“But the subject is very repugnant to me.  I don’t like thinking or talking about it, because it has its other side; the thought of a woman in connection with such things is so unutterably ghastly; it is one of the problems about which I say most earnestly ‘God knows.’”

One other letter of this period, is worth, I think, inserting here.

“Tredennis, August 29.

“I had an instructive parable thrown in my way to-day, containing an obvious lesson for Eddy, and a further meaning for myself.  Eddy came running to me about eleven, to tell me there was a man in the garden.  I hurried to the spot he indicated; and there, in a kind of nook formed by a fernery, his head resting in a great glowing circle of St. John’s wort, and his feet tucked up under him, lay a drunken tramp, asleep.  He was in the last stage of disease; his face was white and fallen away, except his nose and eyes, which were red and bloodshot; he had a horrible sore on his neck; he was unshaven and fearfully dirty; he had on torn trousers; a flannel shirt, open at the neck; and a swallow-tail coat, green with age, buttoned round him.  His hat, such as it was, lay on the ground at his side.  Edward regarded him with unfeigned curiosity and dismay.  While we stood watching him, he began to stir and shift uneasily in his sleep, as a watched person will, and presently woke and rolled to his feet with a torrent of the foulest language.  He was three-parts drunk.  He watched us for a moment suspiciously, and then gave a bolt.  How he accomplished it I don’t know, for he was very unsteady on his feet; but he got to the wall, and dropped over it into the road, and was out of sight before we could get there.  He evidently had some dim idea that he had been trespassing.

“Edward inquired what sort of a man he was.

“‘An English gentleman, in all probability,’ I said, ’who has got into that state by always doing as he liked.’  And I went on to point out, as simply as I could, that everybody has two sets of desires, and that you must make up your mind which to gratify early in life, determining to face this kind of ending if you fix upon one set.  ‘Early in life,’ I said, ’when this gentleman was a well-dressed clean boy like you, one of the voices used to whisper to him at his ear, “Eat as much as you can; that is what you really like best;” while the other said, “If you eat rather less, you will be able to play football, or read your book better; besides, you will be your own master and less of a beast.”

“‘But he wouldn’t listen; and this is the result.’

“Edward seemed to ponder it deeply.  He tried to starve himself to-day at lunch; and I refrained from pointing out to him that abstinence from meat at lunch was not the unum necessarium, for fear of confusing the ingenuous mind.  I like to see people grasp the concrete issue in one of its bearings.  The principle will gradually develop itself; from denying themselves in one point, they will or may grow to be generally temperate; when confronted with overmastering and baser impulses, it may be they will say, ’Let me be [Greek:  egkrates emautou] even here.’