Jena, March 25th.
Dear Mr. Anstruther,--You ask me to tell you more about my illness, but
I am afraid I must refuse. I see no use in thinking of painful past
things. They ought always to be forgotten as quickly as possible; if
they are not, they have a trick of turning the present sour, and I cling
to the present, to the one thing one really has, and like to make it as
cheerful as possible--like to get, by industrious squeezing, every drop
of honey out of it. Just now I cannot tell you how thankful I am simply
to be alive with nothing in my body hurting. To be alive with a great
many things in one's body hurting is a poor sort of amusement. It is not
at all a game worth playing. People talk of sick persons clinging to
life however sick they are, say they invariably do it, that they prefer
it on any terms to dying; well, I was a sick person who did not cling at
all. I did not want it. I was most willing to be done with it. But
Death, though he used often to come up and look at me, and once at least
sat beside me for quite a long while, went away again, and after a time
left off bothering about me altogether; and here I am walking out in the
sun every day, and listening with immense pleasure to the chaffinches.
Yours sincerely,