Even
if he's only a bald-headed old fool over forty selling books
on a country road, he can make an ideal of it. Good old
Parnassus! It's a great game.... I think I'll have to give
her up soon, though: I must get that book of mine written.
But Parnassus has been a true glass of blessings to me._
There was much more in the notebook; indeed it was half full
of jotted paragraphs, memoranda, and scraps of writing--poems
I believe some of them were--but I had seen enough. It
seemed as if I had stumbled unawares on the pathetic, brave,
and lonely heart of the little man. I'm a commonplace
creature, I'm afraid, insensible to many of the deeper things
in life, but every now and then, like all of us, I come face
to face with something that thrills me. I saw how this
little, red-bearded pedlar was like a cake of yeast in the
big, heavy dough of humanity: how he travelled about trying
to fulfil in his own way his ideals of beauty. I felt almost
motherly toward him: I wanted to tell him that I understood
him. And in a way I felt ashamed of having run away from my
own homely tasks, my kitchen and my hen yard and dear old,
hot-tempered, absent-minded Andrew. I fell into a sober mood.
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