Chapter XIII (2)

Needless enough surely to declare that such pages were essentially not love-letters: that they could scarce have been less so seems exactly part of their noble inevitability, as well as a proof singularly interesting and charming that confident friendship may obey its force and insist on its say quite as much as the sentiment we are apt to take, as to many of its occasions, for the supremely vocal. We have so often seen this latter beat distressfully about the bush for something still deficient, something in the line of positive esteem or constructive respect, whether offered or enjoyed, that an esteem and a respect such as we here apprehend, explicit enough on either side to dispense with those superlatives in which graceless reaction has been known insidiously to lurk, peculiarly refresh and instruct us. The fine special quietude of the relation thus promoted in a general consciousness of unrest--and even if it could breed questions too, since a relation that breeds none at all is not a living one--was of the highest value to the author of my letters, who had already sufficiently "lived," in her generous way, to know well enough in how different a quarter to look for the grand inconclusive. The directness, the ease, the extent of the high consideration, the felt need of it as a support, indeed one may almost say as an inspiration, in trouble, and the free gift of it as a delightful act of intelligence and justice, render the whole exhibition, to my sense, admirable in its kind. Questions luckily _could_ haunt it, as I say and as we shall presently see, but only to illustrate the more all the equilibrium preserved. I confess I can imagine no tribute to a manly nature from a feminine more final even than the confidence in "mere" consideration here embodied--the comfort of the consideration being in the fact that the character with which the feminine nature was dealing lent it, could it but come, such weight. We seem to see play through the whole appeal of the younger person to the somewhat older an invocation of the weight suspended, weight of judgment, weight of experience and authority, and which may ever so quietly drop. How kindly in another relation it had been in fact capable of dropping comes back to me in the mention of my brother Wilky, as to whom this aspect of his admiring friendship for our young relative's correspondent, the fruit of their common military service roundabout Charleston, again comprehensively testifies. That comradeship was a privilege that Wilky strongly cherished, as well as what one particularly liked to think for him of his having known--he was to have known nothing more fortunate. In no less a degree was our elder brother to come to prize _his_ like share in the association--this being sufficiently indicated, for that matter, in the note I have quoted from him. That I have prized my own share in it let my use of this benefit derived strongly represent. But again for Minnie herself the sadder admonition is sharp, and I find I know not what lonely pluck in her relapses shaken off as with the jangle of silver bells, her expert little efforts to live them down, Newport and other matters aiding and the general preoccupied good will all vainly at her service. Pitiful in particular her carrying her trouble experimentally back to the Newport of the first gladness of her girlhood and of the old bright spectacle.

I know quite well I don't owe you a letter, and that the custom for
maidens is to mete out strictly letter for letter; but if you don't
mind it I don't, and if you _do_ mind that kind of thing you had
better learn not to at once--if you propose to be a friend of mine;
or else have your feelings from time to time severely shocked.
After which preamble I will say that there is a special reason in
this case, though there might not be in another.

She mentions having seen a common friend, in great bereavement and trouble, who has charged her with a message to her correspondent "if you know of anything to comfort a person when the one they love best dies, for heaven's sake say it to her--_I_ hadn't a word to say." And she goes on:

I wrote to you that I was going to Newport, and I meant to go next
Tuesday, but I had another hemorrhage last night, and it is
impossible to say when I shall be able to leave here. I think I was
feeling ill when I last wrote to you, and ever since have been
coughing and feeling wretchedly, until finally the hemorrhage has
come. If that goes over well I think I shall be better. I am in bed
now, on the old plan of gruel and silence, and I may get off
without any worse attack this time. It is a perfect day, like
summer--my windows are up and the birds sing. It seems quite out of
keeping that I should be in bed. I should be all right if I could
only get rid of coughing. The warm weather will set me up again. I
wonder what you are doing to-day. Probably taking a solitary walk
and meditating--on what? Good-bye.

But she went to Newport after a few days apparently; whence comes this.

I believe I was in bed when I last wrote to you, but that attack
didn't prove nearly so bad a one as the previous; I rather bullied
it, and after the fourth hemorrhage it ceased; moreover my cough is
better since I came here. But I am, to tell the truth, a little
homesick--and am afraid I am becoming too much of a baby. Whether
it's from illness or from the natural bent I know not, but there is
no comfort in life away from people who care for you--not an heroic
statement, I am fully aware. I hear that Wilky is at home, and dare
say he will have the kindness to run down and see me while I am
here; at least I hope so. But I am not in the mood for writing
to-day--I am tired and can only bore you if I kept on. It is just a
year since we began to write, and aren't you by this time a little
tired of it? If you are, say so like a man--don't be afraid of me.
Now I am going to lie down before dressing for dinner. Good-bye.

