short, and I try to be ready for any news; yet I suppose that I
cannot at all realize what it would be. It makes some difference
when the idea of meeting again in this world has been relinquished
for now four and a half years, yet it is all very well to wait or
think about it! I was not so upset by dear Uncle James's death as I
should no doubt have been had I enjoyed the prospect of frequently
seeing him. Somehow, when all ideas of time and space are
annihilated by death, one must think about such separations in a
religious way: for separations in any other sense to us here, from
people in England, have already taken place. I must except, however,
the loving wise letters, and the power of realising more clearly
perhaps the occupations of those still in the body--their accustomed
places and duties; though I suppose we can tell quite enough about
all this in the case of those who have died in the true faith of
Christ to know, at all events, that we are brought and united to them
whenever we think or do anything religiously. I often think that
this is well brought out in the "Heir of Redclyffe"--the loss of "the
bright outside," the life and energy and vigour, and all the
companionable and sociable qualities, contrasted with the power of
thinking oneself into the inner spiritual relations that exist
between the worlds visible and invisible.

'All this effort is much diminished in our case. There is no very
great present loss; at least, it is not so sensibly felt by a great
deal as it would be if we missed some one with whom we lived up to
the time of his death. It is much easier to think of them as they
are than it could be in the case of persons who remember so vividly
what they so lately were; and this is why, I suppose, the news of
Uncle James's death seemed to affect me so much less than I should
have expected, and it may be so again: certain it is that I loved him