We go out to work, and it goes happily all day, happily all night; but hardly so happily, not happily at all, the next day; and the next night the devil asks us, "where is your Holy Spirit ?" We cannot tell.
So month by month, summer and winter, the old life goes on--reading, praying, weeping, praying.

They tell us we become utterly stupid.

We know it.

Even the multiplication table we learnt with so much care we forgot.

The physical world recedes further and further from us.