This passage more than a month later makes me ask myself of which of the correspondents it strikes me as most characteristic. The gay clearness of the one looks out--as it always looked out on the least chance given--at the several apparent screens of the other; each of which is indeed disconnectedly, independently clear, but tells too small a part (at least for her pitch of lucidity) of what they together enclose, and what was _quand meme_ of so fine an implication. Delightful at the same time any page from her that is not one of the huddled milestones of her rate of decline.

How can I write to you when I have forgotten all about you?--if one
_can_ forget what one has never known. However, I am not quite sure
whether it isn't knowing you too much rather than too little that
seems to prevent. Do you comprehend the difficulty? Of course you
don't, so I will explain. The trouble is, I think, that to me you
have no distinct personality. I don't feel sure to whom I am
writing when I say to myself that I will write to you. I see
mentally three men, all answering to your name, each liable to read
my letters and yet differing so much from each other that if it is
proper for one of them it's quite unsuitable to the others. Do you
see? If you can once settle for me the question of which gets my
letters I shall know better what to say in them. Is it the man I
used to see (I can't say know) at Conway, who had a beard, I think,
and might have been middle-aged, and who discussed Trollope's
novels with Kitty and Elly? This was doubtless one of the best of
men, but he didn't _interest_ me, I never felt disposed to speak to
him, and used to get so sleepy in his society at about eight
o'clock that I wondered how the other girls could stay awake till
eleven. Is it _that_ person who reads my letters? Or is it the
young man I recently saw at Newport, with a priestly countenance,
calm and critical, with whom I had certainly no fault to find as a
chance companion for three or four days, but whom I should never
have dreamt of writing to or bothering with my affairs one way or
the other, happiness or no happiness, as he would doubtless at once
despise me for my nonsense and wonder at me for my gravity? Does
_he_ get my letters?--or is it finally the being who has from time
to time himself written to me, signing by the same name that the
other gentlemen appropriate? If my correspondent is this last I
know where I stand--and, please heaven, shall stand there some time
longer. Him I won't describe, but he's the only one of the three I
care anything about. My only doubt is because I always address him
at Pemberton Square, and I think him the least likely of the three
to go there much. But good-bye, whichever you are!

It was not at any rate to be said of her that she didn't live surrounded, even though she had to go so far afield--very far it may at moments have appeared to her--for the freedom of talk that was her greatest need of all. How happily and hilariously surrounded this next, of the end of the following August, and still more its sequel of the mid-September, abundantly bring back to me; so in the habit were the numerous Emmets, it might almost be said, of marrying the numerous young women of our own then kinship: they at all events formed mainly by themselves at that time the figures and the action of her immediate scene. The marriage of her younger sister was as yet but an engagement--to the brother-in-law of the eldest, already united to Richard Emmet and with Temple kinship, into the bargain, playing between the pairs. All of which animation of prospective and past wedding-bells, with whatever consolidation of pleasant ties, couldn't quench her ceaseless instinct for the obscurer connections of things or keep passionate reflections from awaiting her at every turn. This disposition in her, and the way in which, at the least push, the gate of thought opened for her to its widest, which was to the prospect of the soul and the question of interests on _its_ part that wouldn't be ignored, by no means fails to put to me that she might well have found the mystifications of life, had she been appointed to enjoy more of them, much in excess of its contentments. It easily comes up for us over the relics of those we have seen beaten, this sense that it was not for nothing they missed the ampler experience, but in no case that I have known has it come up for me so much. In none other have I so felt the naturalness of our asking ourselves what such spirits would have done with their extension and what would have satisfied them; since dire as their defeat may have been we don't see them, in the ambiguous light of some of their possibilities, at peace with victory. This may be perhaps an illusion of our interest in them, a mere part of its ingenuity; and I allow that if our doubt is excessive it does them a great wrong--which is another way in which they were not to have been righted. We soothe a little with it at any rate our sense of the tragic.

