state of mind must be; and I will be frank--why should I not be?--
and say that I thought you were bearing it bravely, and what is
better still, simply and naturally. I seemed to come closer to you
in those hours than I have ever done before, and to realise better
what you were. 'To make oneself beloved,' says an old writer, 'is
to make oneself useful to others'--and you helped me perhaps most,
when you knew it least yourself. I won't tell you not to brood upon
or exaggerate your trouble--you know that well enough yourself. But
believe me that such times are indeed times of growth and
expansion, even when one seems most beaten back upon oneself, most
futile, most unmanly. So take a little comfort, my old friend, and
fare onwards hopefully."

That is a very beautiful and wise letter, and I cannot say how much
it has meant for me. It is a letter that forges an invisible chain,
which is yet stronger than the strongest tie that circumstance can
forge; it is a lantern for one's feet, and one treads a little more
firmly in the dark path, where the hillside looms formless through
the shade.



March 3, 1889.


Best of all the psalms I love the Hundred-and-nineteenth; yet as a
child what a weary thing I thought it. It was long, it was
monotonous; it dwelt with a tiresome persistency, I used to think,
upon dull things--laws, commandments, statutes. Now that I am
older, it seems to me one of the most human of all documents. It is