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| 1 | +I am writing a history of the things men do. I have written three such histories |
| 2 | +and I am but a young man. Already I have written three hundred, four hundred thousand words. |
| 3 | +My wife is somewhere in this house where for hours now I have been sitting and writing. |
| 4 | +She is a tall woman with black hair, turning a little grey. Listen, she is going |
| 5 | +softly up a flight of stairs. All day she goes softly about, doing the housework in our house. |
| 6 | +I came here to this town from another town in the state of Iowa. My father was a |
| 7 | +workman, a house painter. He did not rise in the world as I have done. I worked |
| 8 | +my way through college and became an historian. We own this house in which I sit. |
| 9 | +This is my room in which I work. Already I have written three histories of peoples. |
| 10 | +I have told how states were formed and battles fought. You may see my books standing |
| 11 | +straight up on the shelves of libraries. They stand up like sentries. I am tall like |
| 12 | +my wife and my shoulders are a little stooped. Although I write boldly I am a shy man. |
| 13 | +I like being at work alone in this room with the door closed. There are many books here. |
| 14 | +Nations march back and forth in the books. It is quiet here but in the books a great |
| 15 | +thundering goes on. |
| 16 | + |
| 17 | +My wife has a serious, almost stern look. Sometimes the thoughts I have concerning |
| 18 | +her frighten me. In the afternoon she leaves our house and goes for a walk. Sometimes |
| 19 | +she goes to stores, sometimes to visit a neighbor. There is a yellow house opposite |
| 20 | +our house. My wife goes out at a side door and passes along the street between our |
| 21 | +house and the yellow house. The side door of our house bangs. There is a moment of |
| 22 | +waiting. My wife's face floats across the yellow background of a picture. |
| 23 | + |
| 24 | +Little things are growing big in my mind. The window before my desk makes a little |
| 25 | +framed place like a picture. Every day I sit staring. I wait with an odd sensation |
| 26 | +of something impending. My hand trembles. The face that floats through the picture |
| 27 | +does something I don't understand. The face floats, then it stops. It goes from the |
| 28 | +right hand side to the left hand side, then it stops. The face comes into my mind |
| 29 | +and goes out--the face floats in my mind. The pen has fallen from my fingers. The |
| 30 | +house is silent. The eyes of the floating face are turned away from me. My wife is a |
| 31 | +girl who came here to this town from another town in the state of Ohio. We keep a |
| 32 | +servant but my wife often sweeps the floors and she sometimes makes the bed in |
| 33 | +which we sleep together. We sit together in the evening but I do not know her. |
| 34 | +I cannot shake myself out of myself. I wear a brown coat and I cannot come out of |
| 35 | +my coat. I cannot come out of myself. My wife is very gentle and she speaks softly |
| 36 | +but she cannot come out of herself. My wife has gone out of the house. She does |
| 37 | +not know that I know every little thought of her life. I know what she thought when |
| 38 | +she was a child and walked in the streets of an Ohio town. I have heard the voices of |
| 39 | +her mind. I have heard the little voices. I heard the voice of fear crying when she |
| 40 | +was first overtaken with passion and crawled into my arms. Again I heard the voices |
| 41 | +of fear when her lips said words of courage to me as we sat together on the first |
| 42 | +evening after we were married and moved into this house. It would be strange if I |
| 43 | +could sit here, as I am doing now, while my own face floated across the picture |
| 44 | +made by the yellow house and the window. It would be strange and beautiful if I |
| 45 | +could meet my wife, come into her presence. The woman whose face floated across |
| 46 | +my picture just now knows nothing of me. I know nothing of her. She has gone off, |
| 47 | +along a street. The voices of her mind are talking. I am here in this room, as |
| 48 | +alone as ever any man God made. It would be strange and beautiful if I could float |
| 49 | +my face across my picture. If my floating face could come into her presence, if |
| 50 | +it could come into the presence of any man or any woman--that would be a strange |
| 51 | +and beautiful thing to have happen. |
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