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THE 
 PROFESSOR'S LOVE-LIFE 
 
This edition is limited to two hundred 
 numbered copies of which this is No. /. tL * 
 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK ■ BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
 ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 
 
 LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
THE 
 PROFESSOR'S LOVE-LIFE 
 
 LETTERS OF 
 RONSBY MALDCLEWITH '^U..<L^-i^ 
 
 /'' 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1919 
 
 AM righls reserved 
 
Copyright, 1919 
 By the MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Set up and printed. Published, September, 1919 
 
CTd.^^, 
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 These are genuine letters; names only are 
 changed, a few sentences omitted. 
 
 Their setting forth a love so single and 
 so complete that it speaks in terms of all 
 generations — their references to a young 
 American's high standards and ideals, his 
 ardor for humanity, his struggle with bitter 
 conditions — led a woman, who is now dead, 
 to ask that the letters be given the world: a 
 help to its interpretation of life and an aid 
 to its bettering. 
 
 The above speaks of the matter of these 
 letters — reasons they are offered the public, 
 an ethical end their publication may serve. 
 The editors can not consider their work 
 completed without briefly referring to the 
 manner of the letters — to their lyricism and 
 the beauty of the English in which they are 
 written. 
 
 New York 
 1919 
 
 _ V^ A» •<* \J - 
 
 f 
 
LETTERS SENT FROM 
 
 COLORADO, ASHBURNHAM, 
 
 CATHNESS 
 
THE 
 PROFESSOR'S LOVE-LIFE 
 
 28 JUNE 
 
 Dearest Katherine 
 
 I shall not attempt to describe my disap- 
 pointment in not finding a letter from you 
 here. All the way, and by that I mean all 
 the time I was in coming, the sweetest thing 
 at the end of my journey was not the moun- 
 tain air, or the cool kisses of the nymph 
 Hygeia in some shadowy caiion, but a small 
 folded sheet with words of more than health. 
 So great is my impatience. 
 
 Denver is a bright place — showy equip- 
 ages, open-handed people, and everyone 
 in confederacy to praise Colorado. Un- 
 happy he who finds fault with anything, 
 from the stifling sand, which you are given 
 to understand is at least clean dirt, to the 
 
 3 
 
^;,;, THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 intelligence of people declared to be the elite 
 of the Union. But more of this when I know 
 more. 
 
 Tomorrow we start for Idaho Springs and, 
 after a week or so of small excursions, fit out 
 for the Parks and to cross the range. Until 
 then I shall expect your letter. Oh, write, 
 write. I am perishing to see on paper the 
 words — I love you. When your lips 
 breathed them they seemed mere echo of 
 my own confession. I could not realize 
 they came from your very heart. Every day 
 I feel gladder and stronger as the conscious- 
 ness of a great passion fills me. 
 
 It is a great life-passion, not a golden 
 vagary, a self-created illusion, a spring- 
 dream full of the flutter of doves' wings — 
 although heaven knows you have enough of 
 those gifts which Paris says no mortal taketh, 
 enough to enchain a score of men without 
 ever giving a single one glimpse of your true 
 heart. 
 
 Do you think I do not understand that 
 heart's yearnings? — that I love just that 
 
LOVE-LIFE 5 
 
 willowy form and grace of motion, that soft 
 conscious face, that eager, splendid spirit? 
 Any of these is enough to nourish a life-long 
 dream of joy, and I love them all, satis 
 superque. My flesh yearns and heart aches 
 to think how far away they are. But most 
 of all I love that deep, subtle and somewhat 
 perverse heart that loves me. 
 
 For me life has but one solution — it must 
 be filled with Katherine. If I have loved 
 Katherine with all my heart and strength 
 there is nothing more my soul will seek in all 
 the ages. God has given me this escape from 
 death : it is my return to him. 
 
 I stop writing without having said — oh, 
 ever so little of what I wish to say. Fare- 
 well, " sweetest thing in mortal eyes." 
 Write me often, often. 
 
 DENVER 
 19 JULY 
 
 Yesterday I returned from a trip to Middle 
 Park where for days I had been victim of 
 most distracting moods. Nature is nowhere 
 more glorious. But constantly, in reveries 
 
6 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 of joyous communion with her, I was startled 
 by a gnawing pain — than the joy as much 
 deeper and more intense as the heart's world 
 is deeper than the eye's. 
 
 I had expected a letter from you before 
 leaving Denver on our first tour. After nine 
 days' absence we came back and — no letter 
 even then. How my heart sank! How 
 many dark thoughts rose ! I can not put on 
 paper what I dimly feared. The last two 
 months began to grow visionary — like a 
 dream. The old hard reality of renuncia- 
 tion began to settle round their memories. 
 
 We went off again, this time to Middle 
 Park, to be gone nine or ten days, and during 
 all that time how could I enjoy the tranquil 
 beauty of the heights with that incubus of 
 fear upon my spirit ? 
 
 On our return I came over the range alone 
 by a new route, while the others travelled by 
 the Pass through which we entered. It was 
 a hundred-mile ride over tremendous moun- 
 tains. 
 
 With my blankets, wallet, cup, revolver 
 
LOVE-LIFE 7 
 
 and poncho I rode three days through those 
 vast solitudes, often above snow-line, up 
 where pines cease to grow, still higher beyond 
 the grass and magical freshness of flowers to 
 where a faint moss clings over the shattered 
 acres-of-rock — where nothing broke the 
 awful silence but the mule's laborious breath- 
 ing, and nothing living was to be seen save 
 the grey mountain rat and the yellow-winged 
 bumble-bee. 
 
 From these heights the plains shone far 
 away to the east, as vast and blue as the 
 ocean, and their alkali ridges gleamed 
 through the haze like breaker-crests upon a 
 distant sea. 
 
 But ever, all about, was the vast wilder- 
 ness of mountains, wTinkles of our ancient 
 giant-earth. 
 
 Then down interminable slopes of pine 
 forest, silent and dark, down along the course 
 of a mountain torrent now crystal clear, now 
 foaming, down, down with the blue sky and 
 fleecy July clouds gleaming through the 
 feathery pines, and so like the azure, snow- 
 
8 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 mottled peaks that sky and cloud and snow- 
 decked mountain sometimes seemed one ! A 
 night alone in one of those passes! But I 
 must tell you of this later. 
 
 Imagine, sweet Katherine, the anxiety and 
 trembling with which I asked if I had let- 
 ters! And my misery when I heard there 
 were none ! But I grasped at a straw. Per- 
 haps inquiries had not included my mail. 
 I rushed off to the post. And my joy on 
 receiving a letter with New York illy legible 
 on the back! 
 
 The superscription was a mystery — I 
 could not tell what it promised. It was a 
 queer compound of English and German 
 script. But it was your letter within, dear 
 heart, my first love letter, and sweeter to me 
 than the subtlest love-lyric Sappho ever 
 penned in Aeolic gold. 
 
 You had fears of my constancy! Heav- 
 ens! How could I be false to a feeling I 
 could not stifle in my despair ! — now, when 
 melting airs and warmth of hope and as- 
 surance feed it ? 
 
LOVE-LIFE 9 
 
 You regret the pain you caused? If you 
 were to go on in your course you might leave 
 many a wreck behind. One poor fellow's 
 heart I know would swell the list. But it is 
 in your power to weigh up the pain by ten- 
 fold happiness. Even those who love you 
 would not undo what is done. 
 
 I will write Stanford, tell him I mastered 
 my feeling because I believed it my duty, and 
 he can not bear me ill that, after you broke 
 your engagement with him I hopelessly dis- 
 closed my love. If he will not receive what 
 I say I shall at least have done right. He 
 would never have shown me the regard I so 
 long preserved toward him. 
 
 In the mountains I have gained in health 
 and hope. Katherine, I do not want to im- 
 pose any sorrow on your sweet life, dearer to 
 me far than my own; but the secret of life is 
 not in fair days and untroubled skies. It is 
 to love with all one's soul what is pure, what 
 is high, what is eternal — even if it appear in 
 decaying form. I hope our life may be full 
 of cheerful human joys. But whatever our 
 
10 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 fortune it shall not want on my part that de- 
 votion which is its own reward. 
 
 I cannot write of things which even im- 
 passioned breath cannot utter. Autumn is 
 coming with its days of gold, its days of 
 reverie and of you — oh, such delightful 
 hours that my heart burns within me at the 
 anticipation. 
 
 Do not forget my impatience, dearest, to 
 hear from you when I cannot hear you. 
 
 ASHBURNHAM v 
 26 JULY 
 
 After writing you from Denver I come 
 back to Ashburnham better and browner 
 than for many a day. Our party lacked 
 enthusiasm. A few weeks roughing it and 
 they preferred a Christian bed to all the pa- 
 gan magnificence of The Garden of the 
 Gods. 
 
 I wait for your return, oh, how impa- 
 tiently! I grow morbidly sensitive about 
 things and sometimes regret having betrayed 
 
LOVE-LIFE ' 11 
 
 so much feeling to you — lest I seem to force 
 a return rather from your compassion than 
 real regard. 
 
 You see, dear Katherine, shadows are on 
 the great tide of new life that surges in my 
 heart. My love does not rest yet in placid 
 expanse mirroring the majesty and beauty 
 of the world. Fear houses in its depths 
 where ought to glide only a train of dreams. 
 You will have to give me confidence who 
 have so long taught me despair. 
 
