I don’t mind dying a bit, if it is my Maker’s pleasure; if it would serve any useful purpose; if it would help my country a myriadth part of a millimetre on towards victory.  But if it would not matter to the world any more than the demise of a daddy-long-legs, I prefer to live.  In fact, I want to live.  I have never wanted to live more in all my life.  I want to see this fight out.  I want to see the Light that is coming after the Darkness.  For, by God! it will come.

And I want to live, too, for personal and private reasons.  If I could regard myself merely as a helpless incumbrance, a useless jellyfish, absorbing for my maintenance human effort that should be beneficially exerted elsewhere, I think I should be the first to bid them take me out and bury me.  But it is my wonderful privilege to look around and see great and beautiful human souls coming to me for guidance and consolation.  Why this should be I do not rightly know.  Perhaps my very infirmity has taught me many lessons. ...

You see, in the years past, my life was not without its lonelinesses.  It was so natural for the lusty and joyous to disregard, through mere thoughtlessness, the little weather-beaten cripple in his wheelchair.  But when one of these sacrificed an hour’s glad life in order to sit by the dull chair in a corner, the cripple did not forget it.  He learned in its terrible intensity the meaning of human kindness.  And, in his course through the years, or as the years coursed by him, he realised that a pair of gollywog legs was not the worst disability which a human being might suffer.  There were gollywog hearts, brains, nerves, temperaments, destinies.

Perhaps, in this way, he came to the knowledge that in every human being lies the spark of immortal beauty, to be fanned into flame by one little rightly directed breath.  At any rate, he learned to love his kind.

It is Christmas day.  I am as happy as a man has a right to be in these fierce times in England.  Love is all around me.  I must tell you little by little.  Various things have happened during the last six months.

At the inquest on the body of Leonard Boyce, the jury gave a verdict of death by misadventure.  The story of the chauffeur, an old soldier servant devoted to Boyce, received implicit belief.  He had faithfully carried out his master’s orders:  to conduct him from the road, across the field, and seat him on the boom of the lock gates, where he wanted to remain alone in order to enjoy the quiet of the night and listen to the lap of the water; to return and fetch him in a quarter of an hour.  This he did, dreaming of no danger.  When he came back he realised what had happened.  His master had got up and fallen into the canal.  What had really happened only a few of us knew.