Before God, if I can I will make this boy enlightened, should I live to do it; or at least not at the mercy of every vagrant prophet and bawler of conventional ideas.
"Ever your friend, "Arthur Hamilton" The next explains itself.
"Tredennis, September 15.
"My Dear Friend, "As you write to inquire so affectionately about my health, I think it would be very wrong of me not to answer you fully; so I will take 'health' to mean well-being, and not confine myself to its paltry physiological usage.
"In the last month I have really turned a corner, and gained serenity and patience in my outlook.

I do not mean that I am either patient or serene yet, but I have long and considerable spaces of both, when I feel content to let God make or mar me as He will, and realise that perhaps in His mind those two words may bear a precisely contrary sense.
"One thing I wish to tell you, which I am afraid you will be rather shocked to hear.

I have not told you before, from a culpable reticence; for I believe that there must be either complete confidence between friends or none at all-- "Do you remember a very gloomy and depressed letter that I wrote to you the other day?
When I wrote it I was deliberately contemplating an action which I have now given up: I mean a voluntary exit from this world's disappointments--suicide, in fact.
"For many years I have carried about a quietus with me.

I began the habit at Cambridge.

Men have often asked me what is the curious little flask with a secret fastening, that stands on my dressing-table.