Adventures in Contentment

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Adventures in Contentment

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Title: Adventures In Contentment
Author: David Grayson AKA: Ray Stannard Baker
Release Date: January 5, 2004 [EBook #10605]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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ADVENTURES IN CONTENTMENT ***

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ADVENTURES IN CONTENTMENT David Grayson

I
"THE BURDEN OF THE VALLEY OF VISION"
I came here eight years ago as the renter of this farm, of which soon
afterward I became the owner. The time before that I like to forget. The
chief impression it left, upon my memory, now happily growing
indistinct, is of being hurried faster than I could well travel. From the
moment, as a boy of seventeen, I first began to pay my own way, my
days were ordered by an inscrutable power which drove me hourly to
my task. I was rarely allowed to look up or down, but always forward,
toward that vague Success which we Americans love to glorify.
My senses, my nerves, even my muscles were continually strained to
the utmost of attainment. If I loitered or paused by the wayside, as it
seems natural for me to do, I soon heard the sharp crack of the lash. For
many years, and I can say it truthfully, I never rested. I neither thought
nor reflected. I had no pleasure, even though I pursued it fiercely
during the brief respite of vacations. Through many feverish years I did
not work: I merely produced.
The only real thing I did was to hurry as though every moment were
my last, as though the world, which now seems so rich in everything,
held only one prize which might be seized upon before I arrived. Since
then I have tried to recall, like one who struggles to restore the visions
of a fever, what it was that I ran to attain, or why I should have borne
without rebellion such indignities to soul and body. That life seems
now, of all illusions, the most distant and unreal. It is like the
unguessed eternity before we are born: not of concern compared with
that eternity upon which we are now embarked.
All these things happened in cities and among crowds. I like to forget
them. They smack of that slavery of the spirit which is so much worse
than any mere slavery of the body.
One day--it was in April, I remember, and the soft maples in the city

park were just beginning to blossom--I stopped suddenly. I did not
intend to stop. I confess in humiliation that it was no courage, no will
of my own. I intended to go on toward Success: but Fate stopped me. It
was as if I had been thrown violently from a moving planet: all the
universe streamed around me and past me. It seemed to me that of all
animate creation, I was the only thing that was still or silent. Until I
stopped I had not known the pace I ran; and I had a vague sympathy
and understanding, never felt before, for those who left the running. I
lay prostrate with fever and close to death for weeks and watched the
world go by: the dust, the noise, the very colour of haste. The only
sharp pang that I suffered was the feeling that I should be
broken-hearted and that I was not; that I should care and that I did not.
It was as though I had died and escaped all further responsibility. I even
watched with dim equanimity my friends racing past me, panting as
they ran. Some of them paused an instant to comfort me where I lay,
but I could see that their minds were still upon the running and I was
glad when they went away. I cannot tell with what weariness their haste
oppressed me. As for them, they somehow blamed me for dropping out.
I knew. Until we ourselves understand, we accept no excuse from the
man who stops. While I felt it all, I was not bitter. I did not seem to
care. I said to myself: "This is Unfitness. I survive no longer. So be it."
Thus I lay, and presently I began to hunger and thirst. Desire rose
within me: the indescribable longing of the convalescent for the food of
recovery. So I lay,