moment the vagueness is dispelled; the form, the lineaments, take
shape from the gloom, and one finds that one is face to face with a
familiar friend, whose greeting warms the heart as one passes into the
mist again.--Ever yours,

T. B.

UPTON,
Dec. 5, 1904.

MY DEAR HERBERT,--I am very sorry to hear you have been suffering from
depression; it is one of the worst evils of life, and none the better
for being so intangible. I was reading a story the other day, in some
old book, of a moody man who was walking with a friend, and, after a
long silence, suddenly cried out, as if in pain. "What ails you?" said
his friend. "My mind hurts me," said the other. That is the best way to
look at it, I think--as a kind of neuralgia of the soul, to be treated
like other neuralgias. A friend of mine who was a great sufferer from
such depression went to an old doctor, who heard his story with a
smile, and then said: "Now, you're not as bad as you feel, or even as
you think. My prescription is a simple one. Don't eat pastry; and for a
fortnight don't do anything you don't like."

It is often only a kind of cramp, and needs an easier position. Try and
get a little change; read novels; don't get tired; sit in the open air.
"A recumbent position," said a witty lady of my acquaintance, "is a
great aid to cheerfulness."

I used, as you know, to be a great sufferer; or perhaps you don't know,
for I was too miserable sometimes even to speak of it. But I can say
humbly and gratefully that a certain freedom from depression is one of
the blessings that advancing years have brought me. Still, I don't
altogether escape, and it sometimes falls with an unexpected
suddenness. It may help you to know that other people suffer similarly,
and how they suffer.

Well, then, a few days ago I woke early, after troubled dreams, and
knew that the old enemy had clutched me. I lay in a strange agony of
mind, my heart beating thick, and with an insupportable weight on my
heart. It always takes the same form with me--an overwhelming sense of
failure in all that I attempt, a dreary consciousness of absolute
futility, coupled with the sense of the brevity and misery of human
life generally. I ask myself what is the use of anything? What is an
almost demoniacal feature of the mood is that it lays a spell of utter
dreariness upon all pleasures as well as duties. One feels condemned to
a long perspective of work without interest, and recreation without
r