoughts in a prim, small house, far away from him, in the pure
country—his life, wrecked as he knew it to be, had still its worthy
use. By an arrangement with the cashier a part of his pay each
Saturday was safely sent to her : with the lesser remaining portion
he began his weekly ruinous carouse. Now that she was dead—
and he had a vision of her still face, with its air of demanding
nothing,
ceased, the inattentivei “night locals” asked what box it was.
Master answered him—correctly. Yet he was unconscious or
the striking bell, of the question, of his own answer, and in this
curious state, known to all who have been stunned by sudden mis-
fortune, in which the mind, though it seems occupied wholly with
its sense of leaden sorrow, still does its usual, familiar task, Master
worked on through the evening.
What he was conscious of was his misery. Its dull ache was
in his brain, which it numbed, and in his body, which felt heavy and
weak. His future was black. The metaphor is outworn ; but
the darkness which it has ceased to make visible to our accustomed
imagination was palpable to him. In the night you see dimly,
perhaps not at all ; but you know where your path is leading, you
know that familiar and well-loved objects—trees, hills, the houses
of men—are about you, that your home is before you, that the
ground is firm under your feet. Not more dark than this is the
future of most of us. But imagine yourself set down in a
spacious blackness of which you know nothing, where the first
step may hurl you into an infinite abyss or bring you full against
some slimy wall, the horrid breadth and height of which are illimit-
able ; where, finally, what you stand upon is neither turf nor stone,
hillside nor plain, private path nor public way, but mysterious
unnameable ooze. In such a place Master was now set down.
Hard as his lot had been before, now it was harder. While hi
old mother lived—a withered yet active dame, to think prim, small
thoughts in a prim, small house, far away from him, in the pure
country—his life, wrecked as he knew it to be, had still its worthy
use. By an arrangement with the cashier a part of his pay each
Saturday was safely sent to her : with the lesser remaining portion
he began his weekly ruinous carouse. Now that she was dead—
and he had a vision of her still face, with its air of demanding
nothing,