you john weu i m engaged with this lamp see the oil is rising give me a match and lamps are but next year i shall devise some system of illumination next year but to day i heard and on the fullest authority that you re thinking of leaving us who has been in the library this afternoon i wasn t in the library this afternoon so it must have been yesterday that i overheard some conversation as it passed through the but you aren t thinking of leaving us m asked not to morrow nor the day after nor next year i can t leave till the end of my lease and by then you ll have had enough of me don t you think so you re not really thinking of leaving us the only foundation for the rumour is that i mentioned to a lady the other day that i didn t look s� hail and farewell ireland as the end of my earthly adventure and she most have told one of her neighbours twenty four hours are all that is required for news to reach the national library john s darkened the national library should not be spoken of as a house of gossip even in joke but you ll never find elsewhere a house as suitable to your pictures as beautiful a garden to walk in or friends as of your conversation you ll not find a finer intelligence than in london or john s i quite agree with you m that i shall never chance on a more agreeable circle of friends and all of you are so necessary to me that i am when i think that the day will come sooner or later when i should like to hear what m stands for in your mind can you tell us he makes me feel at times that the thither side is not dark but dusk and that an invisible hand a thread of destiny through the uniform of life he makes me feel that our friendship was begun in some existence and will be continued perhaps m how conscious he is of his own eternity i said turning to john yet you are leaving us how he is john and yet for all we know he may be the first to leave us he has certain knowledge of the first was in india the second in his third of which he keeps a distinct memory happened b g about i am not so sure but m especially a light treatment of his ideas and i did not dare to add that in heaven he is known as but asked him instead if he were from the task of earning his daily bread would he retire to and spend the rest of his life the sacred books of the east his answer to this interesting question we shall never know for yielding to the impulse of a sudden conviction john if ie leaves it will not be for but for s point formerly haunted by and the and now the of an interesting known as at the end of our laughter m said now will you tell us what idea john stands for he and you are opposite poles i answered you stand for belief john for on one side of me sits the great everything and on the other the great nothing and which would you prefer that death should reveal to you john asked nothing or everything you don t answer admit that you would just as that death discovered nothing it is easy to imagine a return to the darkness out of which we out of which i came and difficult to imagine my life in the grey dusk that m b eyes have revealed to me but since you deny the worth of this life i do not deny john answered yes by your from your prose you deny the value of your life he doubts everything x s � hail and farewell je � the future of ireland the value of literature even the value of his own beautiful prose watch the frown coming into his face i am forgetting � we mustn t speak of a collected edition of his works lest we spoil for him the taste of that who else is coming to dinner john asked g said he would come and he will turn up probably in the middle of dinner pleading that he missed his train let us hear what idea stands for said john an invisible hand a special thread into the which we must follow or perish and as we stand with a peal of laughter often causes us to hesitate laughter behind the veil said john and he spoke to me of a poem that he had received from for publication in he had it in his pocket and would be glad if i would say how it struck me only two hardly longer than a but the poem could not be found among the bundle papers he drew from his pocket and when he gave up the search definitely i m going to write the of your appearance and from the legend of a who appeared some years ago and the young people crowded about him and he them in the fires of fierce and them with tales of and anybody who from the heat the from and anybody who was he e in twain and flung aside as of no use and at last only four stood the test because he was an artist and was enchanted with the performances of the also remained because he was of a disposition and was only happy when or and the gave him the time of his life there was who was naturally more than the and had nothing to learn in from him but undertook to complete his and there was who practised law and could not be brow beat 