I
settled down and went to and fro to my lectures and laboratory; in
the beginning I worked hard, and only slowly did the curiosity that
presently possessed me to know more of this huge urban province arise,
the desire to find something beyond mechanism that I could serve, some
use other than learning. With this was a growing sense of loneliness,
a desire for adventure and intercourse. I found myself in the evenings
poring over a map of London I had bought, instead of copying out lecture
notes--and on Sundays I made explorations, taking omnibus rides east and
west and north and south, and to enlarging and broadening the sense of
great swarming hinterlands of humanity with whom I had no dealings, of
whom I knew nothing....
The whole illimitable place teemed with suggestions of indefinite and
sometimes outrageous possibility, of hidden but magnificent meanings.
It wasn't simply that I received a vast impression of space and
multitude and opportunity; intimate things also were suddenly dragged
from neglected, veiled and darkened corners into an acute vividness of
perception.
Pages:
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182