The path winds on, steeper, more tortuous still; by cliffs, abyss, _impasse_, bald peaks, the Mount is reached ... and here they rest.... Like complements they stand, hand clasping hand, looking out and beyond; serene of brow, though scarred with age. An august peace, the harvest yield. A straight firm youth hangs on his mother's arm ... and in that life is blent the best of both--the purpose of the race. The mantle of the clouds half moulds a form; the hands reach forth to stroke their eyes.... It is _the awakening_....
When Experience came in some time later, bringing a cup of chicken broth, she found me at my writing desk. Commenting on my flushed cheeks, she urged me back to bed. But a feverish energy had seized upon me: to work, to accomplish, to be independent of another's maintenance. There was a prescience that in the not far distant future I should have need of such resource, materially and spiritually. I shook off the foreboding as a connotation of my physical condition. To take my place in the world's work was the grandiose euphemism with which I lulled my uneasiness. That same night I unearthed my working kit from the closet in which it had been stored. One of the rooms of our apartment bearing the honorary title of "boudoir" had a southern exposure, and, as we were on the first floor nearest heaven, the light was good even on gloomy days, which abounded at this season of the year. I shall never forget the sense of exhilaration with which I cleared the decks for action. It was as if some great force had breathed the vital impetus into my nostrils. When I had donned my brown overall-apron I paused and inhaled, deep and long. It was the first free breath I had drawn for weeks.
In reviewing the busts I had made of Boy while he was still a baby I was struck with the child's likeness to his father. Even Experience commented on it. I set to modelling other heads. Inspired by the example of our sculptor friend I essayed studies in expression. Boy, in a laughing mood; Boy, crying; sulking, in a temper; Boy asleep, his head pillowed on Snyder--Snyder, now so altered and disfigured by painless surgery at the hands of Experience as to be hardly recognizable. From the face and head I turned to a study of the hands. It had always appeared to me that there was more of the real character written in the human hand than in any other feature of the human form. I studied, absorbingly, the expression the artist had portrayed in the hands of the Inscrutable One as they emerged from the cloud-like drapery in the final grouping on the Mount. Strength, firmness, a certain largeness and benignity and withal a caressing tenderness.... It pleased and surprised me to observe, how, with each new effort, the clay responded more readily to my touch. Sometimes I made experiments with modelling wax; a pinch here, a pressure there and the whole expression changed.