...The irretrievableness of the step (her sister E.'s marriage)
comes over my mind from time to time in such an overwhelming way
that it's most depressing, and I have to be constantly on my guard
not to let Temple and Elly see it, as it would naturally not please
them. After all, since they are not appalled at what they've done,
and are quite sure of each other, as they evidently are, why should
I worry myself? I am well aware that if all other women felt the
seriousness of the matter to the extent I do, hardly any would
_ever_ marry, and the human race would stop short. So I ought
perhaps to be glad so many people can find and take that "little
ease" that Clough talks about, without consciously giving up the
"highest thing." And may not this majority of people be the truly
wise and my own notions of the subject simply fanatical and
impracticable? I clearly see in how small a minority I am, and that
the other side has, with Bishop Blougram, the best of it from one
point of view; but I can't help that, can I? We must be true to
_ourselves_, mustn't we? though all the rest of humanity be of a
contrary opinion, or else throw discredit upon the wisdom of God,
who made us as we are and not like the next person. Do you remember
my old hobby of the "remote possibility of the best thing" being
better than a clear certainty of the second best? Well, I believe
it more than ever, every day I live. Indeed I don't believe
anything else--but is not that everything? And isn't it exactly
what Christianity means? Wasn't Christ the only man who ever lived
and died _entirely_ for his faith, without a shadow of selfishness?
And isn't that reason enough why we should all turn to Him after
having tried everything else and found it wanting?--turn to Him as
the only pure and _unmixed_ manifestation of God in humanity? And
if I believe this, which I think I do, how utterly inconsistent and
detestable is the life I lead, which, so far from being a loving
and cheerful surrender of itself once for all to God's service, is
at best but a base compromise--a few moments or acts or thoughts
consciously and with difficulty divested of actual selfishness.
Must this always be so? Is it owing to the indissoluble mixture of
the divine and the diabolical in us all, or is it because I myself
am hopelessly frivolous and trifling? Or is it finally that I
really don't _believe_, that I have still a doubt in my mind
whether religion _is_ the one exclusive thing to live for, as
Christ taught us, or whether it will prove to be only _one_ of the
influences, though a great one, which educate the human race and
help it along in that culture which Matthew Arnold thinks the most
desirable thing in the world? In fine is it the meaning and end of
our lives, or only a moral principle bearing a certain part in our
development----?

Since I wrote this I have been having my tea and sitting on the
piazza looking at the stars and thinking it most unfaithful and
disloyal of me even to speak as I did just now, admitting the
possibility of that faith not being everything which yet at moments
is so divinely true as to light up the whole of life suddenly and
make everything clear. I know the trouble is with _me_ when doubt
and despondency come, but on the other hand I can't altogether
believe it wrong of me to have written as I have, for then what
becomes of my principle of saying what one really thinks and
leaving it to God to take care of his own glory? The truth will
vindicate itself in spite of my voice to the contrary. If you think
I am letting myself go this way without sufficient excuse I won't
do it again; but I can't help it this time, I have nobody else to
speak to about serious things. If by chance I say anything or ask a
question that lies at all near my heart my sisters all tell me I am
"queer" and that they "wouldn't be me for anything"--which is, no
doubt, sensible on their part, but which puts an end to anything
but conversation of the most superficial kind on mine. You know one
gets lonely after a while on such a plan of living, so in sheer
desperation I break out where I perhaps more safely can.

Such is the magic of old letters on its subtlest occasions that I reconstitute in every detail, to a vivid probability--even if I may not again proportionately project the bristling image--our scene of next mention; drawing for this upon my uneffaced impression of a like one, my cousin Katharine Temple's bright nuptials, in the same general setting, very much before, and in addition seeming to see the very muse of history take a fresh scroll in order to prepare to cover it, in her very handsomest hand, well before my eyes. Covered is it now for me with that abounding and interesting life of the generations then to come at the pair of preliminary flourishes ushering in the record of which I thus feel myself still assist.

But a line to-day to tell you that Elly was safely married on
Wednesday. She looked simply beautiful in her wedding garment, and
behaved herself throughout with a composure that was as delightful
as it was surprising. I send you a photograph of myself that I had
taken a few weeks ago. It looks perhaps a trifle melancholy, but I
can't help that--I did the best I could. But I won't write more--it
wouldn't be enlivening. Everything looks grey and blue in the world
nowadays. It will all be bright again in time, I have no doubt;
there is no special reason for it; I think I am simply tired with
knocking about. Yet my week in Newport might have been pleasant
enough if the dentist hadn't taken that occasion to break my bones
for me in a barbarous manner. You are very kind and friendly to
me--you don't know how much happiness your letters give me. You
will be surprised, I dare say, but I shall not, at the last day,
when the accounts are all settled, to find how much this counts in
your favour. Good-bye.

I find my story so attaching that I prize every step of its course, each note of which hangs together with all the others. The writer is expressed to my vision in every word, and the resulting image so worth preserving. Much of one's service to it is thus a gathering-in of the ever so faded ashes of the happiness that did come to her after all in snatches. Everything could well, on occasion, look "grey and blue," as she says; yet there were stretches, even if of the briefest, when other things still were present than the active symptoms of her state. The photograph that she speaks of above is before me as I write and blessedly helpful to memory--so that I am moved to reproduce it only till I feel again how the fondness of memory must strike the light for apprehension. The plan of the journey to California for the advantage of the climate there was, with other plans taken up and helplessly dropped, but beguiling for the day, to accompany her almost to the end.

