me because, with all my watching, I was never smart enough to be
around when the water was running uphill; but now I do not mind it.
I have experimented and experimented until now I know it never
does run uphill, except in the dark. I know it does in the dark,
because the pool never goes dry, which it would, of course,
if the water didn’t come back in the night. It is best to prove
things by actual experiment; then you KNOW; whereas if you depend
on guessing and supposing and conjecturing, you never get educated.
Some things you CAN’T find out; but you will never know you can’t
by guessing and supposing: no, you have to be patient and go on
experimenting until you find out that you can’t find out. And it is
delightful to have it that way, it makes the world so interesting.
If there wasn’t anything to find out, it would be dull. Even trying
to find out and not finding out is just as interesting as trying
to find out and finding out, and I don’t know but more so.
The secret of the water was a treasure until I GOT it; then the
excitement all went away, and I recognized a sense of loss.
By experiment I know that wood swims, and dry leaves, and feathers,
and plenty of other things; therefore by all that cumulative evidence
you know that a rock will swim; but you have to put up with simply
knowing it, for there isn’t any way to prove it–up to now.
But I shall find a way–then THAT excitement will go. Such things
make me sad; because by and by when I have found out everything
there won’t be any more excitements, and I do love excitements so!
The other night I couldn’t sleep for thinking about it.
At first I couldn’t make out what I was made for, but now I think it
was to search out the secrets of this wonderful world and be happy
and thank the Giver of it all for devising it. I think there are many
things to learn yet–I hope so; and by economizing and not hurrying
too fast I think they will last weeks and weeks. I hope so. When you
cast up a feather it sails away on the air and goes out of sight;
then you throw up a clod and it doesn’t. It comes down, every time.
I have tried it and tried it, and it is always so. I wonder why
it is? Of course it DOESN’T come down, but why should it SEEM to?
I suppose it is an optical illusion. I mean, one of them is.
I don’t know which one. It may be the feather, it may be the clod;
I can’t prove which it is, I can only demonstrate that one or the other
is a fake, and let a person take his choice.
By watching, I know that the stars are not going to last.
I have seen some of the best ones melt and run down the sky.
Since one can melt, they can all melt; since they can all melt,
they can all melt the same night. That sorrow will come–I know it.
I mean to sit up every night and look at them as long as I can
keep awake; and I will impress those sparkling fields on my memory,
so that by and by when they are taken away I can by my fancy restore
those lovely myriads to the black sky and make them sparkle again,
and double them by the blur of my tears.
After the Fall
When I look back, the Garden is a dream to me. It was beautiful,
surpassingly beautiful, enchantingly beautiful; and now it is lost,
and I shall not see it any more.
The Garden is lost, but I have found HIM, and am content.
He loves me as well as he can; I love him with all the strength
of my passionate nature, and this, I think, is proper to my youth
and sex. If I ask myself why I love him, I find I do not know,
and do not really much care to know; so I suppose that this kind