When one lies awake in the morning,
before the nerves are braced by contact with the wholesome day; when
one has done a tiring piece of work, and is alone, and in that frame of
mind when one needs occupation but yet is not brisk enough to turn to
the work one loves; in those dreary intervals between one's work, when
one is off with the old and not yet on with the new--well I know all
the corners of the road, the shadowy cavernous places where the demons
lie in wait for one, as they do for the wayfarer (do you remember?), in
Bewick, who, desiring to rest by the roadside, finds the dingle all
alive with ambushed fiends, horned and heavy-limbed, swollen with the
oppressive clumsiness of nightmare. But you are not inexperienced or
weak. You have enough philosophy to wait until the frozen mood thaws,
and the old thrill comes back. That is one of the real compensations of
middle age. When one is young, one imagines that any depression will be
continuous; and one sees the dreary, uncomforted road winding ahead
over bare hills, till it falls to the dark valley. But later on one can
believe that "the roadside dells of rest" are there, even if one cannot
see them; and, after all, you have a home which goes with you; and it
would seem to be fortunate, or to speak more truly, tenderly prepared,
that you have only daughters--a son, who would have to go back to
England to be educated, would be a source of anxiety. Yet I find myself
even wishing that you had a son, that I might have the care of him over
here. You don't know the heart-hunger I sometimes have for young things
of my own to watch over; to try to guard their happiness. You would say
that I had plenty of opportunities in my profession; it is true in a
sense, and I think I am perhaps a better schoolmaster for being
unmarried. But these boys are not one's own; they drift away; they come
back dutifully and affectionately to talk to their old tutor; and we
are both of us painfully conscious that we have lost hold of the
thread, and that the nearness of the tie that once existed exists no
more.

Well, I did not mean in this letter to begin bemoaning my own sorrows,
but rather to try and help you to bear your own. Tell me as soon as you
can what your plans are, and I will come down and see you for the last
time under the old conditions; perhaps the new will be happier. God
bless you, my old friend! Perhaps the light which has hitherto shone
(though fitfully) ON your life will now