The Sudden Walk - Telethon

When it looks as if you had made up your mind finally to stay at home for the

evening

When you have put on your house jacket and sat down after supper with a light

on the table to the piece of work or the game that usually precedes your going

to bed

When the weather outside is unpleasant so that staying indoors seems natural,

and when you have already been sitting quietly at the table for so long that

your departure must occasion surprise to everyone

When, besides, the stairs are in darkness and the front door locked,

and in spite of all that you have started up in a sudden fit of restlessness,

changed your jacket, abruptly dressed yourself for the street, explained that

you must go out and with a few curt words of leave-taking actually gone out,

banging the flat door more or less hastily according to the degree of

displeasure you think you have left behind you, and when you find yourself once

more in the street with limbs swinging extra freely in answer to the unexpected

liberty you have procured for them

When as a result of this decisive action you feel concentrated within yourself

all the potentialities of decisive action

When you recognize with more than usual significance that your strength is

greater than your need to accomplish effortlessly the swiftest of changes and

to cope with it

When in this frame of mind you go striding down the long streets — then for

that evening you have completely got away from your family, which fades into

insubstantiality, while you yourself, a firm, boldly drawn black figure,

slapping yourself on the thigh, grow to your true stature

All this is still heightened if at such a late hour in the evening you look up

a friend to see how she is getting on