moteness had come upon the old Blunderstone life--which seemed to lie
in the haze of an immeasurable distance; and that a curtain had for ever
fallen on my life at Murdstone and Grinby's. No one has ever raised that
curtain since. I have lifted it for a moment, even in this narrative,
with a reluctant hand, and dropped it gladly. The remembrance of that
life is fraught with so much pain to me, with so much mental suffering
and want of hope, that I have never had the courage even to examine how
long I was doomed to lead it. Whether it lasted for a year, or more, or
less, I do not know. I only know that it was, and ceased to be; and that
I have written, and there I leave it.

CHAPTER 15. I MAKE ANOTHER BEGINNING

Mr. Dick and I soon became the best of friends, and very often, when his
day's work was done, went out together to fly the great kite. Every day
of his life he had a long sitting at the Memorial, which never made the
least progress, however hard he laboured, for King Charles the First
always strayed into it, sooner or later, and then it was thrown aside,
and another one begun. The patience and hope with which he bore these
perpetual disappointments, the mild perception he had that there was
something wrong about King Charles the First, the feeble efforts he made
to keep him out, and the certainty with which he came in, and tumbled
the Memorial out of all shape, made a deep impression on me. What Mr.
Dick supposed would come of the Memorial, if it were completed; where he
thought it was to go, or what he thought it was to do; he knew no more
than anybody else, I believe. Nor was it at all necessary that he should
trouble himself with such questions, for if anything were certain under
the sun, it was certain that the Memorial never would be finished. It
was quite an affecting sight, I used to think, to see him with the kite
when it was up a great height in the air. What he had told me, in his
room, about his belief in its disseminating the statements pasted on it,
which were nothing but old leaves of abortive Memorials, might have been
a fancy with him sometimes; but not when he was out, looking up at
the kite in the sky, and feeling it pull and tug at his hand. He never
looked so serene as he did then. I used to fancy, as I sat by him of an
evening, on a green slope, and saw him watch the kite high in the quiet
air, that it lifted his mind out of its confusion, and bore it (such was
my boyish thought) into t