light which only eternity can supply.

A man's grief, when he chooses to confide it to a woman, is not an easy
matter to deal with. Its dignity and its pathos are never to be
forgotten. How to meet it, Heaven only teaches; and how far Heaven
taught that awed and humbled girl I shall never know.

But the women--oh, the poor women! I felt less afraid to answer them.
Their misery seemed to cry in my arms like a child who must be
comforted. I wrote to them--I wrote without wisdom or caution or skill;
only with the power of being sorry for them, and the wish to say so; and
if I said the right thing or the wrong one, whether I comforted or
wearied, strengthened or weakened, that, too, I shall not know.

Sometimes, in recent years, a letter comes or a voice speaks: "Do you
remember--so many years ago--when I was in great trouble? You wrote to
me." And I am half ashamed that I had forgotten. But I bless her because
_she_ remembers.

But when I think of the hundreds--it came into the thousands, I
believe--of such letters received, and how large a proportion of them
were answered, my heart sinks. How is it possible that one should not
have done more harm than good by that unguided sympathy? If I could not
leave the open question to the Wisdom that protects and overrules
well-meaning ignorance, I should be afraid to think of it. For many
years I was snowed under by those mourners' letters. In truth, they have
not ceased entirely yet, though of course their visits are now
irregular.

I am so often asked if I still believe the views of another life set