I am speaking with entire sincerity when I say to you that I think I am myself rather cast in that mould.  I have always just missed getting what used to be called “situations of dignity and emolument,” and I have often been condoled with as the person who ought to have had them.

Well, I expect that this is probably a very wholesome discipline for me, but I cannot say that it is pleasant, or that use has made it easier.

The worst of it is that I have an odd mixture of practicality and mysticism within me, and I have sometimes thought that one has damaged the other.  My mysticism has pulled me back when I ought to have taken a decided step, urging “Leave it to God”—­and then, when I have failed to get what I wanted, my mysticism has failed to comfort me, and the practical side of me has said, “The decided step was what God clearly indicated to you was needed; and you were lazy and would not take it.”

I have a highly practical friend, the most absolutely and admirably worldly person I know.  In talk he sometimes lets fall very profound maxims.  We were talking the other day about this very point, and he said musingly, “It is a very good rule in this world not to ask for anything unless you are pretty sure to get it.”  That is the cream of the worldly attitude.  Such a man is not going to make himself tiresome by importunity.  He knows what he desires, he works for it, and, when the moment comes, he just gives the little push that is needed, and steps into his kingdom.

That is exactly what I cannot do.  It is not a sign of high-mindedness, for I am by nature greedy, acquisitive, and ambitious.  But it is a want of firmness, I suppose.  Anyhow, there it is, and one cannot alter one’s temperament.

The conclusion which I come to for myself and for all like-minded persons—­not a very happy class, I fear—­is that one should absolutely steel oneself against disappointment, not allow oneself to indulge in pleasing visions, not form plans or count chickens, but try to lay hold of the things which do bring one tranquillity, the simple joys of ordinary and uneventful life.  One may thus arrive at a certain degree of independence.  And though the heart may ache a little at the chances missed, yet one may console oneself by thinking that it is happier not to realise an ambition and be disappointed, than to realise it and be disappointed.

It all comes from over-estimating one’s own powers, after all.  If one is decently humble, no disappointment is possible; and such little successes as one does attain are like gleams of sunlight on a misty day.—­Ever yours,

T. B.

Upton,
March 25, 1904.

Dear Herbert,—­You are quite right about conventionality in education.