of an inch, and the stone on which he sits five-and-twenty feet. You
differ from me? Be it so. Even if you prove me wrong I will believe
myself in the right: I cannot afford to do otherwise. If you rob me
of my faith in 'minute philosophy,' you rob me of a continual source
of content, surprise, delight.

So go your way and I mine, each working with all his might, and
playing with all his might, in his own place and way. Remember only,
that though I never can come round to your sphere, you must some day
come round to me, when wounds, or weariness, or merely, as I hope, a
healthy old age, shall shut you out for once and for all from burra
shikar, whether human or quadruped.--For you surely will not take to
politics in your old age? You will not surely live to solicit (as
many a fine fellow, alas! did but last year) the votes, not even of
the people, but merely of the snobocracy, on the ground of your
having neither policy nor principles, nor even opinions, upon any
matter in heaven or earth?--Then in that day will you be forced, my
friend, to do what I have done this many a year; to refrain your
soul, and keep it low. You will see more and more the depth of human
ignorance, the vanity of human endeavours. You will feel more and
more that the world is going God's way, and not yours, or mine, or
any man's; and that if you have been allowed to do good work on
earth, that work is probably as different from what you fancy it as
the tree is from the seed whence it springs. You will grow content,
therefore, not to see the real fruit of your labours; because if you
saw it you would probably be frightened at it, and what is very good
in the eyes of God would not be very good in yours; content, also, to
receive your discharge, and work and fight no more, sure that God is
working and fighting, whether you are in hospital or in the field.
And with this growing sense of the pettiness of human struggles will