The answer, of course, in the mouth of a Christian teacher is that in Christianity alone is there both present joy and future hope.

All things change, creeds and philosophies and outward systems - but God remains.

Do we all become garrulous and confidential as we approach the gates of old age? Is it that we instinctively feel, and cannot help asserting, our one advantage over the younger generation, which has so many over us? - the one advantage of time!

Other trades may fail. The agitator is always sure of his market.

The answer, of course, in the mouth of a Christian teacher is that in Christianity alone is there both present joy and future hope.

My grandmother made her home at Fox How under the shelter of the fells, with her four daughters, the youngest of whom was only eight when their father died.

In this choice, as I look back over more than half a century, I can only follow - and trust - the same sort of instinct that one follows in the art of fiction.