 But hasten, oh sweet! The days and 
 nights are long and wearisome. At times I 
 feel like breaking away from this suspense, 
 this long torture of restraint, and seeking a 
 life of adventure and toil in distant lands. 
 What would it matter then if I were sick 
 or died? There would be no heart-ache. 
 Now for two years what have I not suf- 
 fered ! Only your sweet voice and soothing 
 presence can banish these painful thoughts. 
 
 You do not write often. This is my third 
 letter and I have but one of yours. 
 
12 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 I am at the house of the reverend rector of 
 Saint Infidelius. 
 
 To my heart's heart. 
 
 CATHNESS 
 13 AUGUST 
 
 It was not without his usual profundity 
 that the great poet put in one category the 
 lunatic and the lover. Now that your let- 
 ters have restored me to myself, at least in 
 part, I take advantage of this lucid interv^al 
 to w^arn you against my darker moods. To- 
 day I feel lifted up, serene, confident. The 
 only drop of bitterness in my cup is the 
 thought of how I could ever have felt those 
 unutterable misgivings. 
 
 I had had but one letter from you, the 
 dear missive at Denver, and although I was 
 careful to give directions for the forwarding 
 of my mail, a clerk neglected, till I wrote the 
 office — when I received the other two. 
 
 Dearest Katherine, what wrong I do when 
 I give you a moment's pain! Believe me, 
 my wTetchedness is but a great passion under 
 the torture of long suspense. My life had 
 
LOVE-LIFE 13 
 
 come to seem rejected of all the benignant 
 powers. Now it turns to you as to its only 
 refuge, its last supreme hope. Your love is 
 the world to me, and in it I shall find every- 
 thing again, the sweet face of nature, the 
 pleasant wont of work, ambitions long for- 
 gone. And still your love, after it has re- 
 stored all these, will be itself no poorer but a 
 richer, sweeter mystery. 
 
 Your heart has been sore wounded too. 
 Dear Light, love shall cherish you, till you 
 again look on life with happy eyes. 
 
 Two years ago we took up our way, each 
 by the same dusty gate of pain, from the 
 Eden of Love where we might have dwelt. 
 We travelled side by side upon the same 
 desert paths till — how was it? — we found 
 each other, I, at least, near to faint. 
 
 Have patience with my fears. Every 
 touch of your sweet hand reassures me. In 
 time I shall be stronger, and then my love 
 shall be a refuge for you against every grief. 
 
 Dear, dear Katherine, there is no hope for 
 us in this painful, mysterious world save in 
 
14 LOVE-LIFE 
 
 giving ourselves to our love. And the happy 
 hours of our reunion are not far away. If I 
 ever get you back again, I shall never let 
 you go. These eight weeks have been a life- 
 time. 
 
II 
 
 LETTERS SENT FROM 
 NEW YORK 
 
NEW YORK 
 9 JANUARY 
 
 A letter must be written, Katherine, and 
 that before I am settled, or rested, or a bit 
 the wiser for all my long journey — just to 
 let you know that all this is so. This letter 
 has no object appreciable to ordinary reason, 
 but its real raison d'etre is — well, how to 
 express it! — it is something very deep. You 
 see Love is really the Absolute and the Ab- 
 solute must manifest itself — that is sun- 
 clear — and as all the world has no other 
 reason for being so has this letter none. 
 Katherine fills my head and heart and to 
 write is all I can do — write I must. 
 
 Yesterday found me here. I stayed over 
 night in Cincinnati, and sat by a lone grate 
 fire and dreamed of long ago days of hotel 
 life when my visions and dreams were, oh 
 so different! From every long excursion of 
 memory I came round to one sweet figure 
 which seemed to be the enchantress who has 
 17 
 
18 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 changed everything. She fares all directions 
 in my soul — all of my life that is not pain 
 is a tender dream of her, a dim but beautiful 
 future in which her spirit seems to fill, in- 
 spire, transmute all to its own nature. 
 
 But there yawns between me and that 
 heaven an obscure gulf. I am descending 
 into it now to seek a path across. 
 
 This is only a note. I am not unpacked 
 — to write with comfort. I shall consult the 
 specialists and after that you shall hear at 
 once. I have a cold — one of the petty mis- 
 eries of life, you know, against which philos- 
 ophy is of no avail. 
 
 Our friends have invited me to hear " II 
 Trovatore " next Monday, You see what a 
 gay existence I have plunged into. Ah, but 
 music now is only a hemisphere with its 
 sweeter completing in another world. Again 
 I protest this is no letter. Write, my Kath- 
 erine, without delay to 
 
 Yours altogether 
 
 RONSBY 
 
LOVE-LIFE 19 
 
 NEW YORK 
 13 JANUARY 
 
 The enclosed I wrote four days ago, sweet- 
 heart. The morning I should have posted it 
 I was too ill. Since then I have seen his 
 eminence, the specialist. He has given his 
 opinion. 
 
 Now, Katherine, if he is right, and I have 
 nothing but the certainty of invalidism — 
 long and painful, or terminating more speed- 
 ily in death — with only a remote hope of re- 
 covery — how do I lament the sorrow my un- 
 happy life has brought upon you! 
 
 Yesterday I felt the doctor's words a sen- 
 tence which cut me off from the world of the 
 living. I cannot — it is not in my power — 
 to hope further, nor to strive. The end is 
 actually now and here for me. I think of 
 you as a glorious, warm dream of joy, the 
 iiashes of life's sun before it sank away 
 in the west, having been cloud-wrapped all 
 day. 
 
 We shall never be happy. I told you so 
 once, but you would not believe it, Kate, and 
 
20 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 I let myself be dazed into half accepting what 
 your dear heart prophesied — it was what 
 my own so longed for. 
 
 All is yet uncertain in my mind — all but 
 the deadly sense that an end is at hand of all 
 life's living and learning. I do not know 
 whether I shall stay here or go further. I 
 must see several other practitioners in order 
 to feel quite assured of my situation — if 
 there is any conflict of views. 
 
 Now, dearest, dearest Katherine, lift your- 
 self above this misfortune. Your love is my 
 best solace, and cause, too, of my greatest 
 pain. How empty my life had been, had you 
 not loved me ! I could have yielded it more 
 gladly but not so proudly as now. I may 
 see you yet. I do not know what will be 
 best. 
 
 This letter will make you so unhappy I 
 would not send it, if I knew what else to do 
 and not break my promise. 
 
 How lonely and wretched I am it is need- 
 less to say. I ought to shield you from sor- 
 row, and yet it is my most miserable lot to 
 
LOVE-LIFE 21 
 
 distress you. Farewell, dearest heart. 
 Write to me. A thousand kisses. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 19 JANUARY 
 
 I was ill when I wrote you last and am not 
 well yet. Today is the tenth since I was 
 taken acutely sick — with short intervals of 
 comparative ease I have suffered all the time. 
 One of my physicians thinks I have neural- 
 gia. I don't promise myself his encourage- 
 ment, for it seems to me I am doomed to go 
 to pieces — all my happiness and I. 
 
 It is a distressing state of things, Kath- 
 erine, when my letters to you have to report 
 conjectures of doctors. You cannot know 
 how it depresses my spirits and drives me to 
 desperation. How tender and devoted your 
 heart is I feel, and I have no right to think 
 of it otherwise than as I do of my own. But 
 the painful sense of the incongruousness of 
 lover and invalid will not leave me. 
 
 When you are not at hand to kiss away 
 my fears I cannot choose but be wretched. 
 
22 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 And in a lonely sick room I have so much 
 time for brooding that I do not know how I 
 shall come out of the trial — if out I come 
 at all. I have seen no one here but a couple 
 of old German University acquaintances. 
 
 Now, dearest Katherine, do not be dis- 
 tressed on my account if you are not dis- 
 tressed on your own, for all my trouble is on 
 your account. My own happiness I can sac- 
 rifice, but I cannot endure to think that you 
 should be unhappy through me, whose only 
 aim in living would be to surround your 
 sweet life with something near the service and 
 devotion it deserves. The future is ominous 
 for us. But let us have fortitude half equal 
 to our love and we shall meet every chance. 
 
 Write often, and care for yourself as I 
 should care for you if I were there. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 22 J.\NUARY 
 
 A warm sun shone out this morning after 
 storm. Pain had fled and in the troubled, 
 sweet reverie which sunshine and ease 
 
LOVE-LIFE 23 
 
 awaken in oppressed hearts, your letter — 
 your dear, warm, true-hearted letter — was 
 put in my hand. I kissed it how many times 
 before breaking its envelope! Was it nec- 
 essary for me to see its lines to know the soul 
 with whose breath they were laden? 
 
 But, Katherine darling, I did not expect 
 — my ear was not quite pitched — to hear 
 that divine, heroic note. How can we ever 
 realize the devotion of love! My expecta- 
 tion has always been less than the greatest 
 things in life — less, too, than its sorrows, 
 for how could I know I should ever stand 
 helpless before such a trial! 
 
 I am drawn asunder. You do not wish 
 to be thought of as a child, or as one whose 
 interests must be protected, but demand the 
 liberty of disposing freely of your own for- 
 tune, of sacrificing everything to love as is 
 the heart's right? If you are resolved and 
 know your own heart, it is just that I should 
 dismiss considerations for your interests 
 which weigh so much with me. 
 
