I was so wet when I got back to Mitchell’s toward
the evening, that I had simply to divest myself of
my shoes, socks, and trousers, and leave them behind
for the benefit of New York city. No fire could
have dried them ere I had to start; and to pack them
in their present condition was to spread ruin among
my other possessions. With a heavy heart I said
farewell to them as they lay a pulp in the middle
of a pool upon the floor of Mitchell’s kitchen.
I wonder if they are dry by now. Mitchell hired
a man to carry my baggage to the station, which was
hard by, accompanied me thither himself, and recommended
me to the particular attention of the officials.
No one could have been kinder. Those who are
out of pocket may go safely to Reunion House, where
they will get decent meals and find an honest and
obliging landlord. I owed him this word of thanks,
before I enter fairly on the second {1} and far less
agreeable chapter of my emigrant experience.
CHAPTER II—COCKERMOUTH AND KESWICK—A FRAGMENT—1871
Very much as a painter half closes his eyes so that
some salient unity may disengage itself from among
the crowd of details, and what he sees may thus form
itself into a whole; very much on the same principle,
I may say, I allow a considerable lapse of time to
intervene between any of my little journeyings and
the attempt to chronicle them. I cannot describe
a thing that is before me at the moment, or that has
been before me only a very little while before; I
must allow my recollections to get thoroughly strained
free from all chaff till nothing be except the pure
gold; allow my memory to choose out what is truly
memorable by a process of natural selection; and I
piously believe that in this way I ensure the Survival
of the Fittest. If I make notes for future use,
or if I am obliged to write letters during the course
of my little excursion, I so interfere with the process
that I can never again find out what is worthy of
being preserved, or what should be given in full length,
what in torso, or what merely in profile. This
process of incubation may be unreasonably prolonged;
and I am somewhat afraid that I have made this mistake
with the present journey. Like a bad daguerreotype,
great part of it has been entirely lost; I can tell
you nothing about the beginning and nothing about
the end; but the doings of some fifty or sixty hours
about the middle remain quite distinct and definite,
like a little patch of sunshine on a long, shadowy
plain, or the one spot on an old picture that has
been restored by the dexterous hand of the cleaner.
I remember a tale of an old Scots minister called
upon suddenly to preach, who had hastily snatched
an old sermon out of his study and found himself in
the pulpit before he noticed that the rats had been
making free with his manuscript and eaten the first
two or three pages away; he gravely explained to the
congregation how he found himself situated: ‘And
now,’ said he, ‘let us just begin where
the rats have left off.’ I must follow
the divine’s example, and take up the thread
of my discourse where it first distinctly issues from
the limbo of forgetfulness.
