ending, what an appalling ending!' now I try to say to myself, and
sometimes when I am not torturing myself do really and sincerely
say, 'What a beginning, what a wonderful beginning!' It may really
be so. It may become so. If it does I shall owe much to this new
personality that has altered every man's life in this place.

You may realise it when I say that had I been released last May, as
I tried to be, I would have left this place loathing it and every
official in it with a bitterness of hatred that would have poisoned
my life. I have had a year longer of imprisonment, but humanity
has been in the prison along with us all, and now when I go out I
shall always remember great kindnesses that I have received here
from almost everybody, and on the day of my release I shall give
many thanks to many people, and ask to be remembered by them in
turn.

The prison style is absolutely and entirely wrong. I would give
anything to be able to alter it when I go out. I intend to try.
But there is nothing in the world so wrong but that the spirit of
humanity, which is the spirit of love, the spirit of the Christ who
is not in churches, may make it, if not right, at least possible to
be borne without too much bitterness of heart.

I know also that much is waiting for me outside that is very
delightful, from what St. Francis of Assisi calls 'my brother the
wind, and my sister the rain,' lovely things both of them, down to
the shop-windows and sunsets of great cities. If I made a list of
all that still remains to me, I don't know where I should stop:
for, indeed, God made the world just as much for me as for any one
else. Perhaps I may go out with something that I had not got