 Whether I live but a short time, or yet 
 
24 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 years, and whatever my degree of usefulness, 
 heaven could not do so much for my happi- 
 ness as to unite our lives. But how hard 
 are some things ! With what grace could I, 
 a poor man and an invalid, marry? How 
 can that joy actually come to pass in the face 
 of all the real difficulties, and all the wrath 
 of friends and wonder of the world? This 
 is a question for which maybe there is a solu- 
 tion, but it paralyzes my will in the midst of 
 the pain and disappointment I bear. 
 
 I have been housed since I wrote you, some 
 days in bed and at all times under treatment 
 — not in great pain, but confinement has 
 been wearisome and the thoughts with which 
 I have endeavored to beguile the hours were 
 not always radiant. When once the nature 
 of my ill is confirmed, I shall feel much 
 quieter, no matter how bad the sentence. 
 
 Katherine dear, do not be distressed — as 
 if I were as wretched as some other in my 
 place might be. For myself I have no fear. 
 That I have no regrets I can not say. One 
 thought, and one only, brings tears to my 
 
LOVE-LIFE 25 
 
 eyes, and tears not altogether sad. It is 
 something to have been loved. Yes, it is a 
 greater thing than to have enjoyed any other 
 prize of life. To be loved, I should say, 
 to feel that however miserable one is, there 
 is another sweet and noble life living for us. 
 
 You have a woman's heart, Kathie — that 
 clings and in its clinging imparts strength 
 and hope. I can not read your letter with- 
 out feeling a dim ray of hope pierce the dark ; 
 without thinking such perfect love must some 
 day blossom into the happiness it carries in 
 its core. 
 
 At least it is not certain that I shall be a 
 useless invalid, or die soon. There are 
 other chances, however few, and a Great 
 Mercy may melt the heart of Fate in Love's 
 behalf. Let us indulge a little hope, till at 
 least we know we can not. 
 
 How my memory treasures every sweet 
 stray moment of our past — handclasp, kiss 
 and heart-beat, the passion of those dear un- 
 fathomable eyes, the rustle of garments, the 
 gliding step and lingering farewells! It 
 
26 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 seems I could not forget those things under- 
 ground. Oh, Katherine, yes, I must see 
 you again — die in your arms or live in your 
 embrace. 
 
 I can not write further — my heart is too 
 full. Do not suffer is all I say. Let my 
 love be something to you, as yours carries me 
 over the gulf of darkness beneath me to a 
 region where there is no measure of days' 
 beginning and end, but only a glorious sense 
 of perfect life. 
 
 Our sorrow will purify us for love is 
 thrown in the furnace with our souls. To be 
 more than the spoil of wasting days and sea- 
 sons is the noble end of every aspiring spirit. 
 
 Do not wait, dear, for me to write. The 
 mails are tedious enough. Goodbye. An- 
 other day, another pang that you are afar. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 1 PEBRUARY 
 
 Your last letter, just reaching me, has 
 freed my heart from great weight. Now I 
 can write. I could not answer the other let- 
 
LOVE-LIFE 27 
 
 ter although I tried over and over again. I 
 can not tell why I could not. It had words 
 of love and confidence enough. But for all 
 ihere was in it such a spirit of dumb pain, of 
 despair — and regret, I even fancied — that 
 it froze me to the heart. You realize my 
 painful situation; you would do nothing to 
 add to my unhappiness unless you were mis- 
 erable beyond measure. Poor heart! It 
 pierces me with yearning and pity to see 
 how you suffer! 
 
 How far away seem those pure, bright days 
 of only last fall! I seem to have lived a 
 happy lifetime in those short months. Were 
 there not alternations of highest hope, of ut- 
 ter despondency, of sweet intoxication? It 
 is to me at times as if I had been transported 
 to some far away land and had walked for- 
 est-aisles hand in hand with my embodied 
 heart's desire, the sweet spirit of my dreams 
 evoked by some magic from the great void of 
 the unreal. 
 
 Then I remember all — it was our walk 
 along the river-skirted road and through your 
 
28 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 father's woodlands, and the sense of its real- 
 ity touches me till I tremble. How dis- 
 tinctly I see you, Katherine, your slender fig- 
 ure radiant with trust and joy, the setting sun 
 lighting your hair and eyes and lips. What 
 an infinity of bliss the possession of your 
 love seemed to me — the future so full of 
 passionate sweet life that my spirit shrank 
 blinded from trying to explore it; I stopped 
 content with the delicious sense of that mo- 
 ment alone. 
 
 You know what I have suffered and still 
 suffer for your sake, but already it has been 
 far more than made good to me by your love. 
 I can never be happy except with you, that 
 you surely know. It is my whole endeavor 
 to make that possible at the earliest day. 
 But I see nothing for it but patience. The 
 future is a long time and there are many 
 things in it. Maybe the happy hour of our 
 union is somewhere in that unpublished cal- 
 endar. Who knows just where? 
 
 You are timid, you say, about speaking 
 further of our marriage. Dear heart, do 
 
LOVE-LIFE 29 
 
 you know how much I value your sincere na- 
 ture? You do not wish our union so much 
 as I wish it, and if insisting only made clear 
 how it could be, I should not leave you time 
 to express a wish. It must be. It shall be, 
 I feel, but how or when I have no power to 
 determine. It is terrible to me to be thus 
 helpless, not to be able to fulfill every wish 
 of your heart — not to say my own one long 
 passionate desire. 
 
 One of — well, I have been interrupted 
 and can't finish that sentence — oh ! now I 
 have it : — one of these days I expect your 
 picture. Don't forget, you moody angel, 
 and don't let a mood usurp you in which you 
 do not care for anybody. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 11 FEBRUARY 
 
 In the midst of pain and urgent trouble we 
 can not realize the supreme happiness of be- 
 ing loved — sweetest and deepest of all medi- 
 tations. The reflection of a loving soul in 
 our soul is broken by agitation of grief. 
 
30 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 But when we are released from pain and 
 awaken to hope of life and health, the 
 thought that we are loved, or better, words of 
 love, stir one to tears of joy 
 
 I will not deny that my eyes moistened yes- 
 terday with your dear, dear letter in my hand. 
 Was it foolish to kiss the senseless paper, to 
 clasp it with the involuntary laugh of un- 
 controllable emotion? Don't you think one 
 could go mad of pure longing ? I have been 
 near it, I am sure, and several times since — 
 well, it is now a very long time and all my 
 life before seems unreal. Will those days of 
 fire ever look visionary and faint in the light 
 of the full moon of love ? I know, for I can 
 forget my very existence in a deep kiss of 
 you. 
 
 It is raining dismally and my imprison- 
 ment continues. I am not suffering pain. 
 • Much I am sure is due care and precaution. 
 Then J I have had cheeriness. An old chum, 
 who has been in the south since I came from 
 abroad, spent last night with me. A fine 
 fellow with the bark on. Nothing will serve 
 
LOVE-LIFE 31 
 
 him but that I shall go into literary engage- 
 ments, and he promises to find me work and 
 vitality and patience and fun and success. 
 There is no end to the man. " 
 
 I made no promises, but if I stay here I 
 shall doubtless turn toward what he indi- 
 cates. Everything in my future is uncertain 
 to a degree that bewilders me. 
 
 The rain without has changed to snow — 
 great laminated patches — falling ' slowly 
 through the dusky air of twilight. But no 
 snow falls upon the parched lips of love, and 
 alas! there is no Old Probabilities of the 
 Skies of Eros to promise better things. 
 
 This letter to my Lux and Lex. ' 
 
 NEW YORK 
 20 FEBRUARY 
 
 My expectations of a letter this morning 
 were not booked for wreck. I slept last 
 night with happy anticipation filling my 
 head. But much more delightful is the real- 
 ity. 
 
 Your sweet face on the little card has been 
 
32 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 my meditation for a full hour. I gaze upon 
 it till my eyes cease to rest upon the shadow 
 and dwell upon the beloved original locked 
 in the heart's camera — where not a tone, or 
 tint, or gleam or grace, is wanting. The pic- 
 ture is better than I expected. Still it is not 
 my Katherine, whose charm is not in her 
 shadow-casting opacity but in the subtle 
 sweet life which irradiates every feature. 
 
 Dearest, your letters are as capricious and 
 moody as a mountain lake — or shall I say 
 the traditional soul of woman, that variabile 
 semper of Flaccus? What a time I shall 
 have making you happy when it comes to be 
 my privilege to watch every veering of your 
 moods ! 
 
 Now I am not one of the most constant 
 creatures alive myself, and am apt to run 
 through the spectrum which has the blues at 
 the bottom about once a week. But I must 
 sacrifice this luxury if I hope to be of use to 
 you. 
 
 Do not fancy that I mean to chide, sweet. 
 I do not. Your sorrows and anxieties are 
 
LOVE-LIFE 33 
 
 sacred to me who am their unhappy cause. 
 Our love shall never be ruffled, if on my part 
 patience and sincerity and the all-embracing 
 passion which adores blindly avail aught. 
 
 Life is so miserable when it is not utterly 
 filled with sincere love, that I can not abide 
 any patchwork of the heart, any wretched 
 make-believe. You must be everything to 
 me or nothing. If you do not love me as I 
 must be loved, I shall doubtless die in de- 
 spair as cold as my love is warm. 
 
 But this again will sound as if it would 
 say more than it does. I do not ask for more 
 evidence of your love than I have. I should 
 have neither manhood nor tenderness if I 
 did not feel overwhelmed by your assurances. 
 Your love has already more than made good 
 to me the burden of all life's sorrows. I 
 could and would face it again — not for a 
 kingdom, but for Katherine^s tender longing. 
 
