that reveals to me that I am
like a mouse in the grasp of a cat, allowed sometimes to run a few
inches alone--or more truly like a baby walking along, very proud
of its performance, with a couple of anxious, loving arms poised to
catch it. The extraordinary apportionment not only in balance but in
_kind_ of punishment to sin--long-continued, secret, base desires,
punished by long-hidden suffering--the sharp stress of temptation
yielded to, requited by the sharp pang--the glorious feeling which I
have once or twice felt--the sin once sinned and the punishment
once over, as one is assured supremely sometimes that it is without
doubt--of trustful freedom, and fresh fitness for battling one's self
and helping others to battle--a mood that is soon broken, but is an
earnest while it lasts of infinite satisfaction. The extraordinary
delicacy with which the screw of pain and mental suffering is
adjusted, just lifted when we can bear no more (not when _we_ think
we can bear no more, but when God knows it) and resolutely applied
again when we have gained strength which we propose to devote to
enjoyment, but which God intends us to devote to suffering. The very
beauty, too, of pain itself--the strange flushes of joy that it gives
us, which can only thus be won--the certainty that this is reality,
this is what we are meant to do and be--happiness of different kinds,
art, friends, books, are delusive; they play over the surface; in
suffering we dip below it." This latter thought expanded is the
subject of a passage of a letter to myself that gave me wonderful
comfort.

We know how sickness or sorrow comes down heavily on us, crushing in
what we are pleased to call our "plans," and "interrupting," as we
say, "our opportunities for usefulness," spoiling our life.

"My dear friend, _this is_ life itself. It is this very 'interruption'
that we live for. What does God care about the wretched books you
intend to write, the petty occupations you think you discharge so
gracefully? He means to teach you a great high truth, worth knowing;
and, thank Heaven, He will, however much you shrink and writhe. Do
not pick and choose among events: try and interpret each as it
comes."

At the expiration of the year of work--Easter, 1875--he was unchanged
in his plan of travel; in fact, it had become a resolve by that time.
He confessed that he did not personally at all like giving up the
school work; he had got very much interested in some of the bo