He would hardly have called himself a Christian, I think; he would have said that he could not have attained to anything like a vital faith or a hopeful certainty; but the only words and thoughts that haunt my mind about him, echoing sweetly and softly through the ages, are the words in which Christ described the tender spirits of those who were nearest to the Father's heart, and to whom it is given to see God. July 28, 1889. Health of body and mind return to me, slowly but surely. I have given up all attempt at writing; I rack my brain no longer for plots or situations. I keep, it is true, my note-book for subjects beside me, and occasionally jot down a point; but I feel entirely indifferent to the whole thing. Meanwhile the flood of letters about my book, invitations from editors, offers from publishers, continues to flow. I reply to these benignantly and courteously, but undertake nothing, promise nothing. I seem to have recovered my balance. I think no more about my bodily complaints, and my nerves no longer sting and thrill. The day is hardly long enough for all I have to do. It may be that when the novelty of the experiment in education wears off, I shall begin to hanker after authorship again. Alec will have to go to school in a year or two, I suppose; but it shall be a day-school at first, if I can find one. As to the question of a public school, I am much exercised. Of course there are nightmare terrors about tone and morals; but I am not really very anxious about the boy, because he is sensible and independent, and has no lack of moral courage. The vigorous barrack-life is good for a boy, the give-and-take, the splendid equality, the manly code, the absence of affectation. But the intellectual tone of schools is low, and the conventionality is great. I don't want Alec to be a conventional man, and yet I want him to accept current conventions instinctively about matters of indifference. I have a horror of the sporting public-school type, the good-humoured, robust fellow, who does his work and fills his spare time with games, and thinks intellectual things, and artistic interests, and emotion, and sympathy, moonshine and rot. Such people live a wholesome enough life; they make good soldiers, good officials, good men of business. But they are woefully complacent and self-satisfied. The schools develop a Spartan type, and I want Alec to be an Athenian. But the experiment will have to be made, because a man is at a disadvantage in ordinary life if he has not the public school bonhomie, courtesy, and common sense. I must try to keep the other side alive, and I don't despair of doing it.