... It amuses me very much as a proof of how soon a habit is acquired (and also, I think, an evidence that it suits me very well indeed) to find that now, and indeed for a week past at least, I always wake of myself just at 5.30 a.m.,—usually just 5 or 10 minutes before I am called.[33] I wasn’t wrong about my power of adaptability, was I, Mother? Indeed I thrive greatly on hours, fare and all other circumstances; I have not been so strong for many months,—indeed now it is just a year. What a strange, grey, weird year!... You see idleness and listlessness is about the worst thing possible (I was feeling that in Göttingen): now my days are full, not only materially, but really, for it is the kind of employment that does fill and satisfy me. And, I suppose, next to idleness, the worst thing would be over mental fatigue.... It is, too, another advantage, which anybody else can hardly appreciate, to have my day mapped out for me with military exactness,—to find my work always ready before me, and quite definite and imperative,—yet making no demand on my strength almost—always pleasant and always changing. It would have been impossible to have planned a life suiting me personally more exactly to my finest need,—and the glory is that at the same time it is part of my work, and serving it very really and materially. I don’t suppose in that point of view either it would be possible to put my time to better advantage.... You see, Mother, how you get my sunny day-dreams now, as you used to get the weary ones. I don’t know if everyone has words running all day long in their head as I have,—it makes a glorious song sometimes— silently enough, but running like a golden thread through daily work and labour, raising it all till ‘the parapets of heaven with angels leaning’ come full in view.... Do you remember George Herbert’s delicious poem—? ‘My Joy! my Life! my Crown! My heart was meaning all the day Something it fain would say,— And yet it runneth muttering up and down With only this,— My Joy! my Life! my Crown!’ It is to me so exquisitely significant of the joy and peace that floods one’s whole being, but does not very readily find words, except in those already familiar to it, like those Psalm utterances,—or like sometimes fragments of our own dear Liturgy or hymns;—and I think that is perhaps one of the greatest uses and values of such things. In the deep struggle times, one of the things that helped me most of all was always those glorious words of consecration that reminded me of the cross on the brow ‘In token that thou shalt not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, and manfully to fight under His banner against the world, the flesh, and the devil, and to continue Christ’s faithful Soldier and servant unto thy life’s end!’ And again, the Communion words about ‘ourselves, our souls and bodies’.