alternative--you couldn't be bad.

How perfectly you will fit into all his plans and ambitions! A
beautiful new life is opening up for you, a life so full of promise,
of tremendous possibilities for good not only for you but for others
that it seems like a bit of heaven.

Tell him how I feel, Mate. It is hard for me to write letters these
days, but I want him to know that I am glad because he is happy.

I have been living in the past to-day going over the old days in the
Mountains up at the lake, and the reunions on the farm. How many have
gone down into the great silence since then! Somehow I seem nearer to
them than I do to you who are alive. While I am still on the crowded
highway of life, yet I am surrounded by strange, unloving faces that
have no connection with the joys or the sorrows of the past.

How the view changes as we pass along the great road. At first only
the hilltops are visible, rosy and radiant under the enthusiasm of
youth, then the level plains come into sight flooded with the bright
light of mid-day, then slowly we slip into the valleys where the long
shadows fall like memories across our hearts.

Oh! well, with all the struggles, all the heartaches, I am glad, Mate,
very glad that I have lived--and laughed. For I am laughing again, in
spite of the fact that my courage got fuddled and took the wrong road.

I heard of a man the other day who had received a sentence of fifteen
years for some criminal act. He was in love with the freedom of life,
he was young and strong, so he made a dash down a long iron staircase,