MS-HRC-SB-4-3

[1318] in ratio, if that means anything, and leaving behind them, each
in its own stead, the bless"^edness of absence. [1319] While this was
going on I was sturggling ^[  ] to retrieve my pencil, by fits and
starts. [1319|001] My pencil. [1320] It is a little Venus, still green no doubt,
with five or six facets, pointed at both ends and so short there
is just room, between them, for my thumb and the two adjacent
fingers, gathered together in a little vice. [1321] I use the two points
turn and turn about, sucking them frequently, I love to suck.

[1322] And when they go quite blunt I strip them with my nails which
are long, yellow, sharp and brittle for want of chalk or is it
phosphate. [1323] So little by little my little pencil dwindles, inevit-
ably, and the day is fast approaching when nothing will remain
but a fragment too tiny to hold. [1324] So I write as lightly as I can.
But the lead is hard and would leave no trace if I wrote too
lightly.

[1325] But I say to myself, Between a hard lead with which one
dare not write too lightly, if a trace is to be left, and a soft
fat lead which blackens the page almost without touching it,
what possible difference can there ben^[₰] from the point of view of
durability. [1326] Ah yes, I have my little pastimes. [1327] The strange thing
is I have another pencil, made in France, a long cylinder hardly
broached, in the bed with me somewhere I think. [1328] So I have nothing
to worry about, on this score. [1329] And yet I do worry.

[1330] Now while I
was hunting for my pencil I made a curious discovery. [1331] The floor
is whitening. [1332] I struck it several ^blows with my stick and the sound
it gac^ve forth was at once sharp and dull, wrong in fact. [1333] So it
was not without some trepidation that I inspected the other great
planes, above and all about me. [1334] And all this time the sand kept