We know how sickness or sorrow comes down heavily on us, crushing in what we are pleased to call our “plans,” and “interrupting,” as we say, “our opportunities for usefulness,” spoiling our life.

“My dear friend, this is life itself.  It is this very ‘interruption’ that we live for.  What does God care about the wretched books you intend to write, the petty occupations you think you discharge so gracefully?  He means to teach you a great high truth, worth knowing; and, thank Heaven, He will, however much you shrink and writhe.  Do not pick and choose among events:  try and interpret each as it comes.”

At the expiration of the year of work—­Easter, 1875—­he was unchanged in his plan of travel; in fact, it had become a resolve by that time.  He confessed that he did not personally at all like giving up the school work; he had got very much interested in some of the boys, and in the whole process of the education of character.  But there was also another reason, which the following letter will explain: 

“You know, perhaps, that I have been acting as usher here for a year; it is to be a kind of probation.  That is to say, I have promised to try what it is like for a year, and see if I feel inclined to adopt it as my profession.

“Now, I am in a very curious position.  I do feel inclined, very much inclined indeed, to stick permanently to the work; it interests, amuses, occupies me.  I hate the want of occupation.  I hate making occupations for myself, and this provides me with regular work at stated hours, leaving other stated hours free, and free in the best way; that is to say, it works the vapours off.  My brain feels clear and steady; I can talk, think, write, read better, in those intervals than I ever can when all my time is my own, and yet—­I must, I believe, give it up.

“You know I pretend to a kind of familiar; like Socrates, I am forbidden to do certain things by a kind of distant inward voice—­not conscience, for it is not limited to moral choice.  I don’t mean to say I do not or have not disobeyed it, but it is always the worse for me in the end; it is like taking a short cut in the mountains; you get to your end in time, but far more tired and shaky than if you had followed the right road, which started so much to the left among the pines, and moreover, you get there very much behind your party.

“This time it tells me that I am not equal to the direct responsibility; that I can not, with my habits of mind and temper, impress a permanent enough mark upon the lads.  It is like beginning a system of education that is to take, say, thirty years, giving them a year of it, and then taking to another; you not only lose your year, but you unfit them for other systems.  That is what I should do; my methods do not prepare them for other normal education; it is only the beginning of a preparation for what I believe to be a higher and more complete education, but that wouldn’t justify my keeping on.