who yet found himself baffled, thwarted, shut out from the
paradise that seemed to open all about him; it was the face of one who
had found satiety in pleasure, and sorrow in the very heart of joy.
There was no taint of grossness or of luxury in the face, but rather a
strength, an intellectual force, a firm lucidity of thought. I confess
that the sight moved me very strangely. I felt a thrill of the deepest
compassion, a desire to do something that might help or comfort, a
yearning wish to aid, to explain, to cheer. The silence, the
stillness, the hopelessness of the pathetic figure woke in me the
intensest desire to give I knew not what--an overwhelming impulse of
pity. It seemed a parable of all the joy that is so sternly checked,
all the hopes made vain, the promise disappointed, the very death of
the soul. It seemed infinitely pathetic that God should have made so
fair a thing, and then withheld joy. And it seemed as though I had
looked into the very soul of the unhappy man who had set up so strange
and pathetic an allegory of his sufferings. The boy seemed as though
he would have welcomed death--anything that brought an end; yet the
health and suppleness of the bright figure held out no hope of that.
It was the very type of unutterable sorrow, and that not in an outworn
body, and reflected in a face dim with sad experience, but in a
perfectly fresh and strong frame, built for action and life. I cannot
say what remote thoughts, what dark communings, visited me at the
sight. I seemed confronted all at once with the deepest sadness of the
world, as though an unerring arrow had pierced my very heart--an arrow
winged by beauty, and shot on a summer day of sunshine and song.

Is there any faith that is strong enough and deep enough to overcome
such questionings? It seemed to bring me near to all those pale and
hopeless agonies of the world; all the snapping short of joy, the
confronting of life with death--those dreadful moments when the heart
asks itself, in a kind of furious horror, "How can it be that I am
filled so full of all the instinct of joy and life, and yet bidden to
suffer and to die?"

The only hope is in an utter and silent resignation; in the belief
that, if there is a purpose in the gift of joy, there is a purpose in
the gift of suffering. And as thus, in that calm afternoon, in the
silent wood, by the shining pool, I lifted up my heart to God to be
consoled, I felt a great hope draw near, as