efences, beguiling ourselves with fantastic diversions,
overlooking, as far as we can, stern realities; stopping our ears,
turning away our gaze, shrinking and crying out like children at the
prospect of experiences to which we are led by loving presences, that
smile as they draw us to the wholesome and bracing incidents that we so
weakly dread. We pray for courage, but we know in our souls that
courage can only be won by enduring what we fear; and thus preoccupied
by hopes and plans and fears, we miss the wholesome sweet and simple
stuff of life, its quiet relationships, its tranquil occupations, its
beautiful and tender surprises.

And then perhaps, at long intervals, we have a deep and splendid flash
of insight, when we can thank God that things have not been as we
should have willed and ordered them. We should have lingered, perhaps,
in the low rich meadows, the sheltered woodlands of our desire; we
should never have set our feet to the hill. In terror and reluctance we
have wandered upwards among the steep mountain tracks, by high green
slopes, by grim crag-buttresses, through fields of desolate stones. Yet
we are aware of a finer, purer air, of wide prospects of hill and
plain; we feel that we have gained in strength and vigour, that our
perceptions are keener, our very enjoyment nobler; and at last, it may
be, we have sight, from some Pisgah-top of hope, of fairer lands yet to
which we are surely bound. And then, too, though we have fared on in
loneliness and isolation, we see moving forms of friends and comrades
converging on our track. It is no dream; it is but a parable of what
has happened to many a soul, what is daily happening. What does the
sad, stained, weary, fitful past concern us at such a moment as this?
It concerns us nothing, save that only through its pains and shadows
was it possible for us to climb where we have climbed.

To-day it seems that I have been blessed with such a vision. The mist
will close in again, doubtless, wild with wind, chill with rain, sad
with the cry of hoarse streams. But I have seen! I shall be weary and
regretful and despairing many times; but I shall never wholly doubt
again.

August 8, 1889.

Alec is ill to-day. He was restless, flushed, feverish, yesterday
evening, and I thought he must have caught cold; we put him to bed, and
this morning we sent for the doctor. He says there is no need for
anxiety, but he does not know as yet what is the matter; his
temperatu