to begin
our ploughing and sowing afresh, I think.

I have had a great burning lately! I saw, in the mirror of a book,
written by one who knew me well, and who yet wrote, I am sure, in no
vindictive or personal spirit, how ugly and mean a thing a temperament
like mine could be. One needs a shock like that every now and then,
because it is so easy to drift into a mild complacency, to cast up a
rough sum of one's qualities, and to conclude that though there is much
to be ashamed of, yet that the total, for any who knew all the elements
of the problem, is on the whole a creditable one. But here in my
friend's book, who knew as much of the elements of the problem as any
one could, the total was a minus quantity!

How is one to make it otherwise? Alas, I know how little one can do,
but so long as one is humiliated and ashamed, and feels the keen flame
scorching the vicious fibre, something, we may be sure, is being done
for us, some heavenly alchemy that shall make all things new.

How shall I tell my friend that I am grateful? The very telling of it
will make him feel guilty of a sort of treachery, which he did not
design. So I must be silent for awhile; and, above all, resist the
feeling, natural enough in the first humiliation, that one would like
to send some fire-tailed fox into his standing-corn as well.

There is no impulse to be more carefully and jealously guarded than the
impulse which tells us that we are bound to speak unpleasant truths to
one's friends. It must be resisted until seventy times seven! It can
only be yielded to if there is nothing but pure pain in the doing of
it; if there is the least touch of satisfaction or zest about it, it
may be safely put aside.

And so to-day I will stand for a little and watch the slow smoke
drifting heavenwards from the dry weeds of my soul. It is not a sad
experience, though the fingers of the fire are sharp! Rather as the
rich smoke rolls into the air, and then winds and hangs in airy veils,
there comes a sense of relief, of lightness, of burdens not stricken
harshly off, but softly and cleanly purged away.

XXIV

One meets a great many people of various kinds, old and young, kind and
severe, amiable and harsh, gentle and dry, rude and polite, tiresome
and interesting. One meets men who are, one recognises, virtuous,
honourable, conscientious, and able; one meets women of character, and
ingenuousness, and charm, and beauty. But the thing that really
int