Watertown, New York
Jan. 23d, 1883

My Very Dear Friend:
-I am surrounded by snow three and a half feet deep. I reached here yesterday in a driving storm; it snowed all night and half to-day, and everything looks so white and still, I feel like one who is suddenly present at a wake. Pleasant thought, isn't it? To-morrow night and next, I lecture here, then to Canada, then to Boston, then to Pennsylvania, then back here to give a mission of ten days. Then I go to Canton (not in China), to Potsdam (not in Holland), but just hereabouts; then God knows where. On the 26th of March, I march homewards, and you will see the face of me--the tramp-about April 10th.

My health is good; but it is very lonesome to be a comet, passing all by its solitary self across so many weary, long, dreary distances. What a difference between a cloister and a comet!

I stand the cold better than I thought. I think you are praying for me. I need them. I have strange things to tell you when I get home. A Jesuit Father up here argues how fitting it would be to have me end my life in their company.

What do you think?-I think I am too much of a gypsy. A tent under the open sky suits me better than a haven that is fixed.

How many hours have I spent in the whirling cars! How many miles have I travelled! How many mysteries and tragedies of lives I have met! How many wrecks have drifted to my feet! How many tears have fallen upon my hands! How many sorrows have come to my ears for hearing, and to my heart for sympathy!

I am like an Arab; the world is my desert. It is very lonely. Now and then an oasis and the shadow and shelter of a rock; only my desert is full of noises and tumults. But a man can wear a stillness anywhere, I fear I am becoming too grave as I near the vespery of a life that has borne some kind of a shadow since its morning. So pray for me. My regards to all.