There was a harmonium in the church, played by a young woman from a boarding school that was attending en masse.

But, old boy, there was a beautiful little wooden church with a kindly light at the end of that dark road, I read Acts V:14-16, Acts XII:5-17, Peter in prison, and Acts XX:7-37, Paul preaching in Macedonia, and then I told the story of John and Theagenes yet again.

It grew dark early and I wasn’t sure of the way, it was a surprisingly muddy road over a kind of embankment or rise on the hill covered with gnarled elm trees and shrubs. At last I saw below the rise a light in a small house, and scrambled and waded over to it, and there I was told the way.

oh if Thou would only make me, not only almost but altogether, as it were, my Father’s brother, a Christian and a Christian worker. Complete Thy work in me which Thou hast begun.

then I feel ‘Stay, Lord, and hear the prayer my Mother said for me when I left my parent’s house: Father, I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from the evil, and, Lord,

and The prodigal son by Ary Scheffer and the little boat on a stormy sea and one etching, an autumn landscape, view of the heath, which I got from Harry Gladwell on my birthday, and when I think of all of you and then of all those here and of Turnham Green and Richmond and Petersham etc,

To our right a few horses were grazing in a meadow surrounded by a hedge of hawthorn and blackberry bushes.

And to our left were railway tracks on a rather high embankment, and at that moment a train came, and that was a beautiful sight, the red glow of the locomotive and the rows of lights inside the carriages in the twilight.

It was surprisingly muddy there, but it was a beautiful sight when it began to grow dark and the mist rose and one saw the light of a small church in the middle of the green.

There was a view from the window there that reminded me very much of Holland – a flat, grass-covered area, which the torrential rains had turned almost into a morass, surrounded by rows of little red houses with their gardens and the lights of the street-lamps that were being lit.

I also have to do this during the week; there are quite a few children, but it’s a job to round them all up regularly.

And yet, one mustn’t lose heart, Elijah had to pray all of seven times, and David had ashes on his head many a time.