me, for I had, in my enjoyment of the daily company of these various fellows, sought to work amongst them for their conversion to the wisdom and the ultimate salvation of the worth of a life that lay in keeping my faith and observing its sacraments. I was not capable of expressing this ambition in my dealings with the philosophic ones, however, for their conversion is not normally accomplished by their coming to know the texture and the quality of the life of a believer. No, the philosophers, though they may indeed adhere to a set of beliefs for no other reason than that they themselves once, when youthful and less taught in argument, came to know the texture and quality of the life of a man they admired, once they learn how to philosophize with those beliefs will brook no further conversions to be similarly accomplished. Thus they are seldom seekers of belief so much as they are defenders of it, and therefore, if you would attempt to work conversion on them, you must first destroy their present set of beliefs, and this, according to scripture, would be in defiance of the dead. Shatter not any manâs faith if you would have him as your brother. Let him love your faith and with his love shatter his own. Make not a man naked before you present him with a cloak. (I Craig., vii, 18.) In addition, I was not as clever and schooled as they generally were, and often, in explaining the nature and the principles that defined my own mode of worship and the very necessity of worship itself, I made a poor case for myself and my brethren, and I sometimes glumly conceded that I was making no sense.
So it came about that, even though these men were then my only companions among the prisoners, as I was compelled by my love of the dead and my wish to obey scripture, I left off attempting to work conversion among the philosophic ones, with the immediate result of their no longer desiring me to come among them. As long as I had been willing to argue against the faith they defended, I had been welcomed as one of their fraternity. But when I determined that by my own faith I must not attack theirs (and by that means also no longer to be forced into glum concessions of making no sense), the philosophic ones no longer found me of interest. This was to become a considerable deprivation for me, for I had learned to value the companionship of the philosophers above all others and for reasons that had nothing to do with the disputation they themselves valued so highly, and when I was no longer able to sit with them at table or in the prison reading rooms or even to play dominoes with them (for when I left off arguing against them, they no longer were able to respect my intelligence), I sat alone in my cell and wondered what they were doing at that moment, what they were saying to each other, what they were analyzing, discussing and evaluating together, for these were men who talked with feeling and intelligence about many of the things that interested me.
I did not complain then, nor do I now, even though I had fallen into a deep solitude that was broken only by the sporadic visits of my wife, who was growing more weakly, and, for a brief period, the occasional conversations I had with Jacob Moon prior to his departure from his post as jailor, which also took place that second summer of my imprisonment, when he assumed the directorship of the Society Of Prisoners. I did not complain of my solitude, first, because there was no one but my wife to hear it and I did not wish to increase her sufferings by a relation of my own, but also because I knew that my solitude had been achieved by me in the service of the dead, and so I saw my sufferings as yet another way to tender mercy to the dead, and this made me glad.
I cannot now say with certainty when it was that I reached this period of my deep solitude, which goes on even to today, except to notice that it occurred sometime long before the death of my beloved wife, which means that it probably took
So it came about that, even though these men were then my only companions among the prisoners, as I was compelled by my love of the dead and my wish to obey scripture, I left off attempting to work conversion among the philosophic ones, with the immediate result of their no longer desiring me to come among them. As long as I had been willing to argue against the faith they defended, I had been welcomed as one of their fraternity. But when I determined that by my own faith I must not attack theirs (and by that means also no longer to be forced into glum concessions of making no sense), the philosophic ones no longer found me of interest. This was to become a considerable deprivation for me, for I had learned to value the companionship of the philosophers above all others and for reasons that had nothing to do with the disputation they themselves valued so highly, and when I was no longer able to sit with them at table or in the prison reading rooms or even to play dominoes with them (for when I left off arguing against them, they no longer were able to respect my intelligence), I sat alone in my cell and wondered what they were doing at that moment, what they were saying to each other, what they were analyzing, discussing and evaluating together, for these were men who talked with feeling and intelligence about many of the things that interested me.
I did not complain then, nor do I now, even though I had fallen into a deep solitude that was broken only by the sporadic visits of my wife, who was growing more weakly, and, for a brief period, the occasional conversations I had with Jacob Moon prior to his departure from his post as jailor, which also took place that second summer of my imprisonment, when he assumed the directorship of the Society Of Prisoners. I did not complain of my solitude, first, because there was no one but my wife to hear it and I did not wish to increase her sufferings by a relation of my own, but also because I knew that my solitude had been achieved by me in the service of the dead, and so I saw my sufferings as yet another way to tender mercy to the dead, and this made me glad.
I cannot now say with certainty when it was that I reached this period of my deep solitude, which goes on even to today, except to notice that it occurred sometime long before the death of my beloved wife, which means that it probably took
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