You describe your position with great humour. I well understand all the bitterness of it; your position one may really call tragic. But let me tell you you are not alone in it; there is scarcely any quite modern person who isn’t placed in it. You will say that that makes it no better for you; but I am of opinion that suffering in company with thousands is quite a different matter from suffering alone. It is not a matter of egoism, but a sense of a general inevitability which comes in.
All this is very fine, granted, you will say … but not practicable in reality. Why not practicable? I have hitherto imagined, and I hope I shall never cease to imagine, that in God’s world everything honest, good, and true is practicable, and will sooner or later come to pass, and not only will be realised,
