We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Thread:
>Dear Editor,
>I am eight(een) years old. Some of my little friends say there is no such thing as an oshi.
>Papa says, "If you see it in the Thread, it's so."
>Please tell me the truth, is there really an oshi for me?
>Virgin O'anon
>Virgin, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virgin, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
>Yes, Virgin, there is an oshi. She exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Oshi! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virgins. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
>Not believe in oshis! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the streams on Christmas Eve to catch an oshi, but even if your oshi was sick, what would that prove? Nobody avoids the flu, but that is no sign that there is no oshi. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
>You tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virgin, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
>No Oshi! Thank God! she lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virgin, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood."
