early June 1878

Dear friend.

When you wrote you would come in November, it would please me it were November then - but the time has moved - You went with the coming of the Birds-they will go with your coming-but to see you is so much sweeter than Birds, I could excuse the spring.

With the bloom of the flower your friend loved, I have wished for her, but God cannot discontinue himself.

Mr Bowles was not willing to die.

When you have lost a friend, Master, you remember you could not begin again, because there was no World. I have thought of you often since the Darkness-though we cannot assist another's Night-

I have hoped you were saved-

That those have immortality with whom we talked about it, makes it no more mighty-but perhaps more sudden-

How brittle are the Piers
On which our Faith doth tread-
No Bridge below doth totter so-
Yet none hath such a Crowd.

It is as old as God-
Indeed-'twas built by him-
He sent his Son to test the Plank,
And he pronounced it firm.

And perhaps you have spoken with George Eliot. Will you "tell me about it"? Will you come in November, and will November come- or is this the Hope that opens and shuts, like the eye of the Wax Doll?

Your Scholar-