Last Sunday evening I went to a village on the Thames, Petersham. In the morning I had been at the Sunday school at Turnham Green, and went after sunset from there to Richmond and then on to Petersham.

How I’d have liked to go along on that walk to Het Heike and to Sprundel in the first snow.

Do whatever your hand finds to do, with all your might, and your work and prayers cannot fail to be blessed.

From the other end of L. I bid you all good-day! I left this morning at 4 o’clock, now it’s 2. I just came through the old cabbage fields, now on to Lewisham. A man sometimes says, how shall I manage it?

As I sit writing to you in my room and it’s so very, very quiet and I look around at your portraits and the prints on the wall, Christus Consolator and Good Friday and the Women at the sepulchre and The old Huguenot

Mr Jones’s children are better again, but now 3 of the boys have the measles. This week I had to go on a journey for Mr Jones with one of the boys to Acton Green, which is that grassy area that the sexton’s window looks out on.

And so the weeks pass and we approach winter, and the congenial Christmas festivities. Tomorrow I have to be in two remote parts of London, in Whitechapel – that extremely poor area which you’ll have read about in Dickens – and then cross the Thames in a boat and from there to Lewisham.

Next Sunday evening I have to go to Petersham to a Methodist church; Petersham is a village on the Thames, about 20 minutes beyond Richmond; I don’t know yet what I’ll talk about, the prodigal son or Ps. 42:1.

In the afternoon Mr Jones and his son and I went and had tea with the sexton, a shoemaker who lives in one of the suburbs.

Last Sunday I arrived at Turnham Green early to teach at Sunday school; it was a real, English, rainy day. In the morning Mr Jones delivered a sermon on the woman of Samaria, and afterwards there was Sunday school.

You then ask, too, whether I still give lessons to the boys: I do so every day until 1:00, and then after 1:00 I usually have to go out for Mr Jones, or sometimes also teach Mr Jones’s children or a couple of boys in town. And then in the evening and in my spare moments I write in my sermon book.

Where do Mr Jones and the others get their income from? Yes, I’ve thought about that many times. Here one often hears it said that God takes care of those who work for Him. I dearly long to talk to you about this and to confer.

There’s a new assistant teacher at the school, because I’ll have to work more at Turnham Green from now on. He has never been away from home before, and won’t find it easy in the beginning.

Today one of the maids left, they don’t have it easy here and she couldn’t stand it any longer – indeed, everyone, richer or poorer, stronger or weaker, has moments when he can go no further, when ‘all these things seem to be against us’, when much of what we have built collapses.

And now we’re slowly heading towards winter, and many dread it, but Christmas is wonderful, it’s like the moss on the roofs and like the pine and the holly and the ivy in the snow.

It is indeed true that every day has its own evil and its own good, too.

I’ve taken such lovely walks recently, which were especially good after the anxiety of the first months here.

If you can get ‘The imitation of Christ’ one of these days, read some of it, it’s a wonderful book, one that’s very enlightening.

What lovely autumn weather we’re having. You probably see the sun rising in the morning too. Which room are you sleeping in?

It was lovely in the park with the old elm trees in the moonlight and the dew on the grass. It was so good for me to speak in the little church, it is a little wooden church.

Do we not feel this sometimes on the sea of our lives. Does not everyone of you feel with me the storms of life or their forebodings or their recollections?

Yesterday evening I went to Richmond again, and took a walk there on a large common surrounded by trees, and houses around it, above which the tower rose.

How I long for Christmas and to see all of you, old boy, it seems to me that I’ve grown years older in these few months.

When I stood in the pulpit I felt like someone emerging from a dark, underground vault into the friendly daylight, and it’s a wonderful thought that from now on, wherever I go, I’ll be preaching the gospel – to do that well one must have the gospel in his heart, may He bring this about.

It was a clear autumn day and a lovely walk from here to Richmond along the Thames, which reflected the large chestnut trees with their load of yellow leaves and the clear blue sky, and between the tree-tops the part of Richmond that lies on the hill,

I long so much for Christmas – perhaps that time will come before we know it, even though it seems a long way off.

It’s again high time that you heard something from me.

Many battles must be fought Much of life with suffering fraught Many prayers must needs be said For a blissful end to lie ahead.

No victory without a battle, no battle without suffering.

How little we see of each other, old boy, and how little we see of our parents, and yet the feeling of our origins and of one another is so strong that the heart is at times uplifted and our eyes look to God, beseeching, Let me not stray too far from them, not for too long, O Lord!

How wonderful it will be to sail down the Thames and across the sea, and then those friendly Dutch dunes and that small tower that one already sees from a great distance.

It will surely be winter soon, how fortunate that Christmas is in the winter, that’s why I like winter better than any other season, Christmas and New Year’s Eve are even better than the autumn.

The acacias in the playground have already lost many of their leaves, one sees them through the window in front of my reading-desk, sometimes they stand out dark against the sky, sometimes one sees the sun behind them, rising up red in the mist.

It’s lovely here now, especially in the streets in the evening, when it’s a bit foggy and the street-lamps are lit, and also in that park I wrote to you about, I saw the sun setting there a couple of days ago, behind the elm trees whose leaves are now the colour of bronze.

‘My illness is not a bad thing’, no, for man’s extremity is God’s opportunity. When we are weak, we are strong. Being ill sanctifies being well and teaches one to be well. Just get well soon, old chap, oh, how I long for Christmas.

Behold, all things are become new. I heard the Rev. Bersier say that when he was faced with a period of suffering and difficulties in which one says: ‘All these things are against us’. ‘All things are become new’, he said with emotion, as though he saw through everything.

‘My illness is not a bad thing’. No, for Sorrow is better than laughter.

Yesterday I asked Mr Jones to let me go, but he didn’t want to give his consent and said at last, write to your Mother, if she thinks it’s all right then so do I.

When I think of you like this, as of ‘one whom his Mother comforteth and who is worthy of being comforted by his Mother’, it is with envy. Do get well soon, in any case.

It is indeed wonderful that Christmas falls in the winter. Oh how I’m looking forward to it, old boy, to make my rounds here and there at Turnham Green when it’s cold.

We’re having a lot of rain here; it’s probably the same where you are.

I hope to visit Mr Stokes’s school one of these days. And then I hope to buy a new pair of shoes to prepare myself.

I just gave Mr Jones’s girls a German lesson, and after the lesson I told them Andersen’s story The snow queen.

One of these days, perhaps, I’ll go to London or Lewisham again.

Besides wanting so much to sit at Theo’s bedside, I should also like so very much to talk to my Mother, and if possible to go to Etten once more to see and speak to my Father again.

The boys will be going home tomorrow and then I’ll get my money.

In the streets of London they’re selling sweet violets everywhere; they flower here twice a year. I bought some for Mrs Jones to make up for the pipe I smoke here now and then, mostly late in the evening in the playground. The tobacco here is rather strong, though.

Tell Ma that it was such a delight, after that journey to London, to put on a pair of socks that she’d knitted.

I hope to receive tomorrow, for the second time, some money for my new work, and to buy a pair of new boots and a new hat with it. And then, God willing, we shall ‘rise up once again’.

I’m really very glad that Mr Jones has promised to let me work in his parish, and that I’ll eventually find the right thing.