The Temple-Emmet caravan have advanced as far as Newport and now
propose to retreat again to Pelham without stopping at Boston or
anywhere else. My brother-in-law has business in New York and can't
be away any longer. I haven't been well of late, or I should have
run up to Boston for a day or two to take a sad farewell of all I
love in that city and thereabouts before I cross the Rocky
Mountains. This little trip has been made out for me by my friends;
I have determined to go, and shall probably start with Elly and
Temple in about ten days, possibly not for a fortnight, to spend
the winter in San Francisco. I can't be enthusiastic about it, but
suppose I might as well take all the means I can to get better: a
winter in a warm climate _may_ be good for me. In short I am going,
and now what I want _you_ to do about it is simply to come and see
us before that. Kitty is going to send you a line to add her
voice--perhaps that may bring you. You may never see me again, you
know, and if I were to die so far away you'd be sorry you hadn't
taken leave of me, wouldn't you?

The idea of California held, and with other pleasant matters really occupied the scene; out of which moreover insist on shining to me accessory connections, or connections that then were to be: intensely distinct for example the figure of Miss Crawford, afterwards Madame von Rabe, sister of my eminent friend F. Marion of the name and, in her essence, I think, but by a few shades less entire a figure than he--which is saying much. The most endowed and accomplished of men Frank Crawford, so that I have scarcely known another who had more aboundingly lived and wrought, about whom moreover there was singularly more to be said, it struck me, than at all found voice at the time he might have been commemorated. Therefore if the young lady alluded to in my cousin's anecdote was at all of the same personal style and proportion--well, I should draw the moral if it didn't represent here too speciously the mouth of a trap, one of those I have already done penance for; the effect of my yielding to which would be a shaft sunk so straight down into matters interesting and admirable and sad and strange that, with everything that was futurity to the occasion noted in our letter and is an infinitely mixed and a heavily closed past now, I hurry on without so much as a glance.

The present plan is to send me to California in about three weeks
by water, under the care of one of the Emmet boys and Temple's
valet--for nurse; and by the time I get there, early in December,
they will be settled in San Francisco for the winter. The idea of a
twenty-one days' sea-voyage is rather appalling--what do you think
of it? This day is but too heavenly here. I haven't been to
church, but walking by myself, as happy as possible. When one
sleeps well and the sun shines, what happiness to live! I wish you
were here--wouldn't I show you Pelham at high tide, on a day that
is simply intoxicating, with a fresh breeze blown through the red
and yellow leaves and sunshine "on field and hill, in heart and
brain," as Mr. Lowell says. I suppose you remember the pony I
drove, and Punch, the little Scotch terrier that tried so to
insinuate himself into your affections, on the piazza, the morning
you left. The former has been "cutting up," the latter _cut_ up,
since then. You wouldn't believe me when I told you the pony was a
highly nervous creature--but she behaved as one the other day when
I took the Roman Miss Crawford, who has been staying near here, a
ride. She shied at a dog that frightened her, and dragged the cart
into a ditch, and tried to get over a stone wall, waggon and all. I
of course had to hang on to the reins, but I suggested to Miss
Crawford that she should get out, as the cart was pretty steady
while the horse's forefeet were on top of the wall; which she did,
into a mud-puddle, and soiled her pretty striped stockings and
shoes in a horrible way. It ended by the dear little beast's
consenting to get back upon all fours, but I found it very amusing
and have liked her better ever since.... How does Mr. Holmes
persevere about smoking? I pity him if he can't sleep, and wish _I_
had a vicious habit so that I might give it up. But I must finish
my tale of the quadruped Punch, who was called upon in the dead of
night by five dogs of the neighbourhood and torn to pieces by them.
The coachman heard him crying in the night, and in the morning we
found him--that is to say we gathered him together, his dear little
tail from one place and his head from another etc! So went out a
very sweet little spirit--I wonder where it is now. Don't tell me
he hadn't more of a soul than that Kaufmann, the fat oysterman.

I find bribes to recognition and recovery quite mercilessly multiply, and with the effort to brush past them more and more difficult; with the sense for me at any rate (whatever that may be worth for wisdom or comfort) of sitting rather queerly safe and alone, though as with a dangle of legs over the edge of a precipice, on the hither side of great gulfs of history. But these things, dated toward the end of that November, speak now in a manner for themselves.

