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Canada, 1922
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.
