s, as it were, a
lonely journey into the Unknown. It is a mystery--a terrific
mystery--and sometimes it frightens us so terribly that men and women
have been known to kill themselves rather than take it. But there is
always this to be said of sorrow--like happiness, it looms so very much
larger when seen from a long way off. As we approach it it becomes
smaller. When we reach it, sometimes it does not seem so very terrible
after all; either it is small or else Nature or God gives to all of us
some added courage which helps us to bear even the greatest affliction.
For several years past I have been intimately associated with a tragedy
which most people regard as well-nigh unsurmountable even by the
bravest heart. I have thought so myself--and there are moments when I
think so still, in spite of my long familiarity with it, and the
miracles of bravery I have seen displayed in hearts so young and so
tender that one would have thought they must of necessity fall helpless
beneath the burden laid upon them by Fate. I speak, of course, of the
Blinded Soldier--than whom no better example of courage on the road to
Calvary could possibly be given. Personally, I feel that I would
sooner be dead than blind; but I realise now that I only feel this way
because I still, thank Heaven, have remarkably good sight. Were I to
lose my eyes, I hope--perhaps I _know_--that I should still strive to
fight cheerfully onward. And this, not because I am naturally brave--I
am not--but because I have lived long enough to see that when,
metaphorically speaking, the axe falls, some added strength is given to
the spirit which, granted bodily health, can fight and go on fighting
an apparently overwhelming foe. This is one of the most wonderful
miracles of Human Life, and I have myself seen so many instances of it
that I know it to be no mere fiction of an optimistic desire, but an
acknowledged fact. And this miracle applies to nations as well as to
individuals. In Maurice Maeterlinck's new volume of essays there is
one on "The Power of the Dead." "Our memories are to-day," he writes,
"peopled by a multitude of heroes struck down in the flower of their
youth and very different from the pale and languid cohort of the past,
composed almost wholly of the sick and the old, who had already ceased
to exist before leaving the earth. We must tell ourselves that now, in
every one of our homes, both in our cities and in the country-side,
both in the p