One can not help feeling during such times--and, alas! they are becoming very familiar to me--that some mysterious warfare may be being fought out somewhere over one's only half-conscious soul: that some strange decision may be pending." And again: "For the last week, my mind--though I have reiterated again and again to myself that it is purely physical--has steadily refused to take any view of life, to have any outlook, except the most dismal.

I am a little better to-day--well enough to see the humour of it, though God knows it is black enough while it lasts." In one letter he wrote to me, I find the following words: it never occurred to me at the time that they were the gradual fruits of his own experience on the subject: "Physical and mental depression is a most fearful enemy.

Other things give you trouble at intervals--toothache, headache, etc., are all spasmodic afflictions, and, moreover, can be much mitigated by circumstances.

But with depression it is not so: it poisons any cup--it turns all the cheerful little daily duties of life into miseries, unutterable burdens; death is the only future event which you can contemplate with satisfaction.

It admits of no comfort: the whispered suggestion of the mind, 'You will be better soon,' falls on deaf ears.