NOVEMBER 115 



grief ! There is so often an element of self-consciousness, 

 an honest wondering how our attitude will strike others. 

 If we use self-control and try to let life flow in its usual 

 currents, we fear to be thought indifferent, cold, and 

 hard. If once the smallest display of grief becomes in 

 any way a habit, it is difficult to resume again that 

 perfect sincerity of manner which, after all, is the only 

 outward expression of true feeling. A short time ago 

 in 'The Weekly Sun,' in one of Mr. T. P. O'Connor's 

 wonderful reviews of a Life of Tolstoi, he quotes a passage 

 which is a very vivid picture of self-consciousness in 

 grief. ' Tolstoi describes his visit to his mother's death- 

 chamber : " I could not believe it was her face." How 

 this comes home to us all ! The change made by death, 

 the effort of the brain to recognise that what we see before 

 us is the loved object whom, living, we should instantly 

 have recognised among a million. Tolstoi continues : " I 

 looked fixedly at it, and by degrees began to recognise in 

 it the dear familiar features. I shuddered when I did so, 

 and knew that this something was my mother. But 

 why had her closed eyes sunk thus into her head? 

 Why was she so dreadfully pale ? and why was a dark 

 spot visible through her transparent skin on one of her 

 cheeks ? Why was the expression of her face so stern 

 and so cold ? Why were her lips so bloodless and their 

 lines so fair, so grand ? Why did they express such un- 

 earthly calmness that a cold shiver passed through me as 

 I looked at them ? . . . Both before the funeral and after 

 I did not cease to weep and feel melancholy. But I do 

 not like to remember it, because a feeling of self-love 

 mingled with all its manifestations ; either a desire to 

 show that I was more afflicted than the rest, or thoughts 

 about the impression I produced upon others ; or idle 

 curiosity which made me examine Mimi's cap or the 

 faces of those around me." ' The reviewer adds : ' Now 



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