FACTS AND TRUTHS

I love truth, although I shall die hating mere facts, because they are misleading. They are the weapons and defense of literalists, strangely mean-minded people in my opinion who have caused much trouble and strife in the world. But I have the same happy talent the child I was had for prevaricating. Let me have some wisdom of the truth even if it is no larger than a mustard seed and the sensation inflates me. I cannot set it down in the little raw words of mere veracity. I must garnish it and spread it like a rainbow above my mind.

Some people would call this lying. I think they have done it, but I am not embarrassed or convinced. My notion is that it is a very precious kind of inebriation of the spirit. I remember lying myself into a state of happy intoxication as a child, even if I had to go out behind the house to do it where no one could hear me. I think this is one reason I live concealed behind so many hills now. The occasional excursions I make into the world bring me face to face with so many confusing and depressing facts which I cannot endure and cannot deny. Here, there is nothing to deny. All is an affirmation of the old order of things as in the beginning. It is only my mind that travels. Sometimes then I see visions of the future like Cassandra. But I try to be sensible about this and remember that it is the weariness of the years which darkens the glass.

The world is not really whirling to destruction. It is we who are old and no longer able to keep pace with the times and who must pass away. Everything will go on as usual when we are out of it. And I shall not be scared up out of my grave, disheveled and demented by the din of some fearful battle going on above me. Such thoughts I do have for the moment, and am mastered by them as I used to be enchanted when I was young by a star-blossoming night. But presently I take a sort of recumbent comfort in the situation; nothing is really changed that should remain fixed by His almighty will--the same bright days, the same kind nights, the same seasons; only I have grown older.

As to facts, I have always been a faithful interpreter of the truth as my mind finds it; but I never have been able to stick to facts. In my opinion they are among the most misleading things we have to contend with in this present world. A fact is something somebody finds out about you that is not true, one of those capital-letter deeds you performed in a high mood or a low mood which is not characteristic of the man you really are. Personally, I had much rather be judged by the life I have lived than by the books I have written. In both places I have said things or done things that outrage the fact-tacking genius of critics. But on the whole I have come out very well.

My idea of Heaven is a place where there are no hard and fast facts of mortality sticking to us, but we shall be what we really are, true hearts at last, easy to know and easier to believe, no reasons left to envy one another or to suspect one another. I have a faint impression that this may reduce mental activity among us beyond endurance, but I am willing to try it for a while.

I am not opposed to facts, you understand; but my point is that we attach too much importance to them as evidence. Facts make war; they are used by ambitious men and greedy men to sway the minds of people. Does any one believe now that there would have been any Great War if the common people who furnished the cannon fodder for it had known the real truth underlying the conflict? I doubt it.

I should like to get back to that honest feline normalcy of being just a woman with the ordinary exercise of my give-and-take disposition. I would spare more time for living instead of working. I wish above everything else to indulge more in inconsequential conversation about just pleasant things. What has become of all the natural, cheerful little topics we used to discuss? I rarely ever hear a conversation now that does not turn out for the worst instead of ending in a gale of laughter.

Am I wrong, or is there a note of sinister wisdom in laughter these days? Is there some dreadful quality in the knowledge we are getting which changes innocent merriment to cynical hysteria? I must be wrong about this; but when you live alone most of the time, and only go abroad occasionally in the world, you do notice things like that--the eyes of people not so trustful of one another as I remember them long ago, a fearful wit, and that queer triumphant note in laughter like a comment indulged at the world’s expense.

I am merely setting down my thoughts about all this as one thrusts out his hands in the dark and feels his way toward the door. What actually happens is that I spend most of my days alone here in this cabin with a companionable fire upon the hearth. Usually I get away with it; but if I am in a particularly keen mood, the illusion fails. I know it is only a bright combustion of heat and wood in the fireplace. No real sense to the crackling of these blazing logs. I read some, walk abroad with the dogs, and I have my usual look at the stars, as a poor lonesome shepherd may watch his flock a long way off and beyond his reach, but his sheep still. So are these stars mine. The heavens above this cabin are familiar to me like a garment I have worn a long time upon my heart.

But I have never seen an angel ascending or descending! That keeps one strained up too much--no respite from this business of believing what you cannot see with the naked eye. I am not denying that it is good for the soul, but sometimes I have wished for something that was just good for me.