im in a hundred guises--as a tiny child, as a small,
sturdy boy, as the son we lost.

We have let the house to some very kind and reasonable people, who have
made things very easy to us; and to me at least it was a sort of heavy
joy to take the last meal in the old home, to drive away, to see the
landscape fade from sight. I shall never willingly return. It would
seem to me like a wilful rolling among the thorns of life, a
gathering-in of spears into one's breast. I seemed like a naked
creature that had lost its skin, that shrank and bled at every touch.

February 10, 1890.

I have been house-hunting, and I do not pretend to dislike it. The
sight of unknown houses, high garden walls, windows looking into blind
courts, staircases leading to lofts, dark cupboards, old lumber, has a
very stimulating effect on my imagination. Perhaps, too, I sometimes
think, these old places are full of haunting spiritual presences,
clinging, half tearfully, half joyfully to the familiar scenes, half
sad, perhaps, that they did not make a finer thing of the little
confined life; half glad to be free--as a man, strong and well, might
look with a sense of security into a room where he had borne an
operation. But I have never believed much in haunted rooms. The
Father's many mansions can be hardly worth deserting for the little,
dark houses of our tiny life.

I disliked some of the houses intensely--so ugly and pretentious, so
inconvenient and dull; but even so it is pleasant in fancy to plan the
life one would live there, the rooms one would use. One house touched
me inexpressibly. It was a house I knew from the outside in a little
town where I used to go and spend a few weeks every year with an old
aunt of mine. The name of the little town--I saw it in an agent's
list--had a sort of enchantment for me, a golden haze of memory. I was
allowed a freedom there I was allowed nowhere else, I was petted and
made much of, and I used to spend most of my time in sauntering about,
just looking, watching, scrutinising things, with the hard and
uncritical observation of childhood. When I got to the place, I was
surprised to find that I knew well the look of the house I went to see,
though I had not ever entered it. Two neat, contented, slightly absurd
old maiden ladies had lived there, who used to walk out together,
dressed exactly alike in some faded fashion. The laurels and yews still
grew thickly in the shrubbery, and shaded the windows of the