And do you? No. Why not? Because that one is busy that morning--is
somewhere else, perhaps... Once I got to know an old blind Lapp up in
the hills. For fifty-eight years he had seen nothing, and now he was
over seventy. It seemed to him that his sight was getting better little
by little; getting on gradually, he thought. If all went well he would
be able to make out the sun in a few years' time. His hair was still
black, but his eyes were quite white. When we sat in his hut, smoking,
he would tell of all the things he had seen before he went blind. He
was hardy and strong; without feeling, indestructible; and he kept his
hope. When I was going, he came out with me, and began pointing in
different ways. 'There's the south,' he said, 'and there's north. Now
you go that way first, and when you get a little way down, turn off that
way.' 'Quite right,' I said. And at that the Lapp laughed contentedly,
and said: 'There! I did not know that forty or fifty years back, so I
must see better now than I used to--yes, it is improving all the time.'
And then he crouched down and crept into his hut again--the same old
hut, his home on earth. And he sat down by the fire as before, full of
hope that in some few years he would be able to make out the sun...
Eva, 'tis strange about hope.
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