shade, fabricated by the imagination, and which it draws with a
perfidious complacency over the object which it behooves us the most
to know and avoid--a seductive and deceitful veil which, while
presenting things to us in a false light, exposes us to most
deplorable illusions and inevitable dangers.

God permits that we should ignore many things, but He does not wish
that we should be deceived in anything. He is truth itself; error can
never claim His acquiescence.

If prudence and respect for God's work make it a duty for me to
leave intact the veil that He has drawn between you and the future, I
would consider it highly criminal in me if I did not endeavor to
remove that by which your imagination seeks to conceal its illusions
and its errors. It is not my wish or design to trouble the present by
exaggerated anxiety; but, on the other hand, I do not wish to leave
you under a false impression, fed by delusive hopes relative to the
future. My desire is that, while enjoying with gratitude and
simplicity the happiness or peace which God has bestowed upon you in
the springtime of life, you may profit by the calm and tranquillity
it affords you to prepare for the future, and to anticipate a means
of soothing its sorrows and bitterness.

While the soil of your heart is yet untilled and moist, and while
your hands are yet filled with those heavenly seeds which God has
given you in abundance, I desire that you may sow them in the light
and strength of divine grace, to develop in them the heavenly germs
which they contain, that you may be enabled to reap at a later time
an abundant harvest of virtues, holy joy and merit before God and
men. I desire that you may learn to turn to good account all the