And yet my reasons are quite many.
For it is not unusual in human beings who have witnessed the sack
of a city or the falling to pieces of a people to desire to set down
what they have witnessed for the benefit of unknown heirs or of
generations infinitely remote; or, if you please, just to get the sight
out of their heads.
Some one has said that the death of a mouse from cancer is the
whole sack of Rome by the Goths, and I swear to you that the
breaking up of our little four-square coterie was such another
unthinkable event. Supposing that you should come upon us
sitting together at one of the little tables in front of the club house,
let us say, at Homburg, taking tea of an afternoon and watching
the miniature golf, you would have said that, as human affairs go,
we were an extraordinarily safe castle. We were, if you will, one of
those tall ships with the white sails upon a blue sea, one of those
things that seem the proudest and the safest of all the beautiful
and safe things that God has permitted the mind of men to frame.
Where better could one take refuge? Where better?
Permanence? Stability? I can't believe it's gone. I can't believe that
that long, tranquil life, which was just stepping a minuet, vanished
in four crashing days at the end of nine years and six weeks.
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