And so with thanks to this good friend, Richard Jefferies lays down his pen for the last time. The busy hand which has written so much will write no more. He can no longer dictate. His very feebleness will soon be past, and he will be at rest, whether in the unconscious clay-cold rest of the dark grave, or in that better life of the Fuller Soul of which he had so great and glorious a Vision--who knoweth? * * * * * You have read the life of Richard Jefferies. You have seen how the country lad, ill-educated, slenderly provided with books or friends, formed in early life a resolution to succeed in letters. The resolution was formed when as yet he had no knowledge or thought of style. You have read how he fought long years against ill-success, against the ridicule and coldness of his friends, but still kept up his courage; how he did succeed at length, yet not at all in the way that at first he hoped. That way would have taken him along the paths trodden by those who write romances and stories to beguile their brothers and sisters, and to cheat them into forgetfulness of their disappointments and anxieties; that way, by which he wished to go, would have led him quickly to the ease of fortune which at all times he ardently desired. It is foolish, and worse than foolish, to pretend that any man--even the best of men, even the most philosophic of men--desires poverty, which is dependence; therefore one does not blame this man for desiring fortune. The way, however, by which he succeeded was a far higher and a nobler way, though he understood not that at first.