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Collecting One’s Past
“The Gentler View,” Harper’s Weekly (February 27, 1909) : 27
U Michigan copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
 

      We collect so many things, but none more assiduously than memories. We suffer great inconvenience in order that we may at some future date tell of the delightful things we have done in the past. We pay so heavily yet so willingly for those pleasant recollections that it is the height of unkindness on the part of our friends when they remind us that at the time the thing happened we lost our temper, experienced the greatest discomfort, and had never before been so thoroughly upset. Nothing is more likely. We know as well as they that we went through a great deal to secure this memory, but we have it now, it has become one of the delectable experiences of our life. It is one of the things we will always laugh at; it is the story we most enjoy telling. Nothing else proves to us so forcibly that our life has been an interesting one. We snatch a recollection, which nourishes us for years, from a forty-eight hours without food when we took for granted our death by starvation. Even when the disagreeable thing is happening we gloat over it subconsciously, and feel that in another ten years we are going to enjoy this adventure hugely, that is, if we succeed in living through it.
      We collect, with the true self-sacrifice that marks the genuine collector, an impression, a sensation. We close it inside ourselves, lock it in securely, and, with a pleasant sense of being for the moment filled, we congratulate ourselves on the things actually having happened. We have it, we had a devil of a time while it was coming, but now it is undeniably ours, and the process of digestion is blissfully soothing. When the best parts have been assimilated, and the needless details forgotten, the experience is ready to be exhibited, flourished before the public eye. It takes its place in our collection of memories and we value it highly, and ourselves even more so for having it in our possession.
      Some people are much more elaborate in their processes than others. Some are willing to spend six months in Europe growling at the trains, becoming absolutely vicious over the drawbacks of all save American cookery, spending sleepless nights on beds that arouse them to eloquent anger, so that they may return home and, thanks to the alchemy of time, tell of their entertaining misadventures and excruciatingly funny encounters with German delicacies. It is spirited of them; it shows a perverse pluck, a laughable determination that speaks them wholly mad and therefore entirely human. We take a walking trip and, because of the countryside’s surprise at seeing people unreasonably walking for pleasure, inhospitality and suspicion glower from every door. Inexperience starts us off in tennis shoes, with the result that, on the third day, a ligament is wrenched, the maltreated ankle swells, and for two days we walk on crying feet, blistered heels shrieking for a respite. The fourth night is spent in a field on a bed of sweet fern which is penetratingly damp, and , in spite of its thickness, fails to conceal the fact that a gnarled root lies directly beneath the small of our back. Naturally we do not sleep. The ennui that tricked us into drinking flat ginger ale just before sunrise also made a dew-soaked sardine seem attractive, with the inevitable result that an eight-mile walk before breakfast induces a state of health which makes breakfast an offence if not a direct insult. Yet it is with such experiences as these that we spread envy among the fortunate souls who have never felt drawn toward a walking trip. The exhilarating details are dwelt on, the fresh morning air, the expanding landscapes, the bends of the road, the stolen apples — they all acquire merit with a rapidity that no comfortable undertaking is capable of. The more we tell of it the more we are convinced that this was the moment, the highest, brightest peak in our entire experience! We would not have missed it for worlds. We never feel so rich as when we realize that no one can take it from us. We ramp in the air, our feet touching nothing but our own inflated memories, with the intoxicating accompaniment of resting our eyes benignly on the heads of the majority of mankind and noting their position as distinctly lowly.
      It is not only those adventures which we seek, but those which come unsought, that grow precious with age. If we had an unhappy childhood — if we lived, perhaps, in a place lonely or dull — these experiences take on the most engaging attributes when we remember them but faintly; and without in the least intending it we cloak these years in becoming garments; a child that had just the usual juvenile troubles we transform into a a poignant little figure with a tragic eye and a loneliness that was symbolical of his rarefied soul. And this small fictitious person, having at one time been closely connected with us, sheds on our present stage of development an excessively interesting light. The least imaginative of us are quite capable of transfiguring our pasts up to within, say, five years back. Many a man has built his mysteriously charming manner on the things he thinks happened to him in early youth; and it would not be easy to distinguish these chimerical things from the things that really happened. A blank past is so deadening a thing that young people had best begin collecting theirs now. If you see an incident loping along, get in its path and persuade it to stay with you permanently. Romantic things are of course disagreeable at the time, but they must be gone through with, and if one only waits long enough they will become convulsingly funny. A past well managed is very helpful, quite an asset. It is no wonder that we hoard up these invisible riches, counting them and turning them over until they have increased in worth surprisingly. They are the only bank that we always have access to, and it is imperative that we should always find it plethoric. To know that one’s life has been full, to feel that it has, perhaps, been romantic, gives one a confidence, a poise, that is most bracing. One wraps oneself in the rich garments of one’s adventures, and the rustling as it drags on the floor makes one’s carriage very upright and impressive. A blank past is so deadening a thing that young people had best begin collecting theirs now. If you see an incident loping along, get in its path and persuade it to stay with you permanently. Romantic things are of course disagreeable at the time, but they must be gone through with, and if one only waits long enough they will become convulsingly funny. One is very apt to get rheumatism from hazardous adventures, but even rheumatism will, in after-years, appeal to one as something extremely humorous. The hope felt in the future is a mild sentiment compared with the obliterating fondness felt for the past. Privation, cold, hunger, bodily pain, become topics for lively conversation; and, unable to speak for strangled peals of delighted remembrance, you try to recall the time when you were stone-broke and had serious thoughts of begging. A voyage during which seasickness seemed a thing you could not live through is in years after chuckled over, gaining one a reputation for spritely wit. And so the staggering, limping footprints we have left behind turn, with a little help from us, into an orderly, even triumphant march of impressions. They are suggestive of the swing of an oncoming army. They endow us who walk at their head with the captivating graces of a drum-major; and, feeling that we have whipped a shocking lot of recruits into admirable shape, we swagger convincingly, thanks to the past which meekly follows at our heels.
 

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