I tell you if I don't find my real self out here, if I don't see my
own soul in all its bareness and weakness then I will never see it. At
home hedged in by conventionality, custom, and the hundred little
interests of our daily life, we have small chance to see ourselves as
we really are, but in a foreign land stripped bare of everything in
the world save _self_, in a loneliness as great sometimes as the
grave, face to face with new conditions, new demands, we have ample
chance to take our own measurement. I cannot say that the result
obtained is calculated to make one conceited!

I fit into this life out here, like a square peg in a round hole. I am
not consecrated, I was never "_called_ to the foreign field," I
love the world and the flesh even if I don't care especially for the
devil, I don't believe the Lord makes the cook steal so I may be more
patient, and I don't pray for wisdom in selecting a new pair of
shoes. When my position becomes unbearable, I invariably face the
matter frankly and remind myself that if it is hard on the peg, it is
just as hard on the hole, and that if they can stand it I guess I can!

You ask about my reading. Yes, I read every spare minute I can get,
before breakfast, on my way to classes, and after I go to
bed. Somebody at home sends me the magazines regularly and I keep them
going for months.

By the way I wish you would write and tell me just exactly how Jack
is. You said he was working too hard and that he looked all fagged
out. Wasn't it exactly like him to back out of going South on account
of his conscience? He would laugh at us for saying it was that, but it
was. He may be unreligious, and scoff at churches and all that, but he