A FRAGMENT - 1871
VERY much as a painter half closes his eyes so that some salient
unity may disengage itself from among the crowd of details, and what
he sees may thus form itself into a whole; very much on the same
principle, I may say, I allow a considerable lapse of time to
intervene between any of my little journeyings and the attempt to
chronicle them. I cannot describe a thing that is before me at the
moment, or that has been before me only a very little while before; I
must allow my recollections to get thoroughly strained free from all
chaff till nothing be except the pure gold; allow my memory to choose
out what is truly memorable by a process of natural selection; and I
piously believe that in this way I ensure the Survival of the
Fittest. If I make notes for future use, or if I am obliged to write
letters during the course of my little excursion, I so interfere with
the process that I can never again find out what is worthy of being
preserved, or what should be given in full length, what in torso, or
what merely in profile. This process of incubation may be
unreasonably prolonged; and I am somewhat afraid that I have made
this mistake with the present journey. Like a bad daguerreotype,
great part of it has been entirely lost; I can tell you nothing about
the beginning and nothing about the end; but the doings of some fifty
or sixty hours about the middle remain quite distinct and definite,
like a little patch of sunshine on a long, shadowy plain, or the one
spot on an old picture that has been restored by the dexterous hand
of the cleaner. I remember a tale of an old Scots minister called
upon suddenly to preach, who had hastily snatched an old sermon out
of his study and found himself in the pulpit before he noticed that
the rats had been making free with his manuscript and eaten the first
two or three pages away; he gravely explained to the congregation how
he found himself situated: 'And now,' said he, 'let us just begin
where the rats have left off.' I must follow the divine's example,
and take up the thread of my discourse where it first distinctly
issues from the limbo of forgetfulness.