I have had sad things to do and see since I wrote to you: the
loss of my dear and good old Mother, which could not be spared me
forever, has come more like a kind of total bankruptcy upon me
than might have been expected, considering her age and mine. Oh
those last two days, that last Christmas Sunday! She was a true,
pious, brave, and noble Mother to me; and it is now all over;
and the Past has all become pale and sad and sacred;--and the
all-devouring potency of Death, what we call Death, has never
looked so strange, cruel and unspeakable to me. Nay not _cruel_
altogether, let me say: huge, profound, _unspeakable,_ that is
the word.--You too have lost your good old Mother, who stayed
with you like mine, clear to the last: alas, alas, it is the
oldest Law of Nature; and it comes on every one of us with a
strange originality, as if it had never happened before.--
Forward, however; and no more lamenting; no more than cannot be
helped. "Paradise is under the shadow of our swords," said the
Emir: "Forward!"--
I make no way in my Prussian History; I bore and dig toilsomely
through the unutterablest mass of dead rubbish, which is not even
English, which is German and inhuman; and hardly from ten tons
of learned inanity is there to be riddled one old rusty nail.
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