The pages appear to have been written for the most part with reference to a correspondence which he was then carrying on with his brother Charles, referred to in the previous chapter, many of the questions being apparently argued, and incidents in the diary noted with him in view. As a whole it forms a rather odd mixture of excellent sentiments, religious doctrines, questions and arguments, studied illustrations and daily incidents, showing an alert mind, and one that, while awake to observe the smallest events, was equally ready to grapple with the largest subjects. A list of eleven “Tracts French” on half the first page is followed on the blank spaces of the remainder with careless pen-scrawls in which the name of “Nancy” appears with attempts at monograms, showing the pleasant fancies that possessed his idle moments. “Tracts English” heads the next page, which is ruled for names and numbers; but for some reason, perhaps because the list was too great or the selection too difficult, the plan was never carried out and not a single entry was made—a failure so human, so common, that it at once brings him into the sympathies of thousands who remember how often they have done the same thing. “Occasional Thoughts” comes next, printed with the pen in small caps in the middle of a page, and surrounded with the usual artistic pen-decorations. On the opposite page the thoughts begin. The first is “Proof of a Hell.” “I prove first that there must be a hell, and then it will appear evident that there must be a judgment.” Six pages of proof-texts and argument follow, when we come to the next question: “Who will enjoy heaven most?” When this has been answered, somewhat more briefly than the former, but apparently to his own satisfaction, he opens the next subject: “I wish to ask you [evidently addressed to his brother], not as a question, but for my own information, what you think about the devil? Now, this of itself is quite a curious question, but what I wish to ask in this particular is, Do you think that he is at all under the divine direction as we are?” Several pages of pithy sayings and illustrations follow, of which the first three are fair samples: “God’s plans are like a hive of bees, for they seem to go on without any order till they are accomplished, but then you can see a great plan. Each one seems to be pursuing something for itself, but, like the bees, they at the end help to form one elegant edifice.” “A half-way Christian has too little piety to be happy in the next world, and too much to be happy in this.” “Religion, like fire, will go out nearly as soon if no fuel is added to it as if water is poured on it.” These are not quotations, but original, and show thus early a habit already formed and a power already being educated of illustrating religious truth by natural objects and processes.