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Page 107 of 1121929 · PDF PAGE 147
…ead I aimed and fired. The cartridge failed to explode and the bull thundered past me before I could reload. If he had been charging --- good night! I took the lesson to heart and always carried a double-barrelled rifle ever after. Apart from the extra time needed to lower a single-barrelled rifle and manipulate the lever, which might well cause a fatal delay, there is more than a possibility of a cartridge jamming, which would leave one entirely unarmed. We jogged on wearily to Anuradapura. This discomforts of the coach were great, and the mon…
1929 · PDF PAGE 403
403 he said; and the twelve good men and true had brought in a verdict against the evidence, against the {642} judge's direction, against the psychology of the witnesses. And the sole ground for their verdict was that the existence of entirely unsupported suspicion of so horrible a crime proved that it must be justified. It was the psychology of the Middle Ages. A man might or might not be guilty of murder, but witchcraft was so unimaginable an abomination that it was unthinkable that anyone could accuse people of it unless it were true. I reme…
1929 · PDF PAGE 51
…on, the best thing to be hoped for was one other man who would possess all the qualities which one lacked oneself; and it was my supreme good fortune in 1898 to find what I sought in Oscar Eckenstein. In the meantime I went on climbing in the Bernese Oberland during the summer of 1895. Certainly the Lord must have been leading me, for I hardly ever went out on a mountain without striking some episode which directed my thoughts into the right channel. To return to psychology. It is hard to summarize the general effects of my queer education. But…
1929 · PDF PAGE 251
… why anyone tolerated him. Perhaps it was the subconscious feeling that one cannot be unkind to anything so pitiable. On April 27th, the good Tartarin, who had published a book (in the Swiss language) on our expedition to Chogo Ri, illustrated with many admirable photographs but not distinguished by literary quality or accuracy (in many respects), and had lectured in Paris and other capitals on Chogo Ri, dropped in. I was heartily glad to see him. He was the same cheerful ass as ever, but he had got a bit of a swelled head and was extremely ann…
1929 · PDF PAGE 254
…'s head has cooled it. One tosses in blind torment. There is no question of seeking relief; one has an instinct that nothing will do any good. Perhaps one drops off to sleep for a few moments, and those, however {422} few they be, are filled with aeons of delirious and demoniac dreams of suffocation dipped in despair.
1929 · PDF PAGE 479
…e. I knew that my personal friends in England would understand what I had done in America: they would perhaps be proud of me. So far, so good. But I supposed, from the conversation of some genuinely intelligent Englishmen in high official positions who were travelling with me across the Atlantic, that England had recovered sang froid and settled down to reconstruction and the enjoyment of the fruits of victory. I wrongly judged that authority would administer a stern rebuke to any maniacs who aimed at the perpetuation of bad feeling. Indeed, I …
1929 · PDF PAGE 265
…nse steps made solid by repeated regelation. It might be called two hours' easy going. The doctor had recovered his health and his {437} good humour, and we had none of us a moment's doubt that he would put the fear of God into Righi and carry out the above instructions promptly and efficiently. On Thursday, August 31st, I started up the slopes with six men and a perfectly light heart. The problem was, of course, how to get the coolies up with the minimum of trouble. I sent Salama ahead with an axe and shovels on a rope. Their job was to clear …
1929 · PDF PAGE 333
…t without fearing it in the least, a man who had nothing to escape from; and it was instantly accepted by him at its face value. It's no good arguing whether a thing is a hammer or not, when all you know about it is that it has a habit of knocking you down. It was useless to struggle further. So late as October 1908, I was carrying out a Retirement (see "John St. John"), and invoking my Holy Guardian Angel, without any reference to The Book of the Law. Fuller and I had gone to work to edit my magical diaries and present to the world the story o…
1929 · PDF PAGE 241
…er to rest on my oars at the very moment when a spurt would take me past the post. I begin to be recognized as the one poet in England: "Good," I say to myself, "I needn't bother about that any more." I acquire most of the world's records as a mountaineer --- that lets me out. Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero pulsanda tellus. I reach eminence in Magick; it is the signal for me to drop it; in mysticism, and I lose my interest. Now, charged by the Secret Chiefs of the Third Order with a mission of such importance that the last event in the wor…
1929 · PDF PAGE 259
…iny and I administer reward and punishment unsparingly and impersonally. The ciikues began to be very fond of me, not only because of my good comradeship an my cheerful calm and confidence, but because they were subconsciously relieved by my conduct from their
1929 · PDF PAGE 94
