Letter 134: You may conjecture from what it contains, what pleasure you have given me by your letter. The pureness of heart, from which such expressions sprang, was plainly signified by what you wrote. A streamlet tells of its own spring, and so the manner of speech marks the heart from which it came.

To Poeonius, presbyter [a senior priest], You can probably guess from this letter how much yours meant to me. What you wrote revealed the sincerity behind it — a stream always tells you something about its source, and the way someone writes reveals their heart. I have to admit something strange happened. I've been desperate to hear from you for a long time. But when I finally held your letter and read it, I wasn't so much delighted by what you said as frustrated — calculating how much I'd lost during your long silence. Now that you've started writing again, please don't stop. You'd make me happier than a miser receiving a pile of money. I should explain why my own replies are slow: I have no secretary available right now — no copyist, no stenographer. Of the ones I used to employ, some have gone back to their old lives, and the rest have been too sick to work.

ST. BASIL OF CAESAREA To the presbyter Pœonius. You may conjecture from what it contains, what pleasure you have given me by your letter. The pureness of heart, from which such expressions sprang, was plainly signified by what you wrote. A streamlet tells of its own spring, and so the manner of speech marks the heart from which it came. I must confess that an extraordinary and improbable thing has happened to me. For deeply anxious as I always was to receive a letter from your excellency, when I had taken your letter into my hand and had read it, I was not so much pleased at what you had written, as annoyed at reckoning up the loss I had suffered in your long silence. Now that you have begun to write, pray do not leave off. You will give me greater pleasure than men can give by sending much money to misers. I have had no writer with me, neither caligraphist, nor short-hand. Of all those whom I happen to employ, some have returned to their former mode of life, and others are unfit for work from long sickness. About this page Source. Translated by Blomfield Jackson. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 8. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1895.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. <https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3202134.htm>. Contact information. The editor of New Advent is Kevin Knight. My email address is feedback732 at newadvent.org. (To help fight spam, this address might change occasionally.) Regrettably, I can't reply to every letter, but I greatly appreciate your feedback — especially notifications about typographical errors and inappropriate ads.