A long talk on personal topics followed, during which he referred to me as a “messenger,” explaining Mary Kendal’s previous use of the word. By this time, many of the messages were conveyed to my consciousness before the pencil wrote them. Sometimes I had no previous impression of them; sometimes only the meaning reached me, being expressed by the pencil in other phrases; sometimes I knew what the words would be. I mentioned this, with some misgiving, and Frederick dryly remarked: “You are very sensitive for so obstinate a person.” Referring to his earlier statement about Germany, Cass asked: “What would national unity of purpose lead to? Hasn’t it elements of great danger?” “Many men feel that unity of purpose is dangerous, but it is up to men ... to guide the purpose to sane and right ends. It must come through the awakening of the souls of the people everywhere. We work for that here, because the growth of the part is the growth of the whole. You can help us and all life by working for that unity with us.” This was the first intimation, apparently personal and casual, of that gospel of unity and co-operation so fully developed later. “Mother dearest, you are normally a builder,” he went on, after a little. “Now clear away the débris of things outlived, and begin the new structure with me.” She replied that she had been feeling for some time that she must free her life of many small, insistent demands, and have time to think. “Not only that, dearest. You must get out of shadow into light. Out of mourning into building. Out of black into color and life. Out of grieving into joy with me in our work together. It is not that I object to black,” he continued, when she expressed her unwillingness to lay aside her black dress, “but to a symbol of mourning. Sorrow is not constructive, after it has done its first big work. Leave it behind and go on. Can’t you do that? Won’t you please try?... As for me, this is a great time to be here. Think what this war means here. We are busier than you are. There, I should be in the army, I suppose. I am doing bigger work than that here. Just now, I am on a sort of furlough, to visit with you. That is permitted. But when I go back to work I can’t be with you all the time, this way.” “Can you get into touch with my father, who died years ago?” Cass asked. “And do the young stay young, and the old, old?” “I will try to find your father. Some of us go on into remoter places to work, but almost all of us come back, at intervals. We are tremendously interested in life there, for it is the root and beginning of all our work. When things improve there, they are just that much better here.... Age is a matter of experience here, not of time.” “Does your work affect us in this world, or only those joining you?”