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Blackwood, Algernon, 1869-1951

"The Extra Day"


He opened his eyes and looked about him. The room was full of wonder.
It glistened, sparkled, shone. A million things, screened hitherto
from sight by thick clouds of rushing minutes, paused and offered
themselves; things that were commonplace before stood still, revealed
in startling glory. They no longer raced past at headlong speed.
Visible at last, unmasked, they showed themselves as they really were,
in naked beauty. This beauty settled on everything in golden rain, it
settled on himself as well. All that his eyes rested on looked--
distinguished....
And, like snow-flakes, words and thoughts came thickly crowding, like
flakes of fire too. He snatched at them, caught them in bunches, tried
to sort them into sentences. They were everywhere about him, showering
down as from a box of cardboard letters overturned in the sky. The
reality he sought hid among them as a whole--he knew that--but no mere
sequence of words and letters could quite capture this reality.
He plunged his hands among the flying symbols....
In a flash a number of things--an enormous number of things--became
extraordinarily clear and simple; they became one single thing.


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