LITMIR.BIZ

      Published by Good Press, 2021

       [email protected]

      EAN 4057664604361

Table of Contents

       PROEM

       THE THIRTEEN TRULY GREAT THINGS OF LIFE

       THEIR YESTERDAYS

       DREAMS

       OCCUPATION

       KNOWLEDGE

       IGNORANCE

       RELIGION

       TRADITION

       TEMPTATION

       LIFE

       DEATH

       FAILURE

       SUCCESS

       LOVE

       MEMORIES

       THE END.

PROEM

       Table of Contents

      There was a man.

      And it happened—as such things often so happen—that this man went back into his days that were gone. Again and again and again he went back. Even as every man, even as you and I, so this man went back into his Yesterdays.

      Then—why then there was a woman.

      And it happened—as such things sometimes so happen—that this woman also went back into her days that were gone. Again and again and again she went back. Even as every woman, even as you and I, so this woman went back into her Yesterdays.

      So it happened—as such things do happen—that the Yesterdays of this man and the Yesterdays of this woman became Their Yesterdays, and that they went back, then, no more alone but always together.

      Even as one, they, forever after, went back.

      What They Found in Their Yesterdays

      And the man and the woman who went back into Their Yesterdays found there the Thirteen Truly Great Things of Life. Just as they found these things in their grown up days, even unto the end, so they found them in Their Yesterdays.

      Thirteen Truly Great Things of Life there are. No life can have less. No life can have more. All of life is in them. No life is without them all.

      Dreams, Occupation, Knowledge, Ignorance, Religion, Tradition, Temptation, Life, Death, Failure, Success, Love, Memories: these are the Thirteen Truly Great Things of Life—found by the man and the woman in their grown up days—found by them in Their Yesterdays—and they found no others.

      It does not matter where this man and this woman lived, nor who they were, nor what they did. It does not matter when or how many times they went back into Their Yesterdays. These things are all that they found. And they found these things even as every man and woman finds them, even as you and I find them, in our days that are and in our days that were—in our grown up days and in our Yesterdays.

      And it is so that in all of these Thirteen Truly Great Things of Life there is a man and there is a woman.

THE THIRTEEN TRULY GREAT THINGS OF LIFE

       Table of Contents

      DREAMS

      OCCUPATION

      KNOWLEDGE

      IGNORANCE

      RELIGION

      TRADITION

      TEMPTATION

      LIFE

      DEATH

      FAILURE

      SUCCESS

      LOVE

      MEMORIES

      THEIR YESTERDAYS

       Table of Contents

DREAMS

       Table of Contents

      The man, for the first time, stood face to face with Life and, for the first time, knew that he was a man.

      For a long time he had known that some day he would be a man. But he had always thought of his manhood as a matter of years. He had said to himself: "when I am twenty-one, I will be a man." He did not know, then, that twenty-one years—that indeed three times twenty-one years—cannot make a man. He did not know, then, that men are made of other things than years.

      I cannot tell you the man's name, nor the names of his parents, nor his exact age, nor just where he lived, nor any of those things. For my story, such things are of no importance whatever. But this is of the greatest importance: as the man, for the first time, stood face to face with Life and, for the first time, realized his manhood, his manhood life began in Dreams.

      It is the dreams of life that, at the beginning of life, matter. Of the Thirteen Truly Great Things of Life, Dreams are first.

      It was green fruit time. From the cherry tree that grew in the upper corner of the garden next door, close by the hedge that separated the two places, the blossoms were gone and the tiny cherries were already well formed. The nest, that a pair of little brown birds had made that spring in the hedge, was just empty, and, from the green laden branches of the tree, the little brown mother was calling anxious advice and sweet worried counsel to her sons and daughters who were trying their new wings.

      In the cemetery on the hill, beside a grave over which the sod had formed thick and firm, there was now another grave—another grave so new that on it no blade of grass had started—so new that the yellow earth in the long rounded

Скачать книгу