YOUR FAR-FROM-SERENE GLOOMINESS,--Won't you one day be a little
cheerful, and wrong? Won't you send out a lifeboat to the wreck instead
of watching her through your smoked field-glasses as she sinks? What you
seem to forget is that most people at times are their own Gloomy
Deans: some of us too often; and there can be too much of a good thing.
Hopelessness butters no parsnips and it is a mood not to be encouraged
or the world would be as bad as we then think it. Gloomy-deaniness,
though salutary for brief intervals, should be sparingly indulged in;
but you are at it all the time. There is a Chinese proverb which says,
"If you can't smile don't open a shop;" and, after all, St. Paul's
Cathedral is in a manner of speaking a kind of shop, isn't it?--the
goods, at any rate, should be obtainable there. The phrase "there is no
health in us" does not constitute the whole liturgy. Down with facile
optimists by all means, but, my dear Sir----