which, we know not how, the mind transmutes into thought. This can
happen only in a calm of the senses, a surrender of the whole being to
passionless contemplation. I understand, now, the intellectual mood of
the quietist.

Of course my good housekeeper has tended me perfectly, with the minimum
of needless talk. Wonderful woman!

If the evidence of a well-spent life is necessarily seen in "honour,
love, obedience, troops of friends," mine, it is clear, has fallen short
of a moderate ideal. Friends I have had, and have; but very few. Honour
and obedience--why, by a stretch, Mrs. M--- may perchance represent these
blessings. As for love--?

Let me tell myself the truth. Do I really believe that at any time of my
life I have been the kind of man who merits affection? I think not. I
have always been much too self-absorbed; too critical of all about me;
too unreasonably proud. Such men as I live and die alone, however much
in appearance accompanied. I do not repine at it; nay, lying day after
day in solitude and silence, I have felt glad that it was so. At least I
give no one trouble, and that is much. Most solemnly do I hope that in
the latter days no long illness awaits me. May I pass quickly from this
life of quiet enjoyment to the final peace. So shall no one think of me
with pained sympathy or with weariness. One--two--even three may
possibly feel regret, come the end how it may, but I do not flatter
myself that to them I am more than an object of kindly thought at long
intervals. It is enough; it signifies that I have not erred wholly. And
when I think that my daily life testifies to an act of kindness such as I
could never have dreamt of meriting from the man who performed it, may I
not be much more than content?