e done until a
scene has become familiar. I will discharge your commissions
punctually; don't hesitate to tell me what you want. I don't do it from
a sense of duty, but it is a positive pleasure for me to have anything
to do for you. I long for letters; as soon as possible send me
photographs, and not merely inanimate photographs of scenes and places,
but be sure that you make a part of them yourself. I want to see you
standing, sitting, reading in the new house; and give me an exact and
detailed account of your day, please; the food you eat, the clothes you
wear; you know my insatiable appetite for trifles.--Ever yours,

T. B.

UPTON,
March 5, 1904.

MY DEAR HERBERT,--I have been thinking over your last letter: and by
the merest chance I stumbled yesterday on an old diary; it was in
1890--a time, do you remember, when our paths had drifted somewhat
apart; you had just married, and I find a rather bitter entry, which it
amuses me to tell you of now, to the effect that the marriage of a
friend, which ought to give one a new friend, often simply deprives one
of an old one--"nec carus aeque nec superstes integer," I add. Then I
was, I suppose, hopelessly absorbed in my profession; it was at the
time when I had just taken a boarding-house, and suffered much from the
dejection which arises from feeling unequal to the new claims.

It amuses me now to think that I could ever have thought of losing your
friendship; and it was only temporary; it was only that we were fully
occupied; you had to learn camaraderie with your wife, for want of
which one sees dryness creep into married lives, when the first divine
ardours of passion have died away, and when life has to be lived in the
common light of day. Well, all that soon adjusted itself; and then I,
too, found in your wife a true and congenial friend, so that I can
honestly say that your marriage has been one of the most fortunate
events of my life.

But that was not what I meant to write to you about; the point is this.
You say that personality is a stubborn thing. It is indeed. I find
myself reflecting and considering how much one's character really
changes as life goes on; in reading this diary of fourteen years ago,
though I have altered in some superficial respects, I was confronted
with my unalterable self. I have acquired certain aptitudes; I have
learnt, for instance, to understand boys better, to sympathise with
them, to put myself in their place, to manage