 I do not expect anyone else to feel as I 
 do altogether — but you love me and I love 
 you, which is all in my favor and a great dif- 
 ference. 
 
,S4 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 Do not let us hope or even think about my 
 heahh. I dare not at least because I have 
 made up my mind to the worst and dread to 
 have to do it again. But we should be cheer- 
 ful. 
 
 Why should not we be great-souled as well 
 as those we admire? Let us once get the 
 mastery of fortune and ever afterwards keep 
 it. Love is elegiac, it is said, and only kisses 
 will dry his eyes. But it is true Love, "Epws 
 ovpdvio<!, who must kiss away the tears of every 
 sorrow. 
 
 If by any manner of means I could man- 
 age to get the Valentine kiss you sent I should 
 be too happy for dinner — but in vanas auras 
 recessit. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 23 FEBRUARY 
 
 To-day I have been with Professor Otis 
 to a neighboring university. Its buildings 
 are of green serpentine marble in a beautiful 
 Gothic spirit (not style) with grey stone 
 basement, slated roof and stained glass win- 
 dows. The interior is admirable. I met a 
 
LOVE-LIFE 35 
 
 number of the professors, sometimes old fo- 
 gies with a vast amount of assumption in 
 their manner. School life there must be 
 duller than with us. 
 
 And after the day's visiting I came home 
 to — your picture and this very inadequate 
 communion with you. Still it seems like 
 an escape from the outer world into a sort 
 of sanctuary — into home. Every day I 
 look at the picture twenty times. It gets me 
 earlier out of bed, and the last thing at night 
 keeps me poring on it. I scarcely know 
 why, but the thought of you seems somehow 
 more real with it before me. 
 
 Do not be annoyed at my frequent writing. 
 A letter but three days back I know, but your 
 missive which awaited me to-day set me all 
 aglow again, and I must either write to you 
 and tell you how my heart longs and aches, 
 or else tell someone else — and that, you 
 know, would not be discreet or like me. 
 
 Your letter speaks of a night of last win- 
 ter very distinct in my memory. What a 
 desolate sense I used to take home from those 
 
36 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 evenings ! I was trying not to think of self 
 and to labor only for others. But even that 
 seemed useless. " What ideas of me," I 
 used to wonder, " will Katherine keep in her 
 after-life? Can I add impulse to it? — en- 
 rich it with anything of worth it would not 
 have known? She will never know," I used 
 to tell myself, " how hard she made it for me 
 to think and speak." 
 
 Ah! love is so selfish a thing we can not 
 play the self-immolator at the altar. It 
 seemed sometimes, in those days, as if you 
 understood how I suffered for love of you, 
 and that you put a cadence of tender pity into 
 your speech to me ; or a gentle gesture seemed 
 to say that you knew it all and were sorry. 
 Then again I reflected that you could not 
 mean anything by such impalpable graces 
 toward me. 
 
 Nothing ever humbled me in my own es- 
 teem so much as the thought that the woman 
 whom I worshipped did not care for me. I 
 did not try to defend myself against you — 
 how could I ? — I merely felt that I was 
 
LOVE-LIFE 37 
 
 judged and pronounced not equal to my ex- 
 pectations. 
 
 How contradictory love is! In that 
 thought I implied that I deserved your love. 
 But when I thought about it then nothing 
 seemed to me more absurd. I aspired to it 
 as the humblest aspired to the highest, in a 
 sort of worship. To be rejected was like 
 being rejected of heaven — and so it really 
 is, for you are my heaven, the one great re- 
 ward of living for me. 
 
 The family ought not to tease you about 
 my letters when they know you can scarcely 
 expect indemnification for their annoy from 
 the letters themselves. Doubtless your devo- 
 tion to a, poor sick devil amuses them. Then 
 maybe they are waiting for your illusion to 
 pass. 
 
 I have written about a lot of things and 
 thought of but one all the time. I shall 
 never get the knack of writing to you. When 
 I sit down to it I feel a sort of choking sensa- 
 tion in the throat, a dimness about the eyes, 
 a general flight of ideas and flood-tide of 
 
38 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 inarticulate emotion. You will have pa- 
 tience, won't you? 
 
 Oh, that little fern! — what things it 
 knows ! 
 
 NEW YORK 
 8 M.AiiCH 
 
 I have just read your dear letter dated on 
 the first and post-marked on the second. 
 Where can it have been ! — and all the time 
 I anxiously waiting and wondering and con- 
 jecturing about the sweet missive's delay. 
 
 You will be glad to hear that I am still 
 holding my own. Spring has not yet 
 reached us, although we have been seeing the 
 tips of her rosy fingers reaching forward this 
 month or more. 
 
 You know I love everything you write — 
 that if you only scrawled and ink-smeared 
 the paper I should be glad to get it from your 
 hands. But how can you fill a letter to me 
 with such a budget of gossip ! — so many 
 indifferent things! You have no idea how 
 empty they leave me. 
 
LOVE-LIFE 39 
 
 I am a fool, that I have a clear comprehen- 
 sion of. You have put me out of all conceit 
 of myself somehow. I must make a deter- 
 mined effort to recover self-control and self- 
 regard. Alas ! this letter is bound, I see, to 
 be new evidence of my unsettled spirits. A 
 man should not feel as I do; nor above all 
 give utterance to such emotion. 
 
 Don't be grieved at what I have written. 
 I don't mean to find fault with you, but with 
 myself whom nothing reasonable contents. 
 Your letters are my only joy, and do not be 
 pained if mere letters can not appease my un- 
 quiet longing. I want to be well so much 
 more than when I thought I had no chance. 
 
 In view of the res angusta domi it will be 
 necessary for me to do something this sum- 
 mer, even if I return to our University in 
 September. I never before felt what it is to 
 be dependent on my exertions for a liveli- 
 hood, for there was never before anything I 
 wished with all my heart to accomplish and 
 could not. If I could only see my way a few 
 
40 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 months ahead! There is no use trying, 
 however, for I can not even know whether I 
 shall ever get a few months ahead. But I 
 shall not despond if only my health keeps 
 gaining. 
 
 Now, dearest Katherine, I am making the 
 same sort of a billet doiix I growled over on 
 the first page, full of things not very douces. 
 But I am not half as good as I would have 
 you, nor as you are, you dear girl. If^this 
 were not the last sheet of paper in my desk 
 and the stationer's half a mile away, I should 
 burn it and write another — oh, so different ! 
 You must not be grieved at anything I have 
 written. If you could see into my heart you 
 would be satisfied, I know. 
 
 Letter-writing is a miserable business. I 
 am out of conceit with it altogether. How 
 long shall we keep it up? 
 
 You say you have stopped talking to peo- 
 ple, except when spoken to. Shall you serve 
 me that way when I am back? My sweet 
 Kate, you must not, or I shall take to not 
 talking at all whether spoken to or not. 
 
LOVE-LIFE 41 
 
 The sun has come out since I began to 
 write, and the air is vivid with spring light. 
 
 Ex animo yours 
 
 NEW YORK 
 15 MARCH 
 
 So you are going to the reunion of the os- 
 trakophagi! Why it meets this very even- 
 ing, and doubtless you are this moment — 
 seven o'clock by my watch — getting ready. 
 Multa tibi sit voluptas! 
 
 But what on earth, Katherine, do you 
 mean by wishing I may return so " strength- 
 ened that I may not weary of hearing and 
 seeing you " ? Did I ever grow half satis- 
 fied with seeing and hearing you ? 
 
 Oh, I hear and see so little of you that I 
 feel as if an evil fate pursued me to shut me 
 out from every bliss I covet. I feel like 
 giving up in despair when I think how long 
 and uncertain my exile is, and that I can 
 not foresee anywhere in the weary future the 
 hour when I shall rest in the sweet shade of 
 your presence. Is that only a mirage? 
 
 Toujours a toi. 
 
42 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 NEW YORK 
 25 MARCH 
 
 Your dear, dear letter has come with a 
 sunburst of light and warmth to my heart. 
 You thought, you blessed one, that I wanted 
 to " scold " ! You would be right if I could 
 ever feel like " scolding " you. But I can 
 not. I was most miserable because I was far 
 away and despondent and your letter, to 
 which I had looked for a great draught of 
 strength, had brought, oh, such a tiny cup of 
 love — but two or three sweet words and all 
 the rest about — well, I have forgotten. 
 
 But to-day my heart has feasted. I shall 
 always believe it — it is the sole article of 
 faith with me — that the love is in you that I 
 hunger for. When I can not charm it out, 
 then I must suffer. But when I give over 
 my efforts in despair, it comes in pity with a 
 great gush and I revive. 
 
 Your sprig of green I have kissed, conse- 
 crated to Saint Thomas and removed from 
 your sacred letter because it is dedicated to 
 the Doubter. 
 
LOVE-LIFE 43 
 
 Your letter recalls a day of last spring — 
 one among many in a shining bead-roll of 
 memory. Our hearts burned then under the 
 ice of despair. I wept that evening over my 
 formless sorrows. Why should life be so 
 full of hopeless yearning, and of supreme 
 beauty which could not appease? The 
 thought of death came then, as it always 
 comes to me, with a sense of balmy, cool re- 
 lief. I had only to wait in patience the end. 
 Oh, Katherine, your love has been a torch 
 that has re-illumined in me the love of life. 
 The future I do not try to picture — it is a 
 tumultuous emotion. 
 
