title: A Sunlit Absence: Silence, Awareness, and Contemplation
author: Martin Laird
description: <br />"...useful to anyone on the contemplative path, this book deals profoundly yet simply with matters treated only superficially, if at all, in many other guides to contemplation." <br />--<em>Library Journal</em>
zlib_text: ![](images/00001.jpg)
  
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  The Day of Silence  
    
  
  
  This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com
  
  
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  # The Day of Silence
  
  
  ### George Gissing
  
  
  
  
  
  This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  For a week the mid-day thermometer had marked eighty or more in the shade.
  Golden weather for those who could lie and watch the lazy breakers on a rocky
  shore, or tread the turf of deep woodland, or drink from the cold stream on
  some mountain side. But the by-ways of Southwark languished for a cloud upon
  the sun, for a cooling shower, or a breath from its old enemy, the east. The
  cry of fretful children sounded ceaselessly. Every window was wide open; women
  who had nothing to do lounged in the dusk of doorways and in arched passages,
  their money all gone in visits to the public-house. Ice-cream men found
  business at a standstill; it was Friday, and the youngsters ha'pence had long
  ago come to an end. Labourer