My passage for California is taken for the 4th of December; Elly
and Temple have written to me to come at once--they are settled in
San Francisco for the winter. My brother-in-law here has been
promised that I shall be made so comfortable I shan't want to tear
myself from the ship when I arrive. The captain is a friend of
Temple's, and also of my uncle Captain Temple, and both of them are
going to arrange so for me that I fully expect the ship to be hung
with banners and flowers when I step on board.... I enjoyed my time
in Boston far more than I had expected--in fact immensely, and
wouldn't have missed it for anything; I feel now as if it had
_necessarily_ had to happen. I don't know how I should have done
the winter, and especially started off for an indefinitely long
absence in the west without the impetus that it gave me in certain
directions--the settling down and shaking up, the dissipating of
certain impressions that I had thought fixed and the strengthening
of others that I hadn't been so sure of: an epoch in short. I dare
say you have had such--in which a good deal of living was done in a
short time, to be turned over and made fruitful in days to come. I
saw Mr. Holmes once, and was very glad of that glimpse, short as it
was. I went home by way of Newport, where I stayed two days--and
where I was surprised to hear of Fred Jones's engagement to Miss
Rawle of Philadelphia. Do you know her? When I got to New York I
went to the Hones' to ask something about Fred and his affairs and
found that Miss Rawle was staying next door with Mrs. Willy Duncan;
so I went in to see her on the spur of the moment, very much as I
had come from the boat, not particularly presentable for a first
call: however, I thought if she had a soul she wouldn't mind
it--and such I found the case.... Lizzie Boott was as sweet and
good to me as ever; I think she is at once the most unselfish and
most unegotistical girl I know--they don't always go together.

What follows here has, in its order, I think, that it still so testifies to life--if one doesn't see in it indeed rather perhaps the instinct on the writer's part, though a scarce conscious one, to wind up the affairs of her spirit, as it were, and be able to turn over with a sigh of supreme relief for an end intimately felt as at hand. The moral fermentation breaking through the bustle of outward questions even at a time when she might have thrown herself, as one feels, on the great soft breast of equalising Nature, or taken her chance of not being too wrong, is a great stroke of truth. No one really could be less "morbid"; yet she would take no chance--it wasn't in her--of not being right with the right persons; among whom she so ranked her correspondent.

My address at San Francisco will be simply Care of C. Temple Emmet,
Esq.; and I am surely off this time unless heaven interposes in a
miraculous way between now and Saturday. I've no great courage
about it, but after all it's much the same to me where I am; life
is always full of interest and mystery and happiness to me, and as
for the voyage, the idea of three weeks of comparative solitude
between sea and sky isn't unattractive.... I know that by my
question [as to why he had written, apparently, that she was, of
her nature, "far off" from him] I am putting an end to that
delightful immunity I have enjoyed so much with you from sickening
introspection, analysis of myself and yourself, that exhausting and
nauseating subjectivity, with which most of my other friends see
fit to deluge me, thereby taking much that is refreshing out of
life. Don't be afraid of "hurting my feelings" by anything you can
say. Our friendship has always been to my mind a one-sided thing,
and if you should tell me you find me in any way unsympathetic or
unsatisfactory it won't disappoint me, and I won't even allow
myself to think I'm sorry. I feel so clearly that God knows best,
and that we ought neither of us surely to wish to distort his
creatures from the uses he made them for, just to serve our own
purposes--that is to get a little more sympathy and comfort. We
must each of us, after all, live out our own lives apart from
everyone else; and yet, this being once understood as a fundamental
truth, there is nobody's sympathy and approval that would encourage
me so much as yours. I mean that if one's heart and motives could
be known by another as God knows them, without disguise or
extenuation, and if it should _then_ prove that on the _whole_ you
didn't think well of me, it would, more than anything else could,
shake my confidence in my own instincts, which must after all
forever be my guide. And yet, as I said before, I am quite prepared
for the worst, and shall listen to it, if necessary, quite humbly.
I am very much inclined to trust your opinion before my own.

An hour later. _Sold_ again, by all that's wonderful--I had almost
said by all that's damnable, though it isn't exactly that. My
brother Dick has just walked in with a telegram from Temple: "I
shall be back in December--don't send M." A tremendous revulsion of
feeling and a general sigh of relief have taken place on this
announcement, and it's all right, I'm sure, though when I wrote you
an hour ago I thought the same of the other prospect.

One catches one's breath a little, frankly, at what was to follow the above within a few days--implying as it does that she had drawn upon herself some fairly direct statement of her correspondent's reserves of view as to her human or "intellectual" composition. To have _had_ such reserves at such an hour, and to have responded to the invitation to express them--for invitation there had been--is something that our actual larger light quite helps us to flatter ourselves _we_ shouldn't have been capable of. But what was of the essence between these admirable persons was exactly the tone of truth; the larger light was all to wait for, and the real bearings of the hour were as unapparent as the interlocutors themselves were at home in clearness, so far as they might bring that ideal about. And whatever turn their conversation took is to the honour always of the generous girl's passion for truth. As this long letter admirably illustrates that, I withdraw from it almost nothing. The record of the rare commerce would be incomplete without it; all the more perhaps for the wonder and pain of our seeing the noble and pathetic young creature have, of all things, in her predicament, to plead for extenuations, to excuse and justify herself.

