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Circa Date
1887
Transcription
9
#A little black horizontal philosopher calm, pensive, silently watchful, & [ ] curiosity
He was not so dull as he seemed, had been through many calming experiences
Neither buoyant nor depressed, come wind come weather
Either dull or under discipline like a King in disguise
# We fancy being the highest animal we must understand the lower, but this far from being true, we are strangely separated from our brothers below us.
# He was not the same dog after this, nor was I the same man, the memory of it held us together & brought us nearer everything.
Dull dozy callous insensibility of this supreme trial & he became a living soul
# In this life & death struggle fancied I could hear his heart beats & see him like the works of a watch out of its case
To say I sympathized with him would not half tell the story. I felt & heard his heart beats. It required no nice discernment
10
to read every motion for his soul was bare & my vision was sharp with the clearing pains of my own deliverance, I had just passed through the same fire & my heart was sunshine as it might well be taught to feel for others.
As if all the accumulated riches of his life arose to veer in one grand display, like a tree on fire giving out all its gains in one blaze drawn from the sun in centuries.
Crossing
Come now, courage my boy
#If he could only speak & yet it might not help so very much. How little do we make of speech in knowing each other [We all walk through life alone, our friends even our wives don’t know us, speak as long & loud as we may] Rather is it [waste] into a hedge back of which to hide – as well be dumb in most cases. A few signs & faces do as well. They are near & still in reality so far & multitudes of other animals how much
Resource Identifier
MuirReel33 Notebook01 Img007.Jpeg
Contributing Institution
Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific Library
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