Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 285, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 November 1912 — Charm of Memory. [ARTICLE]

Charm of Memory.

The charm of memory lies, I think, in the quality which it gives things, at once of intimacy and remoteness. The fascination to us recalling our past selves, our formSr surroundings, lies in our sense that they are absolutely known to us, yet absolutely out of our reach. We can recall places, houses, rooms, until every detail lives again. We can turn from one thing to another and, as we look at each, 10, it is*there! It has a reality more poigflant than the hand that we touch or the flower that we Bmell. Sometimes, it is true, present experiences, even as they occur, have something of this quality. They do not need to recede into the past to gain this glamour v Certain places have It; cathedrals sometimes, and stiff lakes. Certain things foster it; firelight and silence, and the steady fall of rain. Certain moments give birth to it; the luminous pause between sundown and dusk, afternoon with Its slant of light through deep grass or across a quiet river. This, I fancy, was what Tennyson was thinking of when he called the lotus land the land “wherein it seemed always afternoon.” In that land these magic moments were prolonged, and thus it became the land of reminiscence.—Atlantic Monthly.