Out of the Past — page 23: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

20 Out of the Past. “This is part of your diary. It is good to see it. I suppose these are pages of special importance.” “No. I took them at random, excepting the last page.” “For what purpose?” “TI think you will see when you have finished.” At first Benedict read to himself, but, gradually for- getting his surroundings, he walked back and forth, read- ing half aloud: “*The monastery walls are closing in upon me with the weight of gratitude they impose. Here I have spent my life since early childhood. To the fathers I owe all my knowledge, a training so systematic and so liberal that the learning of the schools would be meagre beside it. Here, under Father Anselm music has become my mistress. Yet I dare not stay here. Better an honest layman than a renegade priest. I cannot decide to-day. The sense of all I owe these dear friends sits heavy on me.’ * * * ‘JT must be free. How the world sings to me! How I long to pass these walls! How the joy of strife runs in my veins. To measure strength with the times—to be plunged in the current of my genera- tion. I am dead here. I have not been born yet. These men in the world of whom I read from day to day—am I their equal? To them the achievement—to me the fate of the dry leaves upon which the history of their deeds is Eomicbooks. Go