t for me,
especially the church, as the dwellings and sanctuary of the enemy;
but on the Platz I was not afraid to play and seek adventures. I loved
to watch the cadets drill and play ball, or pass them close as they
promenaded, two and two, looking so perfect in white trousers and
jackets and visored caps. I loved to run with my playmates and lay out
all sorts of geometric figures on the four straight sides of the
promenade; patterns of infinite variety, traceable only by a pair of
tireless feet. If one got so wild with play as to forget all fear, one
could swing, until chased away by the guard, on the heavy chain
festoons that encircled the monument at one side of the square. This
was the only monument in Polotzk, dedicated I never knew to whom or
what. It was the monument, as the sky was the sky, and the earth,
earth: the only phenomenon of its kind, mysterious, unquestionable.

It was not far from the limits of Polotzk to the fields and woods. My
father was fond of taking us children for a long walk on a Sabbath
afternoon. I have little pictures in my mind of places where we went,
though I doubt if they could be found from my descriptions. I try in
vain to conjure up a panoramic view of the neighborhood. Even when I
stood on the apex of the Vall, and saw the level country spread in all
directions, my inexperienced eyes failed to give me the picture of the
whole. I saw the houses in the streets below, all going to market. The
highroads wandered out into the country, and disappeared in the sunny
distance, where the edge of the earth and the edge of the sky fitted
together, like a jewel box with the lid ajar. In these things I saw
what a child always sees: the unrelated fragments of a vast,
mysterious world. But although my geography may be vague, and the
scenes I remember as the pieces of a paper puzzle, still my breath
catches as I replace this bit or that, and coax the edges to fit
together. I am obstinately positive of some points, and for the rest,
you may amend the puzzle if you can. You may make a survey of Polotzk
ever so accurate, and show me where I was wrong; still I am the better
guide. You may show that my adventureful road led nowhere, but I can
prove, by the quickening of my pulse and the throbbing of my rapid
recollections, that _things happened to me_ there or here; and I shall
be believed, not you. And so over the vague canvas of scenes half
remembered, half imagined, I draw the brush of recollection,