From Father Oliver Gogarty to Miss Nora Glynn.

’GARRANARD, BOHOLA,

’December 30, 19—.

’DEAR MISS GLYNN,

’I should have written to you before, but I lacked courage.  Do you remember saying that the loneliness of the country sometimes forced you to kneel down to pray that you might die?  I think the loneliness that overcame you was the loneliness that comes at the end of an autumn day when the dusk gathers in the room.  It seems to steal all one’s courage away, and one looks up from one’s work in despair, asking of what value is one’s life.  The world goes on just the same, grinding our souls away.  Nobody seems to care; nothing seems to make any difference.

’Human life is a very lonely thing, and for that it is perhaps religious.  But there are days when religion fails us, when we lack courage, lonesomeness being our national failing.  We were always lonesome, hundreds of years ago as much as to-day.  You know it, you have been through it and will sympathize.  A caged bird simply beats its wings and dies, but a human being does not die of loneliness, even when he prays for death.  You have experienced it all, and will know what I feel when I tell you that I spend my time watching the rain, thinking of sunshine, picture-galleries, and libraries.

’But you were right to bid me go on with the book I spoke to you about.  If I had gone away, as you first suggested, I should have been unhappy; I should have thought continually of the poor people I left behind; my abandonment of them would have preyed on my mind, for the conviction is dead in me that I should have been able to return to them; we mayn’t return to places where we have been unhappy.  I might have been able to get a parish in England or a chaplaincy, but I should have always looked upon the desertion of my poor people as a moral delinquency.  A quiet conscience is, after all, a great possession, and for the sake of a quiet conscience I will remain here, and you will be able to understand my scruple when you think how helpless my people are, and how essential is the kindly guidance of the priest.

’Without a leader, the people are helpless; they wander like sheep on a mountain-side, falling over rocks or dying amid snowdrifts.  Sometimes the shepherd grows weary of watching, and the question comes, Has a man no duty towards himself?  And then one begins to wonder what is one’s duty and what is duty—­if duty is something more than the opinions of others, something more than a convention which we would not like to hear called into question, because we feel instinctively that it is well for everyone to continue in the rut, for, after all, a rut means a road, and roads are necessary.  If one lets one’s self go on thinking, one very soon finds that wrong and right are indistinguishable, so perhaps it is better to follow the rut if one can.  But the rut is beset with difficulties; there are big holes on either side.  Sometimes the road ends nowhere, and one gets lost in spite of one’s self.  But why am I writing all these things to you?’