Purging

That nightI shut myself in my room, barred my windows, drew my curtains, and made a greatdestruction.  All books or pictures whichrecalled to me the moorlands were ruthlessly doomed.  Novels, poems, treatises I flung into an oldbox, for sale to the second-hand bookseller. Some prints and water-colour sketches I tore to pieces with my ownhands.  I ransacked my fishing-book, andcondemned all tackle for moorland waters to the flames. I wrote a letter to mysolicitors, bidding them to go no further in the purchase of a place in Lorne Ihad long been thinking of.  Then, and nottill then, did I feel the bondage of the past a little loosed from myshoulders.  I made myself a night-cap ofrum-punch instead of my usual whisky-toddy, that all associations with thatdismal land might be forgotten, and to complete the renunciation I returned tocigars and flung my pipe into a drawer.

But when Iwoke in the morning I found that it is hard to get rid of memories.  My feet were still sore and wounded, and whenI felt my arms cramped and reflected on the causes, there was that black memoryalways near to vex me.

From No-Man's Land (John Buchan, 1898)