That was why tobacco no longer afforded solace, nor reading distraction, nor an exchange of anecdotes mental relaxation. I don’t mean to say that we indulged in none of these pastimes, but we indulged in them slightly. On the one hand, they were pale in comparison with the raw excitement our appetites craved; and on the other, they offered nothing to the spirit which was, so to speak, aching and clamorous. Apart from the satisfaction we got from sure and regular food and sleep, our nearest approach to comfort was in a kind of silent, tactual clinging together. None of us wanted to be really alone. We could sit for hours without exchanging more than a casual word or two, when it frightened us to have no one else in the room. The sheer promiscuity of bed against bed enabled us to sleep without nightmares. The task of chumming up had, therefore, been an easy one. So little was demanded. When a new-comer had been shown the ropes of the house there was not much more to do for him. One could only silently help him to find his lost identity as one was finding one’s own. “That’s about all there is to it,” Andrew Christian observed when I had said something of the sort to him. “You can’t push a man into the kingdom of heaven; he’s got to climb up to it of his own accord. There’s no salvation except what one works out through one’s own sweat and blood.” He gave me one of his quick, semi-humorous glances. “I suppose you know what salvation is?” I replied that I had heard a great deal about it all my life, but I was far from sure of what it entailed in either effort or accomplishment. “Salvation is being normal. The intuitive old guys who coined language saw that plainly enough when they connected the idea with health. Fundamentally health is salvation and salvation is health—only perfect health, health not only of the body, but of the mind. Did it ever strike you that health and holiness and wholeness are all one word?” I said it never had. “Well, it’s worth thinking about. There’s a lot in it. You’ll get a lot out of it. The holy man is not the hermit on his knees in the desert, or the saint in colored glass, or anything that we make to correspond to them. He’s the fellow who’s whole—who’s sound in wind and limb and intelligence and sympathy and everything that makes power. When we say, ‘O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness,’ we mean, O worship the Lord in the beauty of the all-round man, who’s developed in every direction, and whose degree of holiness is just in proportion to that development.” “That’s a big thought, sir,” I said. “I don’t believe many people who speak the English language ever get hold of it. But how does it happen that one of the two words is spelt with a ‘w,’ while the other—” He laughed, showing two rows of small, regular white teeth, as pretty as a girl’s.