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A Journal of Arthur Middleton
Before Arthur Middleton died he gave me this record among others inthe belief that it would help to tell me what he had always known inthe silences, yet could never in life transmute into the friendlycounters of speech. During the last years of his all too briefexperience of his friends, more than once he shyly sought to tell whathe knew, yet always silence claimed him, and nothing but the wonder ofhis eyes revealed the dream that consumed his heart. Because beautyclaims these words in a deeper knowledge than we had before, I havetranscribed this fragment of them here, confident that in these whiteintuitions of his youth there is a revelation of the Light behindbeauty beyond our poor knowledge and still poorer faith. I haveomitted only what was most sacred to the privacies of his heart andour affection. He was of the old faith and would have wished had hepublished these pages to have expressed his entire and passionateloyalty to the Roman Catholic Church in faith and deed, and to havedisclaimed any word therein which conflicted with the intimacies ofits truth. I can do no more than to echo his wish, and mourn theunhappy chance which took him from us on an April tide, though itbefell on the Easter that he loved and at that hour when the flamingsymbol of the Divine Sacrifice was setting in the west. So the passionof the sun and tide which reflected his belief witnessed theconsummation of his great desire.—THE EDITOR.
(N.B.—On the opening pages of the blank book in which this journal iscontained there is a short fragment which bears no relation that I candiscover to the entries that follow, and I am inclined to believe thatit is the beginning of an autobiography which Middleton nevercontinued. In my uncertainty, however, I print it, and accordingly itis transcribed below.—THE EDITOR.)
Fragment.—I was not more than three years old when the sunlightfirst made me happy as it stole through the curtains and over thecoverlet till it kissed my lips and wrapped me in its warm embrace.Then I would fall asleep again and my dreams, if I dreamed at all,were white and faintly stirred me to a smile. I never tried to catchthe sunbeams, for I felt their gold in my heart, nor could they havebeen nearer than they were, being associated with my mother'swatchfulness as she stole in to smile upon my slumbers and claim thesecond silent unconscious kiss. On Sunday morning they would befreighted with a quiet whiter light, more peaceful and hushed to thefeeling of the day, and somehow the peace was guarded with finger onlip throughout the house, so that it was implicit in my nest of imageslong before reason took note of it or sought to explain it to myconsciousness. Once again as a boy of fifteen I knew it with a catchof delighted and almost tearful surprise when I stroked the breast ofa wounded pigeon who found shelter in my room. The world is not asquiet in these days, nor is the hum of traffic in the mart attuned sokindly to the flow of light as when it ran so gently by the bedside ofthe dreaming boy. …
(The journal now follows, written in a small cramped hand, withoutparagraphing or division. I omit the first few entries as purelypersonal. Middleton had gone to a group of remote we