are obliged. When you came, I saw that your troubles and sufferings
would make you bitter. Do you know who helped to cure you? _It was I_.
I have seen that often before. That is the one little bit of good I have
done in the world: I have helped to cure cynicism. You were shocked at
the things I said, and you were saved. I did not save you intentionally,
so I am not posing as a philanthropist. I merely mention that you came
here hard, and you went back tender. That was partly because you have
lived in the City of Suffering. Some people live there and learn
nothing. But you would learn to feel only too much. I wish that your
capacity for feeling were less; but then you would not be yourself,
your present self I mean, for you have changed even since I have known
you. Every week you seemed to become more gentle. You thought me rough
and gruff at parting, little comrade: I meant to be so. If you had only
known, there was a whole world of tenderness for you in my heart. I
could not trust myself to be tender to you; you would have guessed my
secret. And I wanted you to go away undisturbed. You do not feel things
lightly, and it was best for you that you should harden your heart
against me.
"If you could harden your heart against me. But I am not sure about
that. I believe that . . . Ah, well, I'm a foolish fellow; but some day,
dear, I'll tell you what I think . . . I have treasured many of your
sayings in my memory. I can never be as though I had never known you.
Many of your words I have repeated to myself afterwards until they
seemed to represent my own thoughts. I specially remember what you
said about God having made us lonely, so that we might be obliged to
turn to him. For we are all lonely, though some of us not quite so much
as others. You yourself spoke often of being lonely. Oh, my own little
one! Your loneliness is nothing compared to mine. How often I could
have told you that.
"I have never seen any of your work, but I think you have now something
to say to others, and that you will say it well. And if you have the
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