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.

The question that haunts me, the problem I cannot disentangle, is what
is or what ought our purpose to be? What is our duty in life? Ought we
to discern a duty which lies apart from our own desires and
inclinations? The moralist says that it ought to be to help other
people; but surely that is because the people, whom by some instinct we
deem the highest, have had the irresistible desire to help others? How
many people has one ever known who have taken up philanthropy merely
from a sense