Primary tabs
Transcription
[Page 96]
the illusion was complete. The sighing of the gentle breeze in their branches was like the voices of long lost friends, and the sight and the odour of them, the key to unlock the secret chambers of the memory, and to bring into being, to revive into warm pulsating life, and bring from the tomb of the past, where they had long since lain forgotten, a host of scenes and some pulsating with the joy of life, and again throbbing with a great sorrow, scenes pathetic, and ridiculous and associations that one thought had passed out of his life for ever. How strange and wonderful is memory. We leave the past behind us and we imagine we can forget, and lo, a snatch of an old song, a voice, a face, a perfume, and voices that have long been silent, faces that long have mouldered into clay, friendships whose golden links have sundered for many, many years, start out of the shadows of the Past, and live with us again. Such is the power of the law of association.
19th December
I have neglected my diary for quite a number of days now, and yet it is hardly neglect; for there