Standing upon the shore of eternity, I turn for a
last look landward over the course by which I came.
There are twenty years of footprints fairly distinct,
the impressions of bleeding feet. They lead through
poverty and pain, devious and unsure, as of one
staggering beneath a burden--
Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow.
Ah, the poet's prophecy of Me--how admirable,
how dreadfully admirable!
Backward beyond the beginning of this via do-
lorosa--this epic of suffering with episodes of sin
--I see nothing clearly; it comes out of a cloud.
I know that it spans only twenty years, yet I am an
old man.
One does not remember one's birth--one has to
be told. But with me it was different; life came to
me full-handed and dowered me with all my facul-
ties and powers. Of a previous existence I know no
more than others, for all have stammering intima-
tions that may be memories and may be dreams.
I know only that my first consciousness was of ma-
turity in body and mind--a consciousness accepted
without surprise or conjecture. I merely found myself
walking in a forest, half-clad, footsore, unutterably
weary and hungry. Seeing a farmhouse, I approached
and asked for food, which was given me by one
who inquired my name. I did not know, yet knew
that all had names. Greatly embarrassed, I retreated,
and night coming on, lay down in the forest and
slept.
The next day I entered a large town which I shall
not name.
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