4

date: 1919-10-09

names-on-the-page: Miss Hamilton; family; Addie

transcription: tober 9, 1919
ss Hamilton,
e family.

Patience began with this oral estimate speaking in the
voice of Miss Hamilton:

I am amazed at my own confidence. I am amazed
that my own wisdom would intrude against the things
that I have taken in as truth.

Lo, man hath uttered unto mine ear things which
he hath announced aloud and surely, as truth. Yet,
I have sat beside the roadway, letting my hands toy
with pebbles, contemplating them and wondering if
the tick of one against the other was not a greater
wisdom than the utterance that man had delivered unto
me so confidently.

What thing is there that may lift the oppression
from this black-cloaked soul of mine? No word that I
have taken within me hath unloosed even the buckle
which holds it unto me.

I am a seeker of wisdom, but it shall be a thing
which is creative. Its hands must lift. Its eyes
must look directly within mine own. I cannot take
man's words as a testimony. Rather would I listen
to the ticking of the pebbles, and my hands are weary
of the task.

I would raise my eyes and behold within the eyes
of mankind an enlightenment, a something which might
beckon my soul forth from its retreat. Is there
nothing save the plucking of pebbles and the listening
to the tick of one against the other?

I have listened long unto the announcements of
faith, and faith hath been unto me as a spider web
tenuously spread across briars, a confusion which was
iridescently perfect but entangling. My faith must
leave me free! Must be a thing apart. I must
believe in it as a separate being, stronger than I.

Nothing that hath ever presented itself unto me
has lifted my hands from their task of plucking up
the pebbles. I am crying out for faith to beckon me,
to relieve me of the black folds of the cloak which
encircles my soul.

Miss Hamilton said it was the exact state of her religious belief, that
what she had always craved was something that would appeal to her
understanding. Patience said: "I ken me, I ken me, I ken me.
A something like unto the only implement of warring that thy beloved
fenced against the day. Ken ye this thing?"

It was not quite clear and she guessed until Patience said: "Nay, I
say thy beloved had but one thing for a 'fense against the day, a smile."

Of course she meant Addie who had toiled and suffered and had never
given a vicious world anything backbut a smile.

"I'll sing thee a song from thee to her," said Patience and she gave
this wonderful poem:

(2006)