They are indeed just
floating fragments of slum, much as icebergs are floating fragments of
glacier. The civilised man who has learnt to wash, who has developed
a sense of physical honour, of cleanly temperate feeding, of time, can
endure them no more. They pass, and the clanking coal-wasting steamers
will follow them, giving place to cleaner, finer things....
But so it was I made my voyage to Africa, and came at last into a world
of steamy fogs and a hot smell of vegetable decay, and into sound and
sight of surf and distant intermittent glimpses of the coast. I lived
a strange concentrated life through all that time, such a life as a
creature must do that has fallen in a well. All my former ways ceased,
all my old vistas became memories.
The situation I was saving was very small and distant now; I felt its
urgency no more. Beatrice and Lady Grove, my uncle and the Hardingham,
my soaring in the air and my habitual wide vision of swift effectual
things, became as remote as if they were in some world I had left for
ever....
IV
All these African memories stand by themselves.
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