I understood your letter perfectly well--it was better than I
feared it might be, but bad enough. Better because I knew already
all it told me, and had been afraid there might be some new and
horrible development in store for me which I hadn't myself felt;
but bad enough because I find it in itself, new or old, such a
disgusting fact that I am intellectually so unsympathetic. It is a
fault I feel profoundly conscious of, but one that, strange to say,
I have only of late been conscious of _as_ a fault. I dare say I
have always known, in a general way, that I am very unobservant
about things and take very little interest in subjects upon which
my mind doesn't naturally dwell; but it had never occurred to me
before that it is a fault that ought to be corrected. Whether
because I have never been given to studying myself much, but have
just let myself go the way my mind was most inclined to, more
interested in the subject itself than in the fact that it
interested me; or whether because one is averse to set oneself down
as indolent and egotistic I don't know; at all events I have of
late seen the thing in all its unattractiveness, and I wish I could
get over it. Do you think that, now I am fully roused to the fact,
my case is hopeless? Or that if I should try hard for the next
twenty-five years I might succeed in modifying it? I am speaking
now of a want of interest in _all_ the rest of the world; of not
having the desire to investigate subjects, naturally uninteresting
to me, just because they are interesting to some other human being
whom I don't particularly owe anything to except that he _is_ a
human being, and so his thoughts and feelings ought to be respected
by me and sympathised with. Not to do this is, I know,
unphilosophic and selfish, conceited and altogether inhuman. To be
unselfish, to live for other people, to mould our lives as much as
possible on the model of Christ's all-embracing humanity, seems
most clearly to my mind the one thing worth living for; and yet it
is still the hardest thing for me to do, and I think I do it less
than anybody else who feels the necessity of it strongly at all.

I am glad you still go to an occasional ball--I should rather like
to meet you at one myself; it's a phase of life we have seen so
little of together. I have been feeling so well lately that I don't
know what to make of it. I don't remember ever in my life being in
such good spirits. Not that they are not in general pretty natural
to me when there is the slightest excuse for them, but now
everything seems bright and happy, my life so full of interest, my
time so thoroughly filled and such a delicious calm to have settled
down on my usually restless spirit. Such an enjoyment of the
_present_, such a grateful contentment, is in each new day as I see
it dawn in the east, that I can only be thankful and say to myself:
"Make a note of this--you are happy; don't forget it, nor to be
thankful for this beautiful gift of life." This is Sunday morning,
and I wonder whether you are listening to Phillips Brooks. I
understand how you feel about his preaching--that it is all feeling
and no reason; I found it so myself last winter in Philadelphia: he
was good for those within the pale, but not good to convince
outsiders that they should come in. I am glad, however, that he
preaches in this way--I think his power lies in it; for it seems to
me, after all, that what comfort we get from religion, and what
light we have upon it, come to us through feeling, that is through
trusting our instinct as the voice of God, the Holy Ghost, though
it may at the same time appear to us directly against what our
intellect teaches us. I don't mean by this that we should deny the
conclusions arrived at by our intellect--which on the contrary I
believe we should trust and stand by to the bitter end, whenever
this may be. But let us fearlessly trust our _whole_ nature,
showing our faith in God by being true to ourselves all through,
and not dishonouring Him by ignoring what our heart says because it
is not carried out by our intellect, or by wilfully blunting our
intellectual perception because it happens to run against some
cherished wish of our heart.

"But," you will say, "how can a man live torn to pieces this way by
these contrary currents?" Well, I know it is hard to keep our faith
_sure_ of a standpoint where these apparent inconsistencies are all
reconciled and the jangle and discord sound the sweetest harmony;
but I do believe there _is_ one, in God, and that we must only try
to have that faith and never mind how great the inconsistency may
seem, nor how perplexing the maze it leads us through. Let us never
give up one element of the problem for the sake of coming to a
comfortable solution of it in this world. I don't blame those eager
minds that are always worrying, studying, investigating, to _find_
the solution here below; it is a noble work, and let them follow it
out (and without a bit of compromise) to whom God has given the
work. But whether we find it or not I would have them and all of us
feel that it is to _be_ found, if God wills--and through no other
means surely than by our being _true_. Blessed are they who have
not seen and who have yet believed. But I am going out now for a
walk! We have had the most delightful weather this whole week, and
capital sleighing, and I have spent most of my time driving myself
about with that same dear little pony. I went to town yesterday to
a matinee of William Tell; it was delightful and I slept all night
after it too. I am reading German a little every day, and it's
beginning to go pretty well. Good-bye. Don't tire yourself out
between work and dissipation.

