r own tender-hearted and
sentimental theories and schemes of religion.

But whether it be God or fate, the burden has to be borne. And my one
endeavour must be to bear it myself, consciously and courageously, and
to shift it so far as I can from the gentler and tenderer shoulders of
those whose life is so strangely linked with mine.

May 25, 1890.

One sees a house, like the house we now live in, from a road as one
passes, from the windows of a train. It seems to be set at the end of
the world, with the earth's sunset distance behind it--it seems a
fortress of quiet, a place of infinite peace; and then one lives in it,
and behold, it is a centre of a little active life, with all sorts of
cross-currents darting to and fro, over it, past it.

Or again one thinks, as one sees such a house in passing, that there at
least one could live in meditation and cloistered calm; that there
would be neither cares nor anxieties; that one would be content to sit,
just looking out at the quiet fields, pacing to and fro, receiving
impressions, musing, selecting, apprehending--and then one lives there,
and the stream of life is as turbid, as fretful as ever. The strange
thing is that such delusions survive any amount of experience; that one
cannot read into other lives the things that trouble one's own.

A little definite scheme opens before us here; old friends of Maud's
find us out, simple, kindly, tiresome people. There is an exchange of
small civilities, there are duties, activities, relationships. To Maud
these things come by the light of nature; to her the simplest
interchange of definite thoughts is as natural as to breathe. I hear
her calm, sweet, full voice answering, asking. To me these things are
utterly wearisome and profitless. I want only to speak of the things
for which I care, and to people attuned to the same key of thought; a
basis of sympathy and temperamental differences--that is the perfect
union of qualities for a friend. But these stolid, kindly parsons, with
brisk, active wives, ingenuous daughters, heavy sons--I want either to
know them better, or not to know them at all. I want to enter the
house, the furnished chambers of people's minds; and I am willing
enough to throw my own open to a cordial guest; but I do not want to
stand and chatter in some debatable land of social conventionality. I
have no store of simple geniality. The other night we went to dine
quietly with a parson near here, a worthy fello