ss. For, by God! it will come.

And I want to live, too, for personal and private reasons. If I could
regard myself merely as a helpless incumbrance, a useless jellyfish,
absorbing for my maintenance human effort that should be beneficially
exerted elsewhere, I think I should be the first to bid them take me
out and bury me. But it is my wonderful privilege to look around and
see great and beautiful human souls coming to me for guidance and
consolation. Why this should be I do not rightly know. Perhaps my very
infirmity has taught me many lessons....

You see, in the years past, my life was not without its lonelinesses.
It was so natural for the lusty and joyous to disregard, through mere
thoughtlessness, the little weather-beaten cripple in his wheelchair.
But when one of these sacrificed an hour's glad life in order to sit by
the dull chair in a corner, the cripple did not forget it. He learned
in its terrible intensity the meaning of human kindness. And, in his
course through the years, or as the years coursed by him, he realised
that a pair of gollywog legs was not the worst disability which a human
being might suffer. There were gollywog hearts, brains, nerves,
temperaments, destinies.

Perhaps, in this way, he came to the knowledge that in every human
being lies the spark of immortal beauty, to be fanned into flame by one
little rightly directed breath. At any rate, he learned to love his
kind.

It is Christmas day. I am as happy as a man has a right to be in these
fierce times in England. Love is all around me. I must tell you little
by little. Various things have happened during the last six months.

At the inquest on the body of Leonard Boyce, the jury gave a verdict of
death by misadventure. The story of the chauffeur, an old soldier
servant devoted to Boyce, received implicit belief. He had faithfully
carried out his master's orders: to conduct him from the road, across
the field, and seat him on the boom of the lock gates, where he wanted
to remain alone in order to enjoy the quiet of the night and listen to
the lap of the water; to return and fetch him in a quarter of an hour.
This he did, dreaming of no danger. When he came back he realised what
had happened. His master had got up and fallen into the canal. What had
really happened only a few of us knew.

Well, I have told you the man's story. I am not his judge. Whether his
act was the supreme amende, the supreme act of courage or the supreme
act o