The difficulty is to believe that they are burned; one thinks of the
old fault, with evil fertility, ever ripening and seeding, ever
increasing its circle. Well, it is so in a sense, however diligently we
gather and burn. But there is enough hopefulness left for us 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.
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