But when I
began to dwell upon my childhood, one little thing gave birth to
another swiftly, as you may see one flicker in the heaven multiply
and break upon the mystery of the dark, filling the night with
clusters of stars. As I thought, I kept drawing spears of the
dungeon corn between my fingers softly (they had come to be like
comrades to me), and presently there flashed upon me the very first
memory of my life. It had never come to me before, and I knew now
that it was the beginning of conscious knowledge: for we can never
know till we can remember. When a child remembers what it sees or
feels, it has begun life.
I put that recollection into the letter which I wrote Alixe, and it
shall be set down forthwith and in little space, though it took me
so very many days and weeks to think it out, to give each word a
fixed place, so that it should go from my mind no more. Every phrase
of that story as I told it is as fixed as stone in my memory. Yet it
must not be thought I can give it all here. I shall set down only a
few things, but you shall find in them the spirit of the whole.
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