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
begin to shine THROUGH it instead; and let me add one word. My
assurance grows firmer, from day to day, that we are in stronger
hands than our own. It is true that I see things in other lives
which look as if those hands were wantonly cruel, hard, unloving;
but I reflect that I cannot see all the conditions; I can only
humbly fall back upon my own experience, and testify that even the
most daunting and humiliating things have a purifying effect; and I
can perceive enough at all events to encourage me to send my heart