ust pay a terrible price to see and to know. Still, the purchase is
worth making. You know the Emerson lines:--

"Though thou love her as thyself,
As a self of purer clay;
Though her parting dims the day,
Stealing grace from all alive,
Heartily know
When half-Gods go,
The Gods arrive!...

"Reverse the condition: the moral is the same,--and it is eternal. By
light alone one cannot see; there must be shadows in multitude to help.
What we love is good, and exists, but often exists only in _us_,--then
we become angry at others, not knowing the illusion was the work of the
Gods. The Gods are always right. They make us sometimes imagine that
something we love ever so much is in others, while it is only in our own
hearts. The reason they do this to some, like you and me, is to teach us
what terrible long, long mistakes we might have made without their help.
Sometimes they really cause a great deal of more serious trouble, and we
can't tell why. We must wait and believe and be quite sure the Gods are
good.

"What is not always good is the tender teaching we get at home. We are
told of things so beautiful that we believe everybody must believe
them,--truth, and love, and duty, and honour of soul, etc. We are even
taught the enormous lie that the world is entirely regulated by these
beliefs. I wonder if it would not be much better to teach children the
adult truth:--'The world is thus and so:--those beliefs are ideal only
which do not influence the intellectual life, nor the industrial life,
nor the social life. The world is a carnival-ball; and you must wear a
mask thereat,--and never, _never_ doff it;--except to the woman or the
man you must love always. Learn to wear your mask with grace--only keep
your heart fresh in spite of all bitter knowledge.' Wouldn't this be the
best advice? As a mere commonplace fact,--the whole battle of life is
fought in disguise by those who win. No man knows the heart of another
man. No woman knows the heart of another woman. Only the woman can learn
the man, and the man the woman;--and this only after years! What a great
problem it is; and how utterly it is neglected in teaching the little
human flowers that we set out in the world's cold without a thought!

"You are more and more like me in every letter; but you are better far.
I have