The interview affected me deeply and poignantly. The man's patience
and courage are very great; but he has lived, frankly and
laboriously, for perfectly definite things. He never had the least
sense of what is technically called religion; he was strong and
temperate by nature, with a fine sense of honour; loving work and
the rewards of work, despising sentiment and emotion--indeed his
respect for me, of which I was fully conscious, is the respect he
feels for a sentimental man who has made sentiment pay. It is very
hard to see what part the prospect of suffering and death is meant
to play in the life of such a man. It must be, surely, that he has
something even more real than what he has held to be realities to
learn from the sudden snapping off of life and activity. I find
myself filled with an immense pity for him; and yet if my faith
were a little stronger and purer, I should congratulate rather than
commiserate him. And yet the thought of him in his bewilderment
helps me too, for I see my own life as in a mirror. I have received
a message of truth, the message that the accomplishment of our
plans and cherished designs is not the best thing that can befall
us. How easy to see that in the case of another, how hard to see it
in our own case! But it has helped me too to throw myself outside
the morbid perplexities in which I am involved; to hold out open
hands to the gift of God, even though He seems to give me a stone
for bread, a stinging serpent for wholesome provender. It has
taught me to pray--not only for myself, but for all the poor souls
who are in the grip of a sorrow that they cannot understand or
bear.



March 14, 1889.