MS-WU-MSS008-3-49

[1497] pockets, each with its stone, I would never reach the goal I had set
myself, short of an extraordinary hazard. [1498] And if at a pinch I could
double the number of my pockets, were it only by dividing each pocket
in two, with the help of a few sa^fety-pins let us say, to quadruple them
seemed to be more than I could manage. [1499] And I didn't feel inclined to
take all that trouble for a half-measure.

[1500] For I was beginning to lose
all sense of measure, after all this wrestling and wrangling, and to
say, Either it's all or nothing. [1501] And if I was tempted for an instant
to establish a more equitable proportion between my stones and my pockets,
by reducing the former to the number of the latter, it was only for an
instant. [1502] For it would have been an admission of defeat. [1503] And sitting
on the shore, before the sea, the sixteen stones spread out before my
eyes, I gazed at them in anger and perplexity.

[1504] For just as I had
difficulty in sitting on a chair, or in an arm-chair, because of my
stiff leg you understand, so I had none in sitting on the ground, because
of my stiff leg and my stiffening leg, for it was about this time that
my good leg, good in the sense that it was not stiff, began to stiffen.
[1505] I needed a prop under the ham you understand, and even under the whole
length of the leg, the prop of the earth.

[1506] And while I gazed thus at my
stones, b^rooding on endless martingales all equally defective, and
crushing handfuls of sand, so that the sand ran through my fingers, fell
back on the strand, yes, while I held thus in ^suspense my mind and a part
of my body, one day suddenly it dawned on the former, dimly, that I might
perhaps achieve my purpose without increasing the number of my pockets,
or reducing the number of my stones, but simply by sacrificing the
principle of trim.

[1507] The meaning of this illumination, which suddenly
beg^an to sing within me, like a verse of Isaiah, or of Jeremiah, I did
not penetrate at once, and notably the word trim, which I had never met
with, long remained obscure. [1508] Finally I seemed to grasp that this word