e., L450_, with a deduction of L9 for a provision secured to my
sister, she being survivor, the pension guaranteed by Act Georgii
Tertii, etc.
I came home FOREVER on Tuesday in last week. The incomprehensibleness of
my condition overwhelmed me; it was like passing from life into
eternity. Every year to be as long as three, _i.e._, to have three times
as much real time--time that is my own--in it! I wandered about thinking
I was happy, but feeling I was not. But that tumultuousness is passing
off, and I begin to understand the nature of the gift. Holidays, even
the annual month, were always uneasy joys,--their conscious
fugitiveness; the craving after making the most of them. Now, when all
is holiday, there are no holidays. I can sit at home, in rain or shine,
without a restless impulse for walkings. I am daily steadying, and shall
soon find it as natural to me to be my own master as it has been irksome
to have had a master. Mary wakes every morning with an obscure feeling
that some good has happened to us.
Leigh Hunt and Montgomery, after their releasements, describe the shock
of their emancipation much as I feel mine. But it hurt their frames. I
eat, drink, and sleep sound as ever, I lay no anxious schemes for going
hither and thither, but take things as they occur. Yesterday I
excursioned twenty miles; to-day I write a few letters.
Pages:
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296