This is from "The Sign of Jonas," a spiritual log of Thomas Merton's day-to-day life in the Trappist monastery where he was ordained as a priest. This is his entry regarding his INDEX for "The Seven Storey Mountain."

June 20, 1948 Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Bob Giroux had somebody do an index to "The Seven Storey Mountain" --the most peculiar collection of names you ever saw. Starts off with Abbot, Father, and goes on to Advent; Adler, Alfred; Ellington, duke; Fields, W.C.; but Smith, Pete, is followed by Smith, Robert Paul, and there is Bob O'Brien the plumber at Olean House and Pierrot the teamster at Saint Antonin and the Privats at Murat and Brother Fabian who went to Georgia and Mary Jerdo, and Helen Freegood, and Burton, Jinny and Flagg, Nancy and Wells, Peggy. (Peggy wrote to me from Hollywood the other day. I can't figure out if she is acting as well as writing.)

I was fascinated. The index is beautiful. It is like the gathering of all the people I have known at a banquet to celebrate the publication of the book--and it is like a pledge that they we'll all belong to meet somehow as trophies in heaven--or I will belong to some of THEM as a trophy. Blake, William; Francis of Assisi, Saint; Bonaventure, Saint; Aquinas, Saint: Thomas... I think this index is a partial optimistic preview of the General Judgment with the four Marx Brothers among the sheep.

So God is very good. "Sanctus in omnibus operibus suis ("Holy in all His works."). Though the natural pleasure of success sickens me a  little and I get smoke in my eyes from thinking about how the book will look, still I have to take all that on the chin and stay as tranquil and detached as God's grace will grant me to do.