it then. And that made it seem strange to me. I didn't feel very much at home in the world, that was a fact. Now I do.
And now they say my heart is failing. The doctor used the term 'angina pectoris,' which has a theological sound, like misericordia. Well, you expect these things at my age. My father died an old man, but his sisters didn't live very long, really.
So I can only be grateful. I do regret that I have almost nothing to leave you and your mother. A few old books no one else would want. I never made any money to speak of, and I
never paid any attention to the money I had. It was the furthest thing from my mind that I'd be leaving a wife and child, believe me. I'd have been a better father if I'd known. I'd have set something by for you.
That is the main thing I want to tell you, that I regret very deeply the hard times I know you and your mother must have gone through, with no real help from me at all, except my prayers, and I pray all the time. I did while I lived, and I do now, too, if that is how things are in the next life.
4
I can hear you talking with your mother, you asking, she answering. It's not the words I hear, just the sounds of your voices. You don't like to go to sleep, and every night she has to sort of talk you into it all over again. I never hear her sing except at night, from the next room, when she's coaxing you to
sleep. And then I can't make out what song it is she's singing. Her voice is very low. It sounds beautiful to me, but she laughs when I say that.
I really can't tell what's beautiful anymore. I passed two young fellows on the street the other day. I know who they are, they work at the garage. They're not churchgoing, either one
of them, just decent rascally young fellows who have to be joking all the time, and there they were, propped against the
garage wall in the sunshine, lighting up their cigarettes. They're always so black with grease and so strong with gasoline I don't know why they don't catch fire themselves.
They
were passing remarks back and forth the way they do and laughing that wicked way they have. And it seemed beautiful to me. It is an amazing thing to watch people laugh, the way it sort of takes them over. Sometimes they really do struggle with it. I see that in church often enough. So I wonder what it is and where it comes from, and I wonder what it expends out of your system, so that you have to do it till you're done, like crying in a way, I suppose, except that laughter is much more easily spent.
When they saw me coming, of course the joking stopped, but I could see they were still laughing to themselves, thinking what the old preacher almost heard them say.
I felt like telling them, I appreciate a joke as much as anybody. There have been many occasions in my life when I have
wanted to say that. But it's not a thing people are willing to accept. They want you to be a little bit apart. I felt like saying,
I'm a dying man, and I won't have so many more occasions to 5
laugh, in this world at least. But that would just make them serious and polite, I suppose.
I'm keeping my condition a secret
as long as I can. For a dying man I feel pretty good, and that is a blessing. Of course your mother knows about it. She said if I feel good, maybe the doctor is wrong. But at my age there's a limit to how wrong he can be.
That's the strangest thing about this life, about being in the ministry. People change the subject when they see youcoming. And then sometimes those very same people come into
your study and tell you the most remarkable things. There's a lot under the surface of life, everyone knows that. A lot of malice and dread and guilt, and so much loneliness, where you wouldn't really expect to find it, either. , • • '
My mother's father was a preacher, and my father's father was, too, and his father before him, and before that, nobody knows, but I wouldn't hesitate to guess. That life was second nature to them, just as it is to me. They were fine people, but if there was one thing I should have learned from them and did not
learn, it was to control my temper. This is wisdom I should have attained a long time ago.
Even now, when a flutter of my pulse makes me think of final things, I find myself losing my temper, because a drawer sticks or because I've misplaced my glasses. I tell you so that you can watch for this in yourself. A little too much anger, too often or at the wrong time, can destroy more than you would ever imagine. Above all, mind what you say.
'Behold how much wood is kindled by how small a fire, and the tongue is a fire'—that's the truth. When my father was old he told me that very thing in a letter he sent me.
Which, as it happens, I burned. I dropped it right in the stove. This surprised me a good deal more at the time than it does in retrospect.
6
I believe 111 make an experiment with candor here. Now, I say this with all respect. My father was a man who acted from principle, as he said himself. He acted from faithfulness to the truth as he saw it. But something in the way he went about it made him disappointing from time to time, and not just to me. I say this despite all the attention he gave to me bringing me up, for which I am profoundly in his debt, though he himself might dispute that. God rest his soul, I know for a fact I disappointed him. It is a remarkable thing to consider. We meant
well by each other, too.
Well, see and see but do not perceive, hear and hear but do not understand, as the Lord says. I can't claim to understand that saying, as many times as I've heard it, and even preached on it. It simply states a deeply mysterious fact. You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it. A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still
