I do not change at all, I think. I can say
better what I think, I am more accomplished and skilful; but the
thought and motive is unaltered from what it was when I was a
child. But he is different in some ways. I have only gone on
perceiving and remembering, and sometimes forgetting. But he does
not forget; and here I feel that I have helped him a little, as a
servant can help his master to remember the little things he has to
do.
I think that many people must have similar experiences to this.
Tennyson had, when he wrote "The Two Voices," and I have seen hints
of the same thing in a dozen books. The strange thing is that it
does not help one more to be strong and brave, because I know this,
if I know anything, that when the anxious and careful part of me
lies down at last to rest, I shall slip past the wall which now
divides us, and be clasped close in the arms of that Other One;
nay, it will be more than that! I shall be merged with him, as the
quivering water-drop is merged with the fountain; that will be a
blessed peace; and I shall know, I think, without any questioning
or wondering, many things that are obscure to me now, under these
low-hung skies, which after all I love so well. . . .
XII
SCHOOLDAYS
1
It certainly seems, looking back to the early years, that I have
altered very little--hardly at all, in fact! The little thing,
whatever it is, that sits at the heart of the machine, the speck of
soul-stuff that is really ME, is very much the same creature,
neither old nor young; confident, imperturbable, with a strange
insouciance of its own, knowing what it has to do.
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