chase them away for a moment, and next moment they are snapping at my
heels. Experiences of a tragic quality, however depressing they may be,
have a vaguely sustaining power about them, when they close in, as the
fat bulls of Bashan closed in upon the Psalmist. There is no escape
then, and the matter is in the hands of God; but when many dogs have
come about one, one feels that one must try to deal with the situation
oneself; and that is just what one does not want to do.

What sort of dogs are they? Well, to-day they are things like this--an
angry letter from an old friend to whom something which I said about
him was repeated by a busybody. The thing was true enough, and it was
not wrong for me to say it; but that it should be repeated with a deft
and offensive twist to the man himself is the mischief. I cannot deny
that I said it, and I can only affirm its truth. Was it friendly to say
it? says my correspondent. Well, I don't think it was unfriendly as I
said it. It is the turn given to it that makes it seem injurious; and
yet I cannot deny that what has been repeated is substantially what I
said. Why did I not say it to him? he asks, instead of saying it to an
acquaintance. It might, he goes on, have been conceivably of some use
if I had said it to him, but it can be of no use for me to have said it
to a third person. I have no reply to this; it is perfectly true. But I
do not go in for pointing out my friends' faults to them, unless they
ask me to do so: and the remark in question was just one of those
hasty, unconsidered, sweeping little judgments that one does pass in
conversation about the action of a friend. One cannot--at least I
cannot--so order my conversation that if a casual criticism is repeated
without qualification to the person who is the subject of it, he may
not be pained by it. The repetition of it in all its nakedness makes it
seem deliberate, when it is not deliberate at all. I say in my reply
frankly that I admire, esteem, and love my friend, but that I do not