If I, who have lost everything that can enrich and gladden life, can yet feel that inalienable residue of hope, which just turns the balance on the side of desiring still to live, it must be that life has something yet in store for me--I do not hope for love, I do not desire the old gift of expression again; but there is something to learn, to apprehend, to understand. I have learnt, I think, not to grasp at anything, not to clasp anything close to my heart; the dream of possession has fled from me; it will be enough if, as I learn the lesson, I can ease a few burdens and help frail feet along the road. Duty, pleasure, work--strange names which we give to life, perversely separating the strands of the woven thread, they hold no meaning for me now--I do not expect to be free from suffering or from grief; but I will no more distinguish them from other experiences saying, this is joyful, and I will take all I can, or this is sad, and I will fly from it. I will take life whole, not divide it into pieces and choose. My grief shall be like a silent chapel, lit with holy light, into which I shall often enter, and bend, not to frame mechanical prayers, but to submit myself to the still influence of the shrine. It is all my own now, a place into which no other curious eye can penetrate, a guarded sanctuary. My sorrow seems to have plucked me with a strong hand out of the swirling drift of cares, anxieties, ambitions, hopes; and I see now that I could not have rescued myself; that I should have gone on battling with the current, catching at the river wrack, in the hopes of saving something from the stream. Now I am face to face with God; He saves me from myself, He strips my ragged vesture from me and I stand naked as He made me, unashamed, nestling close to His heart. April 3, 1891.