their names and ages,
their comings and goings; but Maggie never makes a mistake about them,
and they seem to her like real people; and when I sometimes plunge them
into disaster, she is so deeply affected that the disasters have all to
be softly repaired. The Pickfords must have had a very happy life; the
kind of life that people created and watched over by a tender, patient
and detailed Providence might live. How different from the real world!

But I don't want Maggie to live in the real world yet awhile. It will
all come pouring in upon her, sorrow, anxiety, weariness, no
doubt--alas that it should be so! Perhaps some people would blame me,
would say that more discipline would be bracing, wholesome,
preparatory. But I don't believe that. I had far rather that she learnt
that life was tender, gentle and sweet--and then if she has to face
trouble, she will have the strength of feeling that the tenderness,
gentleness and sweetness are the real stuff of life, waiting for her
behind the cloud. I don't want to disillusion her; I want to establish
her faith in happiness and love, so that it cannot be shaken. That is a
better philosophy, when all is said and done, than the stoical
fortitude that anticipates dreariness, that draws the shadow over the
sun, that overvalues endurance. One endures by instinct; but one must
be trained to love.

February 6, 1891.

It is months since I have opened this book; it has lain on my table all
through the dreadful hours--I write the word down conventionally, and
yet it is not the right word at all, because I have merely been stunned
and numbed. I simply could not suffer any more. I smiled to myself, as
the man in the story, who was broken on the wheel, smiled when they
struck the second and the third blow. I knew why he smiled; it was
because he had dreaded it so much, and when it came there was nothing
to dread, because he simply did not feel it.

To-night I just pick up idly the dropped thread. Perhaps it is a sign,
this faint desire to make a little record, of the first tingling of
returning life. Something stirs in me, and I will not resist it; it may
be read by some one that comes after me, by some one perhaps who feels
that his own grief is supreme and unique, and that no one has ever
suffered so before. He may learn that there have been others in the
dark valley before him, that the mist is full of pilgrims stumbling on,
falling, rising again, falling again, lying stupefied