 Now I must tell you that just after writing 
 you the last time I was ill again. The sick- 
 ness gave way before remedies and passed 
 off altogether speedily. 
 
 I have heard the philosopher Dellsworth 
 lecture, and a famous quartette play, and 
 seen a much-talked-of gallery of engravings 
 and mezzotints. Alas! how the devotee of 
 literature and the arts has become something 
 else, Art and literature are no longer the 
 
44 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 supreme objects of my desire. I know a 
 sweet girl, who may see these lines, whose lips 
 have more eloquence than the great philoso- 
 pher, more enchantment than the songs of 
 Schubert, sweeter lines than an angel of 
 Toschi's or Antonio's. 
 
 Oh, that wide, armed chair where I am to 
 come to judgment ! Do you think I fear any 
 sentence passed there? Perverse am I? 
 Naughty am I ? When you have once sworn 
 to honor and obey (mark that obaudio) we 
 shall not tolerate such epithets. 
 
 Dearest Katherine, you know my ardent 
 desire, and that the moment I see my way to 
 its fulfillment I shall fly on the wings of im- 
 patience to your arms. I do not yet know 
 that I can again endure the climate at the 
 University. If not, I can not see just where 
 or when I shall form other engagement. In 
 a few years our University will doubtless be 
 flourishing, and a professorship in it would 
 afford the basis of a modest support; at pres- 
 ent it is dependence and starvation. 
 
 I dislike to annoy you with such things, 
 
LOVE-LIFE 45 
 
 important as they are. Uncertain health de- 
 prives me of much of the ability I should 
 otherwise feel to make my way in other quar- 
 ters. 
 
 I have prospect of trying my hand here at 
 journalism, and if only for the experience I 
 am inclined to spend effort at it. It is no 
 embarrassment to have two professions. In 
 all my years of study I have never thought of, 
 nor cared for, business. I meant to do what 
 I liked best. 
 
 What Light has changed all that? — and 
 with no regrets from me. But it does pain 
 me, dearest, to know you think I could be 
 perverse in determining what so absolutely 
 interests my own happiness and can not be 
 indifferent to you. You must appreciate 
 my embarrassment growing out of not only 
 insecure health but equally insecure income. 
 You do not know what it is to be perplexed 
 by narrow estate. 
 
 If life has those moments — ecstasies of 
 health, youth and peace of which your letter 
 speaks — treasure them. How I should 
 
46 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 love to take you at such an hour! Should 
 I disturb its gracious power? — should I? 
 — with my gaucherie? What reforms of all 
 sorts in my ways of doing and being I prom- 
 ise myself when I am something more than 
 
 Your Inamorato 
 
 NEW YORK 
 2 APRIL 
 
 Our spring has come at last with the soft 
 laughter of April suns and shadow of April 
 showers. There are no flowers yet — out- 
 side florists' shops — nor grass, nor other 
 leafage. Spring has surprised the earth. 
 But a few days more and the parks will stand 
 in their splendor of pale green. This long, 
 cruel winter will be only a softening memory. 
 My pulses beat freer, if they do not yet bound 
 with the delicious life that makes you beau- 
 tiful and glad. 
 
 Your own little rapture of a letter tells 
 me all about it. Still, I have other sources, 
 and the same news comes that way, too. 
 Katherine in sorrow would break my poor 
 
LOVE-LIFE 47 
 
 heart with pitying love, but Katherine in 
 ecstasy drives me almost wild with a glow 
 and flood of delighted desire. How can you 
 write me that you are so happy? Don't you 
 know it makes my enforced absence intol- 
 erable? 
 
 Fate means that my love for you shall be 
 burnt into the deepest grain of my spirit by 
 the most wonderful encaustic process of de- 
 spair, hope, intoxicating joy, patience, ab- 
 sence, desperation, and some day — if God 
 is good enough — this picture of a great 
 love shall receive a transparent varnish of 
 happy possession to bring out all its colors 
 and keep them ever fresh. 
 
 Do you have visions, you sweet saint? I 
 never thought you were likely to see such. I 
 thought you were more your father's daugh- 
 ter — who has no great phrenetic tendencies. 
 But so long as you have visions of the true 
 God, that is, that servant of the true God who 
 came into this world on purpose to love you, I 
 shall not complain. 
 
 But pity me for visions are slow to come to 
 
48 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 my eyes. Instead I have merely a faculty 
 of reviving impressions. Sharp memories 
 of kisses and long sighs, of warm hands 
 and tender obscure glances, I can feel 
 and see again almost as when they were 
 real. You do not call those visions, do 
 you? 
 
 How strange a SaiV^v Love is ! He feeds 
 on such memories as these and grows into the 
 strength and purity of an angel. He can 
 suffer death and torture with enthusiasm, but 
 needs to be kissed, caressed and sighed over. 
 At least my love does, but I have often 
 thought he was a Sybarite ; yet I know he is 
 a hero, too. 
 
 My health is fair, although I am doing a 
 great deal of writing towards the book we 
 talked of. Next Tuesday I am to meet the 
 economist Saluxton, whose works you know. 
 My studies this winter — except my brown 
 studies — have been on sociological ques- 
 tions. 
 
 Give my love to your mother who is my 
 greatest benefactor, for did she not give me 
 
LOVE-LIFE 49 
 
 more than life? To you I send what Ca- 
 tullus calls seges basiorum. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 , 12 APRIL 
 
 It is the woman's genius, dearest, to find 
 herself at home in any novel situation sooner 
 than can one of my embarrassed sex. While 
 my pulses are still so much a flutter with your 
 first kiss that my letters are full of the turbu- 
 lence of love, yours have settled into the clear 
 full strain, the ardent, even beat which is 
 ruffled only by your gay sallies of tender 
 mirth. How ineffably beautiful you are to 
 me! 
 
 There are many felicities Lgve has for 
 those who love and fear him, and one crown- 
 ing beatitude — to feel that overpowering, 
 tender yearning in which all things blend 
 that are high, ardent and pure — a senti- 
 ment which carries in itself the assurance 
 that it is stronger than time or death. 
 
 Our flesh, our individuality, is but a veil 
 of the Eternal and Infinite Life, and Love 
 burns through this veil. We are not to seek 
 
50 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 to enter the formless, divine Spirit beyond, 
 but stop and worship its great heat and light 
 at its sweet human portal. It is strange that 
 anyone who truly loves should need a relig- 
 ion of the churches. 
 
 Do you think or wonder that my love sug- 
 gests such thoughts? You will not think 
 it any the less human and tender because it 
 is worship as well as love? Do not fancy 
 that it is for that reason exacting and vision- 
 ary, that I look for what the world calls " di- 
 vine perfections." It is of all loves the least 
 careful about such divinities. 
 
 One thing only — a great thing — it does 
 call for — that is a perfect, measureless trust 
 and love in return. Give me that and you 
 can have no faults to my eyes. Then you 
 may live a gay, sweet lady with all the petu- 
 lance, caprice and whim you will, and I shall 
 be your mad lover always. I reap in ad- 
 vance joy of the inward assurance I feel that 
 my love will be always the same tremulous 
 passion — the same feet-kissing devotion it 
 is now. 
 
LOVE-LIFE 51 
 
 You want to know if you shall see me in 
 May — when woods are green and thrushes 
 sing. I have no patience and tact to ac- 
 complish what I wish, now spring is come 
 and you are calling. Still I must wait till I 
 see the president of the new university at 
 Belchester, who comes on next month — the 
 institution is to be made a great affair. 
 Then I shall let go all my fastenings and 
 come under full sail straight to your arms. 
 
 I do not tell of the incidents of my stay 
 here. They will fill our confidences at 
 home. Do I find fault with your sweet tem- 
 per and cheerful moods ? Far from it. Be 
 as serene and caustic as your heart desires, 
 so you keep your pungency for the faculty 
 and your serenity for me. 
 
 To the princess Katherine 
 
 Her most devoted thrall 
 
 NEW YORK 
 25 APRTL 
 
 Dear heart, you will have distressed your- 
 self over this delay, I fear, before you can 
 hear account of it. I was in Washington 
 
52 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 when your last sweet letter came — away two 
 days visiting an old friend. With all my 
 movement my health remains in statu quo, 
 unassailed by pain, although I do not feel 
 vigor with the returning spring. How can 
 I after so long a deprivation of joy? Shall 
 I ever be well and strong and glad alto- 
 gether ? 
 
 You speak with some apology of a certain 
 type of woman. Is it because they love so 
 little? — have so little ardor? — or because 
 their hearts are always straying and never 
 perfectly true? It must be some such rea- 
 son. Many women are beautiful and bril- 
 liant and joyous. Are none innocent and 
 ardent and true? Do not let me think that. 
 
 You know I always feared I could not 
 make you love me as I love you. Do not un- 
 deceive me yet. You once hoped that I 
 should be able to re-inspire your heart with a 
 heat it no longer felt. I have the letter, Kate 
 darling. It made me very miserable, but it 
 was at least frank. What could I do? You 
 
LOVE-LIFE 53 
 
 trusted me. You seemed to want to love me, 
 and I did what I should have thought myself 
 incapable of — tried to disguise facts to my- 
 self. Do you love me at last? " Yes," I 
 think your heart says to itself, " but not quite 
 perfectly. That will come in time. If not, 
 he need never know." 
 