I find myself quite sit up to her, as we have it to-day, while she sits there without inconvenience, after all that has happened, under the dead weight of William Tell; the relief of seeing her sublimely capable of which, with the reprieve from her formidable flight to the Pacific doubtless not a little contributing, helps to draw down again the vision, or more exactly the sound, of the old New York and Boston Opera as our young generation knew and artlessly admired it; admired it, by my quite broken memories of the early time, in Brignoli the sweet and vague, in Susini the deep and rich, in Miss Kellogg the native and charming, in Adelaide Phillipps the universal, to say nothing of other acclaimed warblers (they appear to me to have warbled then so much more than since) whom I am afraid of not placing in the right perspective. They warbled Faust a dozen times, it comes back to me, for once of anything else; Miss Kellogg and Brignoli heaped up the measure of that success, and I well remember the great yearning with which I heard my cousin describe her first enchanted sense of it. The next in date of the letters before me, of the last day but one of December '69, is mainly an interesting expression of the part that music plays in her mental economy--though but tentatively offered to her correspondent, who, she fears, may not be musical enough to understand her, understand how much "spiritual truth has been 'borne in' upon me by means of harmony: the relation of the part to the whole, the absolute value of the individual, the absolute necessity of uncompromising and unfaltering truth, the different ways in which we like our likes and our unlikes," things all that have been so made clearer to her. Of a singular grace in movement and attitude, a grace of free mobility and activity, as original and "unconventional" as it was carelessly natural, she never looked more possessed of her best resources than at the piano in which she delighted, at which she had ardently worked, and where, slim and straight, her shoulders and head constantly, sympathetically swaying, she discoursed with an admirable touch and a long surrender that was like a profession of the safest relation she could know. Comparatively safe though it might have been, however, in the better time, she was allowed now, I gather, but little playing, and she is deep again toward the end of January '70 in a quite other exposure, the old familiar exposure to the "demon," as she calls it, "of the Why, Whence, Whither?" Long as the letter is I feel it a case again for presentation whole; the last thoughts of her life, as they appear, breathe in it with such elevation. They seem to give us her last words and impulses, and, with what follows of the middle of February, constitute the moving climax of her rich short story.

There have been times (and they will come again no doubt) when I
could write to you about ordinary things in a way at least not
depressing; but for a good while now I have felt so tired out,
bodily and mentally, that I couldn't conscientiously ask you to
share my mood. The life I live here in the country, and so very
much alone, is capable of being the happiest or the unhappiest of
existences, as it all depends so on oneself and is so very little
interfered with by outside influences. Perhaps I am more than
usually subject to extremes of happiness and of depression, yet I
suppose everyone must have moments, even in the most varied and
distracting life, when the old questioning spirit, the demon of the
Why, Whence, Whither? stalks in like the skeleton at the feast and
takes a seat beside him. I say everyone, but I must except those
rare and happy souls who really believe in Christianity, who no
longer strive after even goodness as it comes from one's own
effort, but take refuge in the mysterious sacrifice of Christ, his
merit sufficing, and in short throw themselves in the orthodox way
on the consoling truth of the Atonement--to me hitherto neither
comprehensible nor desirable. These people, having completely
surrendered self, having lost their lives, as it were in Christ,
must truly have found them, must know the rest that comes from
literally casting their care of doubt and strife and thought upon
the Lord.

I say hitherto the doctrine of the vicarious suffering of Christ
has been to me not only incomprehensible but also unconsoling; I
didn't want it and didn't understand even intellectually the
feeling of people who do. I don't mean to say that the life and
death of Christ and the example they set for us have not been to me
always the brightest spot in history--for they have; but they have
stood rather as an example that we must try to follow, that we must
by constant and ceaseless effort bring our lives nearer to--but
always, to some extent at least, through ourselves, that is through
ourselves with God's help, got by asking Him for it and by His
giving it to us straight and with no mediation. When I have seen as
time went by my own shortcomings all the more instead of the less
frequent, I have thought: "Well, you don't try hard enough; you are
not really in earnest in thinking that you believe in the Christian
life as the only true one." The more I tried, nevertheless, the
less it seemed like the model life; the best things I did continued
to be the more spontaneous ones; the greatest efforts had the least
success; until finally I couldn't but see that if this was
Christianity it was not the "rest" that Christ had promised his
disciples--it was nothing more than a pagan life with a high ideal,
only an ideal so high that nothing but failure and unhappiness came
from trying to follow it. And one night when I was awake through
all the hours it occurred to me: What if this were the need that
Christianity came to fill up in our hearts? What if, after all,
that old meaningless form of words that had been sounded in my
unheeding ears all my days were suddenly to become invested with
spirit and truth? What if this were the good tidings that have made
so many hearts secure and happy in the most trying situations? For
if morality and virtue were the test of a Christian, certainly
Christ would never have likened the kingdom of heaven to a little
child, in whose heart is no struggle, no conscious battle between
right and wrong, but only unthinking love and trust.

