now by experience; answer it at once, as
dispassionately as one can; extract from it the few grains of probable
truth it holds, and keep them in mind for possible future use; then
deliberately try and forget all about it. I know now by experience that
the painful impression will gradually fade, and, meanwhile, one must
try to interpret the whole matter rightly. What is there in one's
conduct which needs the check? Is it that one grows confident and
careless? Probably! But the wholesome thing to do is to deal with it at
once; otherwise it means anxious and feverish hours, when one composes
a long and epigrammatic answer, point by point. The letter is
over-stated, gossipy, malicious; if one lets it soak into the mind, it
makes one suspicious of every one, miserable, cowardly. It is useless
in the first hours, when the sting is yet tingling, to remind oneself
philosophically that the suggestion is exaggerated and malignant; one
does not get any comfort that way. No, the only thing is to plunge into
detail, to work, to read--anything to recover the tone of the mind.

It is a comfort to write to you about it, for to-day I am in the sore
and disquieted condition which is just as unreal and useless as though
I were treating the matter with indifference. Indifference indeed would
be criminal, but morbidity is nearly as bad.

I once saw a very dramatic thing take place in church. It was in a town
parish near my old home. The clergyman was a friend of mine, a
wonderfully calm and tranquil person. He went up to the pulpit while a
hymn was being sung. When the hymn concluded, he did not give out his
text, but remained for a long time silent, so long that I thought he
was feeling ill; the silence became breathless, and the attention of
every one in the church became rivetted on the pulpit. Then he slowly
took up a letter from the cushion, and said in a low, clear voice: "A
fortnight ago I found, on entering the pulpit, a letter addressed to me
in an unknown hand; I took it out and read it afterwards; it was
anonymous, and its contents were scandalous. Last Sunday I found
another, which I burnt unread. To-day there is another, which I do not
intend to read"--he tore the letter across as he said the words, in the
sight of the congregation--"and I give notice that, if any further
communications of the kind reach me, I shall put the matter into the
hands of the police. I am willing to receive, if necessary, verbal
communications on suc