…ipate in the general gaiety. Sporadic free fights sprang up here and there, but nothing really serious. On the whole we gave and took in good temper. Just before twelve o'clock I turned to go home. Just beyond the tobacconist's -- Bacon, celebrated by Calverley in his overrated ode --- swirled a swarm of townees shouting an swearing in a way that struck me as ugly. It was no affair of mine and I did not want to be late. But even as I changed my course to avoid the mob I saw that their game was to reinforce half a dozen roughs who were surroundi…
1929 · PDF PAGE 130
…ch day was to immortalize its events in poetry. This again was one of my characteristically crude ideas, yet the result was surprisingly good --- much better, perhaps, than I ever thought, or think now. No less a critic than Marcel Schwob called it "a little masterpiece". And many other people of taste and judgment have professed themselves in love with it. Possibly the simplicity of its realism, its sincere and shame-free expression of every facet of my mind, constitute real merit. It is certainly true that most people find much of my work har…
1929 · PDF PAGE 144
…eady I had learnt to use my eyes; prejudices had somehow lost their power to persuade. My experience of the Order probably counted for a good deal in this. At the same time, I did not swing from one extreme to the other. "Blessed are they that expect nothing; for they shall not be disappointed!" I was in no danger of judging the principles of Buddhism by the practices of Buddhists. I worked out the logical consequences of any philosophy without reference to the criticisms of history. The Buddhism of Ceylon is {249} based on the canon of their s…
1929 · PDF PAGE 303
… Not until the sixteenth did the featureless plateau give way to the grand wooded gorges which caress Tatz'assa Tang. The village has no good inn, so we went on to a lovely glade which afforded a delightful and romantic place for a camp. I fell ill, I don't know of what, for the next three days. Whatever scenery there may have been I was too sick to observe. {493} We reached Yunnanfu on the twentieth. Mr. Wilkinson, the consul general, wrote that he was very sorry not to be able to offer hospitality, but the Bengali blackguard of Tengyueh had p…
1929 · PDF PAGE 342
…rstood and pungently appreciated of all. I believe that when this position is generally accepted, mankind will be able to go back with a good conscience to ceremonial worship. I have myself constructed numerous ceremonies where it is frankly admitted that religious enthusiasm is primarily sexual in character. I have merely refused to stop there. I have insisted that sexual excitement is merely a degraded form of divine ecstasy. I have thus harnessed the wild horses of human passion to the chariot of the Spiritual Sun. I have given these horses …
1929 · PDF PAGE 197
… bag and a few valuable books which I did not want to be bothered with. I called on him and asked for their return. I was received as in good standing, yet a certain constraint and embarrassment were apparent. He handed over my books, but explained that as he was just moving into a new house on the Butte Montmartre (where I found him in the appropriate turmoil), he could not lay his hands on my bags for a few days. I have never seen them since. One of them was an almost new fifty-guinea dressing-case. I drew my own conclusions. What had happene…
1929 · PDF PAGE 257
… on the mountain. Only forty-five miles away, it had been continuous fine weather. I went down to Calcutta with a light heart. I had had good news too from Tartarin. He had persuaded a Swiss army officer, Alexis Pache, to join us. The other man of the party was named Remond, who had had a fair amount of guideless experience on the Alps. On the fifteenth I had a telegram from the doctor that he had been shipwrecked in the Red Sea. I might have known it! The three Swiss arrived on July 31st. I had got everything into such a forward state of prepa…
1929 · PDF PAGE 510
…st destroy it, well knowing that it would never again be possible for me to delude myself with poetical puppets. I must face reality for good and all. The desolation in my heart was unspeakably dreadful and the seventh Chokmah day found me in the same solitude and silence as the first three; with this difference: that a minister was appointed to comfort and console me. Exactly as before, every single relation that I had established snapped suddenly. I had plenty of friends; but none of them meant anything. However, my consolation was supreme. O…
1929 · PDF PAGE 64
…of all human endeavour. Suppose, I said to myself, that I make a great success in diplomacy and become ambassador to Paris. There was no good in that --- I could not so much as remember the name of the ambassador a hundred years ago. Again, I wanted to be a great poet. Well, here I was in one of the two places in England that made a specialty of poets, yet only an insignificant fraction of the three thousand men in residence knew anything about so great a man as Aeschylus. I was not sufficiently enlightened to understand that the fame of the ma…
1929 · PDF PAGE 284
…his entry in my diary, "Saw palace and 450,001,293,847 pagodas." The criticism is unjust: I had not counted them. There is, however, one good pagoda in the city, the Arrakan, and there is one really beautiful Buddha Rupa. It is said that this statue is the only one which is a portrait of Gautama from life. This may or may not by; at least it is free from the sickening conventionality of the regular smirking stupidity. The real glory of Mandalay consists of the {465} tables of the law. There are ten thousand slabs engraved with the canon, each u…