However it may turn out, whether it shall seem true or untrue to me
finally, I am at least glad to be able to put myself intellectually
into the place of the long line of Christians who have felt the
need and the comfort of this belief. It throws a light upon Uncle
Henry's talk, which has seemed to me hitherto neither reasonable
nor consoling. When I was with him it so far disgusted me that I
fear I showed him plainly that I found it not only highly
unpractical, but ignoble and shirking. I knew all the while that he
disliked what he called my pride and conceit, but felt all the same
that his views didn't touch my case a bit, didn't give me the least
comfort or practical help, and seemed to me wanting in earnestness
and strength. _Now_ I say to myself: What if the good gentleman had
all along really got hold of the higher truth, the purer
spirituality? Verily there are two sides to everything in this
world, and one becomes more charitable the older one grows.
However, if I write at this length it is because I am feeling
to-day too seedy for anything else. I had a hemorrhage a week ago,
which rather took the life out of me; but as it was the only one I
feel I should by this time be coming round again--and probably
might if I hadn't got into a sleepless state which completely
knocks me up. The old consolatory remark, "Patience, neighbour, and
shuffle the cards," ought to impart a little hope to me, I suppose;
but it's a long time since I've had any trumps in my hand, and you
know that with the best luck the game always tired me. Willy James
sometimes tells me to behave like a man and a gentleman if I wish
to outwit fate. What a _real_ person he is! He is to me in nearly
all respects a head and shoulders above other people. How is
Wendell Holmes? Elly is having the gayest winter in Washington and
wants me to go to them there, which I had meant to do before the
return of my last winter's illness. But it's not for me now.

Later.--I have kept my letter a day or two, thinking I might feel
in tune for writing you a better one and not sending this at all.
But alas I shall have to wait some time before I am like my old
self again, so I may as well let this go. You see I'm not in a
condition, mentally or physically, to take bright and healthy views
of life. But if you really care you may as well see this mood as
another, for heaven only knows when I shall get out of it. Can you
understand the utter weariness of thinking about one thing all the
time, so that when you wake up in the morning consciousness comes
back with a sigh of "Oh yes, here it is again; another day of
doubting and worrying, hoping and fearing has begun." If I don't
get any sleep at all, which is too frequently the case, the strain
is a "leetle" bit too hard, and I am sometimes tempted to take a
drop of "pison" to put me to sleep in earnest. That momentary
vision of redemption from thinking and striving, of a happy rest
this side of eternity, has vanished away again. I can't help it;
peaceful, desirable as it may be, the truth is that practically I
don't believe it. It was such a sudden thing, such an entire change
from anything that had ever come to me before, that it seemed
almost like an inspiration, and I waited, almost expecting it to
continue, to be permanent. But it doesn't stay, and so back swings
the universe to the old place--paganism, naturalism, or whatever
you call the belief whose watchword is "God and our own soul." And
who shall say there is not comfort in it? One at least feels that
here one breathes one's native air, welcoming back the old _human_
feeling, with its beautiful pride and its striving, its despair,
its mystery and its faith. Write to me and tell me whether, as one
goes on, one must still be tossed about more and more by these
conflicting feelings, or whether they finally settle themselves
quietly one way or the other and take only their proper share at
least of one's life. This day is like summer, but I should enjoy it
more if last night hadn't been quite the most unpleasant I ever
spent. I got so thoroughly tired about two in the morning that I
made up my mind in despair to give the morphine another trial, and
as one dose had no effect took two; the consequence of which is
that I feel as ill to-day as one could desire. I can tell you, sir,
you had better prize the gift of sleep as it deserves while you
have it. If I don't never write to you no more you'll know it's
because I really wish to treat you kindly. But one of these days
you'll get another kind of letter, brim-full perhaps with health
and happiness and thoroughly ashamed of my present self. I had a
long letter yesterday from Harry James at Florence--enjoying Italy
but homesick. Did you see those verses in the North American
translated from the Persian? Good-bye.

The last of all is full both of realities and illusions, the latter insistently living through all the distress of the former. And I should like to say, or to believe, that they remained with her to the end, which was near.