1
Doors have a back side also. And grass blades are double-edged. It’s no
use trying to deceive me, leaves fall more by the buds that push them off
than by lack of greenness. Or throw two shoes on the floor and see how
they’ll lie if you think it’s all one way.
2
There is no truth—sh!—but the honest truth and that is that touch-me-nots
mean nothing, that daisies at a distance seem mushrooms and that—your
japanese silk today was not the sky’s blue but your pajamas now as you
lean over the crib’s edge are and day’s in! Grassgreen the mosquito net
caught over your head’s butt for foliage. What else? except odors—an old
hallway. Moresco. Salvago. —and a game of socker. I was too nervous and
young to win—that day.
3
All that seem solid: melancholias, _idees fixes_, eight years at the
academy, Mr. Locke, this year and the next and the next—one like
another—whee!—they are April zephyrs, were one a Botticelli, between
their chinks, pink anemones.
* * * * *
_Often it happens that in a community of no great distinction some
fellow of superficial learning but great stupidity will seem to be rooted
in the earth of the place the most solid figure imaginable impossible
to remove him._