"Yes," he said, smiling, "there is something in that; but one wants the marks as well--I have always liked to be marked for my work. I am glad you told me that story, old man." We went on to talk of other things, and when I rose to go, he thanked me rather effusively for my kindness in coming to see him. He told me that he was shortly going abroad, and that if I could find time to write he would be grateful for a letter; "and when I am on my legs again," he said with a smile, "we will have another meeting." That was all that passed between us of actual speech. Yet how much more seems to have been implied than was said. I knew, as well as if he had told me in so many words, that he did not expect to see me again; that he was in the valley of the shadow, and wanted help and comfort. Yet he could not have described to me what was in his mind, and he would have resented it, I think, if I had betrayed any consciousness of my knowledge; and yet he knew that I knew, I am sure of that. The interview affected me deeply and poignantly. The man's patience and courage are very great; but he has lived, frankly and laboriously, for perfectly definite things. He never had the least sense of what is technically called religion; he was strong and temperate by nature, with a fine sense of honour; loving work and the rewards of work, despising sentiment and emotion--indeed his respect for me, of which I was fully conscious, is the respect he feels for a sentimental man who has made sentiment pay. It is very hard to see what part the prospect of suffering and death is meant to play in the life of such a man. It must be, surely, that he has something even more real than what he has held to be realities to learn from the sudden snapping off of life and activity. I find myself filled with an immense pity for him; and yet if my faith were a little stronger and purer, I should congratulate rather than commiserate him. And yet the thought of him in his bewilderment helps me too, for I see my own life as in a mirror. I have received a message of truth, the message that the accomplishment of our plans and cherished designs is not the best thing that can befall us. How easy to see that in the case of another, how hard to see it in our own case! But it has helped me too to throw myself outside the morbid perplexities in which I am involved; to hold out open hands to the gift of God, even though He seems to give me a stone for bread, a stinging serpent for wholesome provender. It has taught me to pray--not only for myself, but for all the poor souls who are in the grip of a sorrow that they cannot understand or bear. March 14, 1889.