 But what am I writing ? — words which 
 ought not to be written. I should not send 
 them if not sending would annihilate them. 
 But you are my best soul and I will keep 
 nothing from you — not even my doubts. 
 Forgive them, Katherine. I shall not al- 
 ways doubt, and if I were to, I should love 
 you all the same. 
 
 Our friends here have found us out and 
 they came in the other day — the rascals ! — 
 and pretended to know all about it They 
 congratulated me most warmly, and are of 
 opinion that I do not deserve half my fortune 
 — which shows how sound their judgment 
 is, for I myself am of that mind, too. 
 
 It will be May before I hear from you 
 
54 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 again. I hasten this letter to hasten its an- 
 swer 
 
 Yours eternally 
 
 RONSBY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 5 MAY 
 
 A sweet letter this morning to flood the 
 day with sunshine. I had waited for it anx- 
 iously. Now let me be thankful and not 
 complain of delay. I am just recovering 
 from cold taken in some mysterious way. 
 How grateful I am that it has not settled into 
 the old neuralgia! Nothing in my health 
 to-day should lead to pride, but the worst a 
 cold can do is nothing to the old evil. Cer- 
 tainly I have made headway. 
 
 Dear heart, you ask if my doubts are the 
 fruit of absence, or if I feel them when with 
 you. Won't you believe me when I say that 
 I do not doubt you. I rest upon your love. 
 My own faith is too utter to harbor a sus- 
 picion of yours. From what could I save 
 myself by ever so sagacious doubting? 
 
LOVE-LIFE 55 
 
 There is but one thing in this world I should 
 rather not know if it happened — that you 
 had ceased to love me. 
 
 No, my heart is all too earnest, and has too 
 many heaven-kissing projects of life builded 
 upon your love to lose more time in testing 
 the foundation. If it is not solid everything 
 will come down with a crash and bury me in 
 the ruins ; but let me die rather than not build 
 at all. 
 
 Now I have news you will not welcome I 
 know. The editor of The Hustings holds 
 out inducements to me to try my hand at his 
 paper. If I succeed I shall be relieved of 
 the drudgery of night editing, and shall have 
 only prime editorial work. I am not con- 
 fident of my aptitude, and if I do not suc- 
 ceed to my complete satisfaction shall drop it. 
 This will keep me from you. But if I can 
 get employment for the summer I must. 
 Expenses of specialists and no incoming sal- 
 ary trouble me. 
 
 Another object is worth my attention. 
 The great Barrington endowment is to be 
 
56 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 organized and the projected university 
 opened. Of course I can not be confident of 
 a post in it. But it will advantage me to 
 meet its organizers, as I am invited to, and 
 know its relations. A man can not live on 
 the paltry salary at our University — since 
 the late cut. 
 
 But my heart is breaking to get back to 
 you. Hundreds of miles part us, and all 
 these duties call and keep me, strongest of all 
 the hope of sooner saying to my dearest, 
 " Come, share my life." 
 
 Doubtless it will never be luxurious. It 
 may be plainer than I hope, but with Kather- 
 ine's love it will be a life to be envied by all 
 who have sense to understand it. 
 
 My plans here may in a few days go up in 
 smoke and I able to keep my original en- 
 gagement about Commencement. Let us 
 hold ourselves in patience. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 14 MAY 
 
 Your dear letter came yesterday, and with 
 its new pulses of love mingled a memory of 
 
LOVE-LIFE 57 
 
 the older — a year old to-day. This is my 
 heart's birthday after long travail. 
 
 How strange the sunlight on that May 
 afternoon! And what a delicious sense of 
 mysterious happiness awoke me suddenly the 
 next morning long before my usual hour! 
 It was a second before my eyes were used to 
 the inner light and I could think of the cause. 
 Then the thought came rushing — " Kath- 
 erine's kiss — yes, I kissed her. She loves 
 me." It seemed a dream; but songs of birds 
 and the morning's brilliance helped to make 
 it real. 
 
 How often before had I wakened with the 
 heavy sense of misery, dumb, not understood 
 — till the old settled mood returned and I 
 knew too well why my heart was sick. At 
 times I strove for days to banish your image. 
 I struggled to think I could forget, or at least 
 overcome. Then I would break down and 
 revel in a dream of you, and it would end in 
 the wild misery of a fresh despair. Oh, 
 Katherine, you did not know what it cost me 
 to live those years in your sight. 
 
58 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 It is all turned to joy now. The lesson I 
 learned I shall never lose. I ate the bitter 
 bt-ead of humiliation till it was no longer 
 bitter, and I made renunciation a companion. 
 Life was over for me; and it has been a long 
 time regaining hold upon me. You, Kath- 
 erine, brought my new life and are utterly 
 inseparable from it. 
 
 Day after to-morrow I begin work on The 
 Hustings — as first assistant. The editor 
 thinks I have the best sort of journalistic ma- 
 terial, and he anticipates success for me. I 
 am simply making an experiment, and can 
 not fail to profit by a few months in a large 
 office and responsible position. 
 
 I shall not cease to look for a good location 
 as professor of something somewhere ; but if 
 I should find that I really have a career in 
 journalism, why not stick to it? Certainly 
 I prefer an academic life, and am inclined to 
 think my work lies in the University, but I 
 will try this thing a turn. 
 
 Your undergraduate studies are all over 
 — laus Deo semper. But if I were at home 
 
LOVE-LIFE 59 
 
 you would have to conjugate an old verb I 
 know all in the dual number. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 26 MAY 
 
 Yesterday, my Kate, when I awoke at 
 noon, I found your dear letter on my pillow. 
 The good people of the house know with 
 what eagerness I receive those slender blue 
 envelopes, and they thought to afford me 
 delightful surprise. They have dim con- 
 ception of the thoughts the little messenger 
 inspired. Matter-of-fact people, they never 
 sighed like furnace. One right conclusion 
 they have come to, for they think you must 
 be an angel to be so loved. 
 
 My health keeps fair and I endure the 
 night-work satisfactorily. The most dis- 
 agreeable feature of my business is that I am 
 literally muzzled — kept from a word on 
 those subjects which interest me most. The 
 Hustings is an administration organ and un- 
 der obligations to nearly all the miserable 
 monopolies in the country. All good para- 
 graphs are on the other side. It is just the 
 
60 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 office in which to acquire a newspaper style. 
 You are bound to say nothing in an inter- 
 esting way. 
 
 Now, Kathie dearest, what do you expect 
 to do this summer? If you enjoy it, my own 
 imprisonment will not be so hard to bear. 
 Write me cheerful letters anyhow, for these 
 conditions of life strain me and I feel my pa- 
 tience sometimes almost spent. 
 
 Your love grows more and more the only 
 deep, rich heart of joy in the world for me. 
 How I can live on without you I can not un- 
 derstand when I think of it. I only know 
 the long days do wear away 
 
 When shall we have a home together and 
 a united life? It depends upon the success 
 I have in an untried field. My heart sick- 
 ens to think of it. I shall not falter but be 
 nerved by my desire — well nigh intolerable 
 — for that life. 
 
 Work presses and I must break off. One 
 long sweet kiss will make me whole again, so 
 why complain? 
 
 Forever your Ronsby 
 
LOVE-LIFE 61 
 
 NEW YORK 
 30 MAY 
 
 Not to lose its effect what you say should 
 be spoken slowly and with intelligent em- 
 phasis, the fine lines in it with a sense of 
 their worth. They will then be distin- 
 guished by your auditors. Do not seem to 
 share a common ardor. You w^ill be under- 
 stood save by few, and you might as well be 
 aware of the fact. 
 
 Come in at the finish with all the cool sense 
 of superiority which you have a right to feel. 
 The public performance ought not to give 
 you a moment's trepidation. Be resolved to 
 be heard by clearest and most weighted ut- 
 terance. It is the thought which fastens at- 
 tention. 
 
 My health continues fair, and my work 
 growls easier, although if I would improve I 
 must make great exertion. One must pry 
 into everything to be a journalist. 
 
 Spring nearly flown and almost half a 
 year from you ! Your patience grows while 
 mine gets shorter as the days go on. 
 
62 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 NEW YORK 
 2 JUNE 
 
 Your message has come in so late this 
 evening that I have but a moment to answer 
 before going down to work. I can not wait 
 till to-morrow. 
 
 Sweet Katherine, I submit to your pro- 
 voking little disclosure that you have some- 
 thing to tell me, that I must make myself 
 ready to hear — and then you explode the 
 bubble with a sigh of solicitude for my peace 
 of mind and a puff of contempt for the story, 
 leaving me as much in the dark as ever. If 
 I had not a good conscience how this method 
 of doing would torture me ! As it is I only 
 itch to get my arms about your shoulders — 
 and then wouldn't I make you talk? — or 
 kiss you till you did. 
 
 Your letter is full of the tenderest heart on 
 earth, my own dear Katherine's. You have 
 a secret you want to tell me, do you not? Is 
 it that you already have a home for me if I 
 will accept it? You fear the offer will hurt 
 me and write in enigmas. 
 
LOVE-LIFE 63 
 
 I am in no wise prejudiced against a wife's 
 wealth. A home is the work of husband 
 and wife, but present-day social usage, and 
 the unequal position of women and men, 
 make the husband responsible for the support 
 of this home. He should feel his ability to 
 sustain it before he undertakes it. After- 
 wards he may receive what help he legiti- 
 mately can. I need not assure you that I 
 love you too well to feel any delicacy about 
 this subject. If I were not so certain of my 
 love I might not trust my motives. 
 
