A. E. Coppard - My Hundredth Tale

[Sitaram]

(short story - excerpts)

... I have enjoyed much of my life here (in this forest, in this hut). and indeed perhaps I still enjoy it. It is hard to find the truth about your own emotions. I can look back with joy upon times when I fancied I was unhappy, but I know now that one enjoys all experiences, whether happy or not.

By the time my new story was finished and disposed of I had grown restless. The year was falling into decay, and in the forest there is nothing between the fall of the leaves and the coming of the primrose. The primroses come, and after them there is the blue bugle. The wild parsnip runs to seed (I rub it on my hands because I love its curious scent), and then the leaves fall off trees and the years is over. Now, like the prodigal son, I wanted to gather my rags about me and turn home, for the habits of home are the things we measure life by - but I had no other home.

What shall I call such passages as these?

I am thinking of calling them "pensive passages" or, perhaps, simply pensives.

I am always encountering such passages, in anything of quality that I read. Common writing seems to lack such pensives.

What is it that they have in common, that they all stand out in my mind and I regard them as creatures of the same species?


Water is everywhere, all kinds of water; running water, still water, stagnant water, shallow water, deep water, muddy water. But water differs from rain.
Rain is water with a certain style and mood.

A drop of dew differs from a drop of rain.

Something appears, suddenly. Something inconspicuous catches our attention. Perhaps we pass it at just the right moment and angle, and suddenly, it gleams.

The moment we behold and admire is evanescent, evaporating with the droplet of dew.

If I could gather all the pensives in the world to one place, all the drops of dew, would, then, drowning be possible? May one drown in dew?