w
passionately they cling to their ambitions and activities. How many
people there are who work too long, and try to prolong the energies of
morning into the afternoon, and the toil of afternoon into the peace of
evening. I earnestly desire to grow old gracefully; to know when to
stop, when to slip into a wise and kindly passivity, with sympathy for
those who are in the forefront of the race. And yet if one does not
practise wonder and receptivity and hope, one cannot expect them to
come suddenly and swiftly to one's call. There comes a day when a man
ought to be able to see that his best work is behind him, that his
active influence is on the wane, that he is losing his hold on the
machine. There ought to come a patient, beautiful, and kindly dignity,
a love of young things and fresh flowers; not an envious and regretful
unhappiness at the loss of the eager life and its brisk sensations,
which betrays itself too often in a trickle of exaggerated
reminiscences, a "weary, day-long chirping."

This is a harder task, I suppose, for an old bachelor than for a father
of children. I have sometimes felt that adoption, with all its risks,
of some young creature that you can call your own, would be a solution
for many loveless lives, because it would stir them out of the
comfortable selfishness that is the bane of the barren heart.

Of course, a schoolmaster suffers from this less than most professional
men; but, even so, it is melancholy to reflect how the boys one has
cared for, and tried to help, drift out of one's sight and ken. I have
no touch of the feeling which they say was characteristic of
Jowett--and indeed is amply evidenced by his correspondence--that once
a man's tutor he was always his tutor, even though his pupil became
grey-headed and a grandfather. One must do the best for the boys and
look for no gratitude; it often comes, indeed, in rich measure, but the
schoolmaster who craves for it is lost.

Well, it is time to stop. I sit in a little, low raftered parlour of
the old inn; the fire in the big hearth flickers into ash, and my
candles flare to their sockets. I leave the place to-morrow; and such
is the instinct for permanence in the human mind, that I feel depressed
and melancholy, as though I were leaving home.--Ever your affectionate,

T. B.

THE BLUE BOAR,
STANTON HARDWICK,
April 21, 1904.

DEAR HERBERT,--I have made a pilgrimage to Stratford-on-Avon. I now
feel overwhelmed with shame