do beset and embitter a man's life in India." But a new stay within, the
reconciliation that love brings about between a man and the world,
upholds him.

"'To draw homeward to the general life,' which you, and dear Matt
himself, and I, and all of us, are--or at least may be--living,
independent of all the accidents of time and circumstance--this is a
great alleviation." The "_fundamentals"_ are safe. He dwells happily on
the word--"a good word, in which you and I, so separated, as far as
accidents go, it may be for all time, can find great comfort, speaking
as it does of Eternity." One sees what is in his mind--the brother's
"little book of poems" published a year before:

Yet they, believe me, who await
No gifts from chance, have conquered fate,
They, winning room to see and hear,
And to men's business not too near
Though clouds of individual strife
Draw homeward to the general life.
* * * * *
To the wise, foolish; to the world
Weak;--yet not weak, I might reply,
Not foolish, Fausta, in His eye,
To whom each moment in its race,
Crowd as we will its neutral space,
Is but a quiet watershed
Whence, equally, the seas of life and death are fed.

Six months later the younger brother has heard "as a positive fact" of
Tom's marriage, and writes, with affectionate "chaff":