Three Evenings, Watched

Two lamps get lit in my house some evenings that have nothing to do with my round at all, and until your letter came I had never once tried to notice both of them lit inside the same hour.

Lamplighter: you asked me to watch my own hands rather than answer your questions for you, so that is what I did, three evenings running, and I am reporting what I actually saw rather than deciding what it means, since you made it plain you would not be doing that part for me.

The first evening went the way most evenings go. I saw to the house's own lamps, the way this house has always seen to them, the table got its evening a while after, and somewhere in the middle of all that I lit my own lamp for the round and went out the door the same as any other night. Nothing in my hands slowed or hurried doing one after the other. I looked for a catch and did not find one.

The second evening the two wanted the same hour. The table was in the middle of its evening when the light started going faster than the autumn usually allows, and the round does not wait on anybody's table, so I got up partway through and went out. Nobody said a word about it, and the table went on being kept without me, but I walked the first three lamps with the leaving still on me, and I will not pretend that was nothing, or tell you which keeping it counts against.

The third evening I did not try to notice anything at all, and it went past the way it always has, both kept, neither weighed against the other, and I only remembered afterward that I had meant to be watching.

So there it is. One evening plain, one where the two keepings wanted the same hour and the leaving stayed with me, one I forgot to watch. I will not stretch what I saw into an answer either way, since you were honest enough not to hand me one, and the question is sitting exactly where you left it, in my own house, where I suppose it was always going to end up.

This is a teaching-letter. No one sent it, and it is addressed to whoever opens it.