As I wandered about Woodcote my thoughts took a sombre tinge, and the lacrimae rerum, the happy days gone, the pleasant groups broken up to meet no more, the old faces departed, the voices that are silent—­all these thoughts began to weigh on my mind with a sad bewilderment.  One feels so independent, so much the master of one’s fate; and yet when one returns to an old home one begins to wonder whether one has any power of choice at all.  There is this strange fence of self and identity drawn for me round one tiny body; all that is outside of it has no existence for me apart from consciousness.  These are fruitless thoughts, but one cannot always resist them; and why one is here, what these vivid feelings mean, what one’s heart-hunger for the sweet world and for beloved people means—­all this is dark and secret; and the strong tide bears us on, out of the little harbour of childhood into unknown seas.

Dear Woodcote, dear remembered days, beloved faces and voices of the past, old trees and fields!  I cannot tell what you mean and what you are; but I can hardly believe that, if I have a life beyond, it will not somehow comprise you all; for indeed you are my own for ever; you are myself, whatever that self may be.—­Ever yours,

T. B.

P.S.—­By the way, I want you to do something for me; I want a map of your house and of the sitting-rooms.  I want to see where you usually sit, to read or write.  And more than that, I want a map of the roads and paths round about, with your ordinary walks and strolls marked in red.  I don’t feel I quite realise the details enough.

SENNICOTTS,
honey hill,
east Grinstead,
Aug. 9, 1904.

Dear Herbert,—­I am making holiday, with the voice of praise and thanksgiving, like the people in the Psalm, and working, oh! how gratefully, at one of my eternal books.  Depend upon it, for simple pleasure, there is nothing like writing.  I am staying with Bradby, who has taken a cottage in Sussex.  He has had his holiday, so that he goes up to town every day; it does not sound very friendly to say that this arrangement exactly suits me, but so it is.  I work and write in the morning, walk or bicycle in the afternoon, and then we dine together, and spend peaceful evenings, reading or talking.

But this is not the point.  I came in yesterday to tea, saw an unfamiliar hat in the hall, and found to my surprise James Cooper, whom you remember at Eton as a boy.  I knew him a little there, and saw a good deal of him at Cambridge; and we have kept up a very fitful correspondence at long intervals ever since.