I came back at sundown, through the silent garden, all shrouded and muffled with snow. The snow lay on the house, outlining the cornices, cresting the roof-tiles, crusted sharply on the cupola, whitening the tall chimney-stacks. The comfortable smoke went up into the still air, and the firelight darted in the rooms. What a sense of beautiful permanence, sweet hopefulness, fireside warmth it all gave; and it is real as well. No life that I could have devised is so rich in love and tranquillity as mine; everything to give me content, except the contented mind. Why cannot I enter, seat myself in the warm firelight, open a book, and let the old beautiful thoughts flow into my mind, till the voices of wife and children return to gladden me, and I listen to all that they have seen and done? Why should I rather sit, like a disconsolate child among its bricks, feebly and sadly planning new combinations and fantastic designs? I have done as much and more than most of my contemporaries; what is this insensate hunger of the spirit that urges me to work that I cannot do, for rewards that I do not want? Why cannot I be content to dream and drowse a little? "Rest, then, and rest And think of the best, 'Twixt summer and spring, When no birds sing." That is what I desire to do, and cannot. It is as though some creeper that had enfolded and enringed a house with its tendrils, creeping under window-ledges and across mellow brickwork, had been suddenly cut off at the root, and hung faded and lustreless, not even daring to be torn away. Yet I am alive and well, my mind is alert and vigorous, I have no cares or anxieties, except that my heart seems hollow at the core. January 12, 1889.