Courage

Excerpt

You have had many rectors here in St. Andrews who will continue in bloom long after the lowly ones such as I am are dead and rotten and forgotten.  They are the roses in December; you remember someone said that God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.  But I do not envy the great ones.  In my experience—­and you may find in the end it is yours also—­the people I have cared for most and who have seemed most worth caring for—­my December roses—­have been very simple folk.  Yet I wish that for this hour I could swell into someone of importance, so as to do you credit.  I suppose you had a melting for me because I was hewn out of one of your own quarries, walked similar academic groves, and have trudged the road on which you will soon set forth.  I would that I could put into your hands a staff for that somewhat bloody march, for though there is much about myself that I conceal from other people, to help you I would expose every cranny of my mind.