Courage
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. But, alas, when the hour strikes for the Rector to answer to his call he is unable to become the undergraduate he used to be, and so the only door into you is closed. We, your elders, are much more interested in you than you are in us. We are not really important to you. I have utterly forgotten the address of the Rector of my time,
dwellings.
"Faith, with her lovely eyes, and Hope, with her bright ways, are good
enough," they said; "and why need they bring this pale, fragile one to
earth?"
But when once she had spoken, either in council or rebuke, to her
listeners, there was melody and richness in her tones: such an awakening
of their souls' finer powers that they ever after bade her welcome.
Her strength lay in her gentleness. She always went when called for, but
never obtruded herself on others. Very often her sisters were invited to
the feast of the people without her. It took time for her quality to be
known: she was so still and silent. Her step, too, was noiseless, and her
delicate feet left no prints where she trod.
Before she grew into favor with the people they used to watch for her
footprints to see whose guest she had been; but they found no traces,
and learned to entertain her after a long time for the lovely qualities
which she possessed.
They walk the earth now, each loved and entertained by many, while
some sit in the shadows, and know not that earth has the angels of Faith,
Hope, and Charity to bless them.
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. But, alas, when the hour strikes for the Rector to answer to his call he is unable to become the undergraduate he used to be, and so the only door into you is closed. We, your elders, are much more interested in you than you are in us. We are not really important to you. I have utterly forgotten the address of the Rector of my time,