 You speak of my ideals that must be sac- 
 rificed on your account, and are unwilling it 
 should be. Dear heart, do you know I have 
 no ideals now. I have an idol and a holo- 
 caust of all my dreams before it would glad- 
 den me if it gladdened it — and you are that 
 idol. 
 
 I get but forty dollars a week, but this will 
 be raised probably to fifty before long, if I 
 continue to give satisfaction. Of course I 
 should not stay long at the work at that 
 figure, but it will probably be a year before 
 
64 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 my services will bring more. You see the 
 means over which I dispose. We might live 
 here modestly — very — and I should be 
 most happy to be with you. 
 
 Now Katherine, it remains with you to say 
 if we shall end this heart-ache, not as Hamlet 
 proposed to, but only as it can be ended. I 
 do not venture to insist because my offer is 
 not better. My own heart has but one desire. 
 You talk to a soul that echoes every wish of 
 yours. Do not be timid. Write a clean- 
 breasted letter. If I have mistaken your 
 meaning, you will pardon me and be assured 
 that nothing but the loyalest love speaks in 
 all I write you. 
 
 Goodnight, sweet angel. I must go a-par- 
 agraphing. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 12 JUNE 
 
 Two letters of yours unanswered, dear 
 Katherine. It is almost more than I have 
 courage to tell you. I am recovering from 
 another attack of neuralgia. Day before 
 yesterday it began to threaten and forced me 
 
LOVE-LIFE 65 
 
 from work. All day yesterday I was in tor- 
 ture, and now I am sore and exhausted. I 
 seem to have contracted a cold — and the 
 pain returned after a long interval. 
 
 I had grown so confident that I almost ex- 
 pected never again to suffer. It now seems 
 as if I had gained nothing, and I am in the 
 depths. " What if it keeps coming," I think. 
 Then all the old misery is back. 
 
 Dearest, we are certainly to be tested to the 
 limit of endurance. Times are so hard that 
 no salaries are increased, and I can not tell 
 when I shall be able to command the mini- 
 mum pay which would warrant my taking 
 you to share my fortunes. 
 
 If ceaseless longing and the courage of any 
 sacrifice could shorten the time, it would in- 
 deed be brief. We must still drift without 
 a clear point to sail by save the pole star of 
 our constancy. We may -come no nearer to- 
 gether, but we fall no further apart. 
 
 Your sweet, sanguine letters, led by your 
 high spirits, see everything in rosy light. 
 You say you wish to be useful — to have def- 
 
66 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 inite occupation — when we are married. It 
 is a noble ambition. It will make your life 
 happier than it could be in any petted idle- 
 ness. But it is most difficult to be useful in 
 the way you mean. Social conditions are 
 such that it would be almost impossible for 
 you to take any initiative yourself. And I 
 would not wish you to. In time my pur- 
 suits might be such that your assistance 
 would be money's worth. For the present 
 there is nothing you could do that would 
 make any adequate return unless you starved 
 at some profession — quod avertet Dens. 
 
 As regards you I share the aversion Amer- 
 ican men feel toward married women's labor 
 in the larger world. I would gladly see your 
 time pleasantly occupied by pursuits you 
 relish — but you should not be pushed to do 
 aught but enjoy a rational and moderate ac- 
 tivity. Such labor may be made useful. It 
 has no market. What men pay for is slavery. 
 
 I never knew before what it was to be poor. 
 It means to suffer every deprivation under 
 heaven. With plenty to eat and wear and 
 
LOVE-LIFE 67 
 
 go on, I am poor because it suffices only for 
 me. What do I care for all the world with- 
 out you! If I had been trained to some 
 bread profession and not loitered so long in 
 the lotos-land of learned dreams, I should 
 not now be so helpless. Now I know the 
 difference between a visionary and a prac- 
 tician, and am endeavoring with all my might 
 to become the second from being the first. 
 
 A great newspaper office is a good school, 
 for it is a focus of all the tendencies and in- 
 fluences which prevail in the actual world. 
 There I see all the hideous deformity of life. 
 My abhorrence deepens while my composure 
 increases. How different from the aca- 
 demic regions where I have tarried ! — where 
 the purged spirits of the great and good reign 
 
 — where patient and candid zeal serve. 
 The summer will soon be spent and au- 
 tumn here. Shall golden October see us to- 
 gether? Would to God I could tell! If 
 my health holds, and if my salary improves 
 
 — these seem to be the conditions. It would 
 not be worth my while to return in Septem- 
 
68 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 ber to share the University crust with the 
 handful of hungry professors. It may never 
 be worth while to go back, although there are 
 many reasons why Ashburnham should be a 
 happy abiding-place for us. In years to 
 come I should love to frequent the rooms and 
 haunts where our love grew till we had to 
 give up to it, will, heart and hand — for in- 
 stance, I should like to stand where I used 
 to stand of mornings and watch for your 
 little crimson coat rising over the hill like a 
 star. 
 
 More than ever yours 
 
 NEW YORK 
 20 JUNE 
 
 My sweet bachelor 
 
 How shall I express my gratification at 
 your good fortune — first in getting out of 
 that old Thinking-Shop, and next in doing 
 it so gracefully? 
 
 Oh, if I could have been there to kiss those 
 eloquent lips and carry off as a sort of con- 
 ductor the surcharge of your happy enthu- 
 
LOVE-LIFE 69 
 
 siasm! All I could do was to take account 
 of the time and think " Now Katherine is 
 waiting," and " Now it must be that she is 
 speaking," and " Now she is done " — that 
 was after twelve o'clock — was it not? — 
 and before one? I was happy to see the 
 newspaper's report. 
 
 Our weather is delightful and since my 
 work is at night I escape the days' heat. 
 How magnificent the city is by the June 
 moonlight ! — after the streets are empty and 
 silent. I turn homeward just before 'the 
 sparrows begin to twitter from houseledge 
 and tree. The Park is lovely and there I 
 sometimes wander, but I have little time save 
 for newspapers and office-work. 
 
 Elements of a journalist are deeply cov- 
 ered up in me. For the work it will take two 
 or three years to get my forces in hand. I 
 write on all sorts of topics, with no care nor 
 elaboration and so of course without much 
 effect. The indispensable thing is rapid 
 composition. That I have acquired. Now 
 comes the learning to write well as well as 
 
70 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 fast. I may yet find it more congenial to 
 go back to the professor's chair. 
 
 I must close — but not without wishing 
 aloud that I could spend an hour — oh, just 
 one hour, what would it not be worth! — 
 near you this summer weather. 
 
 I work with but one aim, but sometimes it 
 seems like the stars — none the nearer for all 
 my climbing. You must pour out the let- 
 ters, now your time is free. They must not 
 be on three sides of a tiny sheet. 
 
 Yours eternally 
 
 Thanks for the roses! Their scent en- 
 tombs the whole glory of Class Day, and has 
 caught a memory of the sweetest, dearest, oh, 
 inexpressible — 
 
 NEW YORK 
 26 JUNE 
 
 The clock just struck three, and, back 
 from work, after a sponge bath and early 
 breakfast, I sit down to answer your last 
 dear letter. You can not conceive how my 
 heart swells with love and gladness at this 
 
LOVE-LIFE 71 
 
 priceless evidence of your love. For do you 
 not say " Marry me " ? 
 
 It more than heals the wound of the Ad- 
 ministrative Board's action. Loss of my 
 chair I make light of. The insult is in the 
 manner. My proposition left them free. 
 They could have given me option of return- 
 ing at a reduced salary, or of resigning. By 
 their summary dismissal they have injured 
 my professional prospects. A professor's 
 position should be taken from him only 
 for incompetency, bad conduct, or in 
 case of financial necessity. But of this 
 enough. 
 
 All commands from your lips are sweet, I 
 say, and now have you not said the sweetest 
 of all? Marry you, blessed Katherine! 
 You know that nothing but poverty delays 
 that happiest day. Until I have an income, 
 how can I take you to be my wife ? 
 
 A man can not put himself in a position 
 of dependence on his wife's relatives. The 
 situation of Tantalus would be easy com- 
 pared with such a lot. You fear the effect 
 
72 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 of business worry upon my character, and 
 perhaps with reason. But therefrom come 
 the strength and calm of seasoned expe- 
 rience. 
 
 Day is breaking as I write, and dream 
 here of you and shorten my hours of sleep. 
 You must ever believe, my Katherine, that 
 you are become integral part of my nature. 
 I love and worship you all the more for your 
 tender boldness in pressing upon me what 
 alone I live for — your life and love — but 
 you must see that unless we have money in 
 our pockets we must bide our time. Hope, 
 sweet, that that may not be very long — may 
 be next September. 
 
 You turn in your sleep, perhaps, while I 
 sign the name of your most devoted thrall 
 
 RONSBY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 1 JULY 
 
 Dearest Katherine, two days have passed 
 since the coming of your double letter, your 
 own pulsing words of aspiring love and the 
 
LOVE-LIFE 73 
 
 saucy little chatterbox hid under its gracious 
 folds. 
 
 The rector of Saint Infidelius would pull 
 the wings of the Seraphim from before their 
 shaded faces — in the very presence of the 
 Throne. His advice is well-meant — how 
 could it be anything else when it would 
 hasten the happy hour for which I toil and 
 wait? — but for that very reason it is " su- 
 perfluous and ridiculous excess." Your 
 own sweet mandate has all the power it is 
 possible to exercise over circumstances. 
 
