n helps to take us out of
ourselves, by exactly the strength of that emotion, as it were, is the
other one robbed of its bitterness and its pain. Some people seek this
soul-ease one way and some people by other means, but seek it we all
must one day or another, and it seems to me that one of the wonders of
the natural world, the sunlight and the stars, is that they are always
there, magnificent and waiting, for the weary and the sorrowing to find
some small solace in their woe.

_Work_

Work and Travel, Travel and Work--and by Work I mean some labour so
absorbing as to drug all thought; and by Travel I mean Nature, and
books, and art, and music, since these are, after all, but
dream-voyages in other men's minds--they alone are for me the panacea
of pain. Not the cackle of the human tongue--that for ever leaves me
cold; not the sympathy which talks and reproves, or turns on the tap of
help and courage by the usual trite source--that never helps me to
forget. But Work, and Travel, and (for me) Loneliness--these are the
three things by which I flee from haunting terrors towards numbness and
indifference. Each one, of course, has his own weapons--these are
mine. Years ago, when I was young and timid, I dreaded to leave the
little rut down which I wandered. Now experience has given me the
knowledge that Life is very little after all, and that it is for the
most part worthless where there is no happiness, no forgetfulness of
pain, no inner peace. The opinion of other people, beyond the few who
love me, leaves me cold. The praise or approbation of the world--what
is it worth at best, while it is boring nearly always? Each year as it
passes seems to me, not so much a mere passing of time and distance,
but a further peak attained towards some world, some inner vision,
which I but half comprehend. Each peak is lonelier, but, as I reach it
and prepare to ascend the next, there comes into my soul a wider vision
of what life, and love, and renunciation really mean, until at last I
seem to _see_--what? I cannot really say, but I see, as it were, the
early radiance of some Great Dawn where everything will be made clear
and, at last and at length, the soul will find comfort, and happiness,
and peace. And the things which drag you away from this
inner-vision--they are the things which hurt, which age you before your
time, which rob you of joy and contentment. As a syren they seem to
beckon you into the valleys where