It is by little things that we know ourselves; a soul would very probably
mistake itself for another, when once disembodied, were it not for
individual experiences that differed from those of others only in details
seemingly trifling. All of us have been thirsty thousands of times, and
felt, with Pindar, that water was the best of things. I alone, as I think,
of all mankind, remember one particular pailful of water, flavored with
the white-pine of which the pail was made, and the brown mug out of which
one Edmund, a red-faced and curly-haired boy, was averred to have bitten a
fragment in his haste to drink; it being then high summer, and little
full-blooded boys feeling very warm and porous in the low-"studded"
school-room where Dame Prentiss, dead and gone, ruled over young children,
many of whom are old ghosts now, and have known Abraham for twenty or
thirty years of our mortal time.
Thirst belongs to humanity, everywhere, in all ages; but that white-pine
pail and that brown mug belong to me in particular; and just so of my
special relationships with other things and with my race. One could never
remember himself in eternity by the mere fact of having loved or hated any
more than by that of having thirsted; love and hate have no more
individuality in them than single waves in the ocean;--but the accidents
or trivial marks which distinguished those whom we loved or hated make
their memory our own forever, and with it that of our own personality
also.
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