SEIZE THE DAY
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and with it his father's opinion of him.
It
was, he knew it was, his
bid for liberty, Adler being
in
his mind the title of the species,
Tommy the freedom of the person. But Wilky was his inescapable
self.
In middle age you no longer thought such thoughts. Then it
came over you that from one grandfather you had inherited such
and such a head of hair which looked like honey when it whitens or
sugars in the jar; from another, broad thick shoulders; an oddity of
speech from one uncle, and small teeth from another, and the gray
eyes with darkness diffused even into the whites, and a wide-lipped
mouth like a statue from Peru. Wandering races have such looks, the
bones of one tribe, the skin of another. From his mother he had
gotten sensitive feelings, a soft heart, brooding, hypochondria, a
tendency to be confused under pressure.
The changed name was a mistake, and he would admit it as
freely as you liked. But this mistake couldn't be undone now, so why
must his father continually remind him how he had sinned? It was
too late. You would have to return to the pathetic day when the
sin was committed. And where was that day? Past and dead. Whose
humiliating memories were these? His and not his father's. What
had he to think back on that he could call good? Very, very little.
You had to forgive. First, to forgive yourself, and then general for–
giveness. Didn't he suffer from his mistakes far more than his father
could?
"Oh, God," Wilhelm prayed. "Let me out of my trouble. Let
me out of my thoughts, and let me do something better with myself.
For all the time I have wasted I am very sorry. Let me out of this
clutch and get into a different life. For I am all balled up. Have
mercy."
II
The mail.
The clerk who gave it to him did not care what sort of ap–
pearance he made this morning. He only glanced at him from under
his brows, upward, as the letters changed hands. Why should the
hotel people waste courtesies on him? They had his number. The
clerk knew that he was handing him, along with the letters, a bill
for his rent. Wilhelm assumed a look that removed him from all such
