18089For now had come that moment, that crisis, in the when if afather alight in one scale, it will be weighted down - & so ifif a feather had blown alighted the house would have fallen in:would have become past repair; & out picnickers, would haveboiled their kettles in its cr ruined rooms, lovers [?]sought shelter there, or som the shepherd stored his dinner, &taken his rest there, with his collie & by his side. Theneven the the walls would have fallen in, & then, coming overnothing would havethe hill, only the since the tangled garden could what would haveremained to straying into this wilderness, this ruined barn,one(for such it seemed) in a wilderness of old unkempt shrubs,some the only things [?] which would have testified that herepeople had lived somewhere about here would have beenthe extraordinary apparition of a red hot poker;Originally 'poker' ended a sentence with a period followed by 'The'. [Shillingsburg, P.] The a chipped plate.If the feather had fallen, - if it had plunged the scale intodarkness, - but there was a force working on the other side;something leering & lurching; something not highly conscious of itsown purpose, & certainly not inspired to go about its task withdignified ritual or solemn chanting. But in old Maggie & hercrony, Mrs. Bast, there was a force: (they came with theirbrooms & their pails, they moaned: they crooned. They got to work.)There was a force perhaps in their craziness, (for without beinglocked in danger of locking up, their minds were blankA vertical line through lines 22 to 24 appears to cancel both more and less than was intended. It appears to have cancelled the parenthetical interruption that began in the text and ended in the margin, but no line cancels the marginal text. The sequence appears to have been: 'There was a force perhaps in their craziness, (for without being in danger of locking up, their minds were blank, |m|ask them what the war had been about - did they know?)|m| or vacancy of mind; which slowly and painfully stayed the corruption and rot.' Then the horizontal and vertical cancellations occurred, leaving only: 'There was a force perhaps in their craziness, or vacancy of mind; which slowly and painfully stayed the corruption and rot.' [Shillingsburg, P.]or vacancy of mind which slowly & painfully beganstayed the corruption & the rot; rescued from thepool of time which was fast closing over them, now a bed now abasin now a cupboard; fished up from oblivion theall the Waverley novels, & a tea pot one morning: in theafternoon restored to the sun & the air a brass fender & aset of steel pokers & tongs. Some rusted laborious birthattended with the creaking hinges & the screeching of bolts &ask them whatthe war hadbeen about -did they know?)The closing parenthesis here has no matching opening mark except the cancelled one before 'for without being' - the whole passage about the women's blank minds is cancelled, and the marginal passage should be cancelled with it. [Shillingsburg, P.]something that was
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