Immediately on receiving it, I answered as follows:

Dear Children,

It makes me happy to think that you enjoyed the tale of God’s hands. I like it too. However, despite that, I cannot come pay you a visit. Do not be angry at me for this. Who knows if you would like me. I do not have a nice nose, and if—which happens from time to time—it also had a little red pimple on the end, you would spend the whole time looking and marveling at this little spot and would not hear at all what was being said just a short distance below. You would probably also dream about this little pimple. All this would not make me at all happy. Therefore, I suggest another way around the problem. We have (even besides your mother) a large number of friends and acquaintances in common who are not children. You will find out soon enough who. From time to time, I will tell them a story, and you will get a much nicer version from these intermediaries than I could ever come up with myself. For there are some great writers among these friends of ours. I will not tell you in advance what my stories will be about. But because nothing is more on your minds and in your hearts than the dear Lord, I will take every opportunity to fit in what I know about Him. If you find anything wrong, write me another nice letter, or have your mother tell me. For it is possible that I might make mistakes about a number of things, because it has been so long since I heard the most beautiful stories, and in the meantime have had to hear a lot that were not so beautiful. That is the way life goes. But nevertheless, life is a marvelous thing—that will often come up in my stories too. And so I remain

Yours Truly,

Me, but also just one more,

because I too am one of you.

The Stranger

A stranger wrote me a letter. The stranger wrote me not about Europe, not about Moses, not about either the major or minor prophets, not about the emperor of Russia or about Czar Ivan the Terrible, his fearsome forefather. Not about the mayor or the neighborhood shoe repairman, not about the nearby city nor about any distant city; nor were the woods full of deer that I get lost in every morning mentioned in his letter. He also told me nothing about his mother or his sisters, who are certainly long since married. Perhaps his mother is dead too—how can it be otherwise when I don’t find her mentioned anywhere in a letter four pages long? He places a far greater trust in me: he treats me like his brother, he tells me his troubles.

In the evening the stranger pays me a visit. I do not light a lamp. I help him off with his coat and ask him to join me for tea, because it is just the time that I take my tea every day. In the case of such intimate visits, there is no need to place constraints on oneself. As we are about to sit down at the table, I notice that my guest is restless; his face is full of fear and his hands are shaking.