rimitive, the most childish of instincts--to tell
my pains and hopes and dreams. I could not utter them, at the time, to
another. I could not let the voice of my groaning reach the ears of any
human being. Perhaps it would have been better for us both, if I could
have said it all to my dearest Maud. But a sort of courtesy forbade my
redoubling my monotonous lamentations; her burden was heavy enough
without that. I can hardly dignify it with the name of manliness or
chivalry, because my frame of mind during those first months, when I
lost the power of writing, was purely despicable; and then, too, I did
not want sympathy; I wanted help; and help no one but God could give
me; half my time was spent in a kind of dumb prayer to Him, that He
would give me some sort of strength, some touch of courage; for a
helpless cowardice was the note of my frame of mind. Well, He has sent
me strength--I recognise that now--not by lightening the load, but by
making it insupportably heavy and yet showing me that I had the
strength to carry it; I am still in the dark as to why I deserved so
sore a punishment, and I cannot yet see that the loneliness to which He
has condemned me is the help that is proportioned to my need. But I
walk no longer in a vain shadow. I have known affliction by the rod of
His wrath. But the darkness in which I walk is not the darkness of
thickening gloom, but the darkness of the breaking day.

And then, too, I suppose that writing down my thoughts from day to day
just eased the dumb pain of inaction, as the sick man shifts himself in
his bed. Anyhow it is written, and it shall stand as a record.

But now I shall write no more. I shall slip gratefully and securely
into the crowd of inarticulate and silent men and women, the vast
majority, after all, of humanity. One who like myself has the
consciousness of receiving from moment to moment sharp and clear
impressions from everything on earth, people, houses, fields, trees,
clouds, is beset by a kind of torturing desire to shape it all in words
and phrases. Why, I know not! It is the desire, I suppose, to make some
record of what seems so clear, so distinct, so beautiful, so
interesting. One cannot bear that one impression that seems so vivid
and strange should be lost and perish. It is the artistic instinct, no
doubt. And then one passes through the streets of a great city, and one
becomes aware that of the thousands that pass one by, perhaps only one
or two have the