I spend my time now in bicycling down to school after breakfast, teaching all the morning, writing articles all the afternoon with an occasional variant by walking down to the town with Elspeth, teaching from 4.15 to 6, and then coming home and writing until 10 and so to bed. In this way the days slip past at incredible speed. We seem to be in another world from the war: our only reminders are gigantic catastrophes, big successes, old boys returning scarred and maimed; telephonic communications plastered in the local bookseller's window, wounded soldiers, Belgian refugees, and occasional lectures. Common Room conversation has changed. The talk now during "break" is nearly always on the news of the day and very gloomy are the predictions made, especially by our older men, who are very hard hit by the horror of it and age perceptibly between one term and another. The debating societies flourish as they never did before, boys seem to be working harder, games are relegated to a secondary place in the estimation of the school and we seem to have settled down with grim determination to see it through. I have lately been lecturing to the Girls' School and in London on Rupert Brooke. He is a poet exactly after my own heart. He is clever, witty, honest, and tries to find a meaning in life. He strains after Beauty but is not afraid of Ugliness: he is in love with the material, the tangible joys of life, but is not afraid of probing into the unseen world and guessing at what lies behind the darkness. I have had the great good fortune to have two books published this autumn, one a school textbook, the other a series of sketches of English country life reprinted from the magazines. The sense of authorship gives me tremendous pleasure and the letters I get of adverse and commendatory criticism do me good. I would rather write a real book that mattered, something to inspire and cheer people up and show them a path through the labyrinth of life than anything else in the world. Pray God I may live long enough to do that. The days of quarrels and struggles for supremacy between Elspeth and myself are over. She is extraordinarily patient with me and I do my level best not to give her cause for offence. When either of us shows signs of a relapse, the other immediately climbs down and gives in at once. I am as happy as it is possible for man to be. Some half-dozen boys come up to my house regularly and talk "bookish shop" and show up literary compositions of wonderful insight and value. I am making more and more friends in the school.