Or I might readily have found a more serious task. It was a
folly, with the materiality of this daily life pressing so
intrusively upon me, to attempt to fling myself back into
another age, or to insist on creating the semblance of a world
out of airy matter, when, at every moment, the impalpable beauty
of my soap-bubble was broken by the rude contact of some actual
circumstance. The wiser effort would have been to diffuse
thought and imagination through the opaque substance of to-day,
and thus to make it a bright transparency; to spiritualise the
burden that began to weigh so heavily; to seek, resolutely, the
true and indestructible value that lay hidden in the petty and
wearisome incidents, and ordinary characters with which I was
now conversant. The fault was mine. The page of life that was
spread out before me seemed dull and commonplace only because I
had not fathomed its deeper import. A better book than I shall
ever write was there; leaf after leaf presenting itself to me,
just as it was written out by the reality of the flitting hour,
and vanishing as fast as written, only because my brain wanted
the insight, and my hand the cunning, to transcribe it.
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