 Dear heart, your letter breathes that as- 
 piring sentiment which makes our love a true 
 worship. To be constant, tender, passion- 
 ate, is not enough for it. My heart at least, 
 in the excess of these, the elements of love, 
 feels a new sense born, and I have no word 
 for it but worship. 
 
 I feel somehow that the Holy Power which 
 sustains and moves this ancient universe of 
 wonderful and beautiful forms, reveals it- 
 self to me as Love — the essence of my own 
 uncomprehended life in your sweet spirit. 
 
74 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 To love you and serve you and drink from 
 the cup of your tenderness, and to sink my 
 life in the Divine Life through you, seem to 
 me the supreme end of my existence. Love 
 is a cult — rightly understood — and our 
 love shall be our religion, shall it not? To 
 each other we shall reveal only the divine 
 attributes of tenderness and patience. 
 
 The account given out of the Board's vote 
 against me was false. You, darling, must 
 not take their action too much to heart. 
 Consider what a prejudiced set of men such 
 a Board may be — at times laggards in the 
 better works of our day, blunted in percep- 
 tion of truth, perhaps dehumanized in sym- 
 pathy. Better behaviour we should not ex- 
 pect. Before now vastly more learned men 
 than I have lost their places and suffered 
 persecution at the hands of much better men 
 than they. 
 
 I have ceased to regret their action and 
 turned myself to succeed at my new work. 
 Write often, Katherine Another time a bet- 
 ter letter. 
 
LOVE-LIFE 75 
 
 NEW YORK 
 6 JULY 
 
 You will not expect deliberation, dear 
 Kate. A cool place is not within reach. 
 Since your letter came I have been so crazed 
 with noise that I could scarce think of you, 
 not to say write to you. 
 
 Gallius, to whom I sent my opinion of 
 the action of the Administrative Board, as- 
 sures me that they labored under misappre- 
 hension of my wishes, that there was no in- 
 tention to affect me injuriously. I say in 
 answer that it is still in their power to re- 
 verse what they did and make good an unin- 
 tentional injury, and I await their action be- 
 fore forming settled judgment as to motives. 
 That admits no evasion of responsibility. 
 
 How ill-fortuned that my letters to you 
 must be filled with business, and that, too, 
 of no agreeable kind ! But I wish to let you 
 know such matters, although it is not what 
 men commonly talk to women. A man 
 wishes to conceal all the disagreeable detail 
 of his struggle for existence from the woman 
 
76 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 he loves. Fruits and loveliness alone he 
 wishes to lay before her. But unless his 
 advantages enable him to follow his devoted- 
 ness effectively, attempt is sheer folly. 
 
 The next years of my life are a struggle 
 with fortune. Anxiety is with me that my 
 exertions may not be sufficient to sustain the 
 home upon which my heart is set. You 
 stand and watch my battle and nerve my 
 hand, but the sense of what is at issue almost 
 unnerves my heart. 
 
 If only I had been trained to make money 
 instead of to pursuits which are not paid! 
 "Patience! " I hear you say. In time I 
 shall get a mastery of gain. 
 
 On The Hustings everybody shirks work 
 in this heat. ' I have to write the leaders now. 
 
 For the good-night kiss you sent, I wish 
 I could give you a thousand by daylight. 
 
 Write often, Katherine, and love me ever. 
 
LOVE-LIFE 77 
 
 NEW YORK 
 14 JULY 
 
 Your sick letter at hand, my dearest, the 
 first complaint of real illness. Oh, how I 
 fear those visions are not good. 
 
 At Herberg's conduct I stand appalled — 
 disparagement of me as a scholar, betrayal of 
 confidences that inflict humiliation, and mon- 
 strous falsehoods which he has coined and 
 spread to my harm. lago is outdone. Not 
 a living motive in the heart of the man but 
 cravings for praise. 
 
 Among other abominations he has a tale 
 about my injuring a young lady when I was 
 at the University of Athens, a lady of good 
 family and character, an acquaintance of 
 his and mine. A picture which I left with 
 him bears her striking likeness — a likeness 
 we both remarked one day before I left Ash- 
 burnham. Well, he has told that I pur- 
 chased the picture because of its resemblance. 
 
 This is a specimen of his lies, and from 
 some reference in a letter of yours, Kather- 
 ine, I suspect the tale reached your ears. I 
 
78 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 asked him to leave the picture with you and 
 he wrote that you did not seem very ready to 
 receive it and, " if he were I, he would not 
 press it." 
 
 Katherine, my Light, I should die of mis- 
 ery and disappointment if it were not for the 
 absolute confidence I rest in your love. One 
 heart beats true to me, and is such refuge 
 that I shall never again need to trust a per- 
 fidious soul. You have my life in your 
 hand. I can not harbor, a suspicion of your 
 truth. It is weary, I know, loving a sick 
 man who is hundreds of miles away. But 
 I am getting stronger — and shall not always 
 be far away. • 
 
 Do take care of your precious health. 
 Otherwise I must be your nurse — and all 
 your life. You don't want me to address 
 myself to that office, do you ? I should keep 
 you dependent, I fear, in order to wait upon 
 you. 
 
 My work goes forward without a jar and 
 I progress in the difficult art of writing on 
 current topics for the public. 
 
LOVE-LIFE 79 
 
 Do not be distressed at what I have had to 
 tell you of the " friend " who supplanted me 
 in the University post he undertook to guard 
 
 Yours world without end 
 
 NEW YORK 
 18 JULY 
 
 Your letter assures me of your convales- 
 cence, Katherine. May these lines find you 
 as' wonted — sweet and strong and cheerful. 
 You are a blessing to all near you — a darl- 
 ing to love and dote on. But be careful. 
 Next your love your health is my most pre- 
 cious possession. 
 
 Of the late perfidy let us dismiss every 
 thought. The dishonor will devolve where 
 it belongs. There is a world outside the 
 antipathy our University seems to harbor 
 against me, and somewhere in that world we 
 shall find resting place. 
 
 The next few months must reveal our fu- 
 ture, at least a green glimpse of it, a future 
 worth living for I think. I am resolved 
 never to give another mortal my confidence 
 
80 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 — another save you and two or three old, 
 tried friends. Wise is he who trusts and de- 
 pends on no one. 
 
 My heahh improves and I am more rugged 
 than for a long time. But doubtless I am 
 still subject to relapse. A great enjoyment 
 comes from my work, or rather the sense of 
 advancing in it blesses me. Still there re- 
 mains much to acquire and overcome, but if 
 my health holds and your love abides I sharll 
 conquer. 
 
 Remember me to the dear mother of vours. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 29 JULY 
 
 A long delay you will think, Katherine! 
 And what can be the reason? I have been 
 ill over a week. The days wear away and 
 the pain grows lighter, but still it persists 
 and culminates once or twice in twenty-four 
 hours. 
 
 Every day I have dictated an article or 
 two and so have not abandoned my post of 
 labor. But I could not very well dictate a 
 
LOVE-LIFE 81 
 
 letter to you, Light of my life. This I write 
 propt up in bed. The weather changed to 
 wet and cool and that accounts for the long 
 pain. 
 
 You will be sorry to get this letter, Kath- 
 erine, and you will feel as great a despair as 
 I when the agony seized me — despair lest 
 I may never realize our dream of love and 
 life. I seemed especially well before the at- 
 tack and was thinking of spending my two 
 weeks vacation with you at Ashburnham. 
 My heart aches when I remember those days 
 of last fall. But I shall be well again, and 
 if the improvement I have made can be ren- 
 dered permanent, even if not bettered, I shall 
 be content. 
 
 Summer will soon be gone and autumn I 
 feel must bring in its harvest the solution of 
 our secret. Your noble sweet constancy 
 has earned the faithfullest love a man ever 
 gave a woman, and if that will be reward, 
 reward you shall have. Our marriage will 
 be what few marriages are — a perfect union 
 of powers and desires. We — you and I — 
 
S2 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 take the same earnest, high and free view of 
 life and we shall sustain each other in every 
 aspiration. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 8 AUGUST 
 
 Kate dearest 
 
 The last illness, from which I was not re- 
 covered when I wrote, dragged on. Stormy 
 weather, not yet fairly over, distressed and 
 kept me from rapid convalescence. Still, as 
 I wrote you, I was able to contribute a fair 
 share of editorials to The Hustings. 
 
 Rest assured that I am well cared for, not 
 indeed as I should be by a certain sweet- 
 lipped girl I know, but as well as humans 
 can be expected to discharge such duties. I 
 may never be free from such attacks. The 
 utmost I hope is to make them so infrequent 
 that they will not seriously interfere with 
 my work, or greatly impair my strength. If 
 you will love me, Katherine, I fear you must 
 make up your mind to love something of an 
 invalid. 
 
 In about ten weeks I hope to see you — in 
 
LOVE-LIFE 83 
 
 the very tide of autumn. A few days with 
 you among brown fields will sink in poppied 
 oblivion the long pain of our separation. 
 
 We shall talk the great question, when can 
 we make our home? If my earnings afford 
 me a competence, I shall not wish to post- 
 pone the happy day by one revolution of the 
 earth. 
 
 We shall grow together in our work. Life 
 is too short to enable a poor man first to 
 spend years upon his culture and then years 
 in accumulating a property before marriage 
 — if he marries for love, that is. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 18 AUGUST 
 
 Won't you leave the worship of Harpo- 
 crates, my Light, till I am near you, and in 
 your sweet eyes can read the meaning of your 
 golden silence? The days that pass beyond 
 the expected date of your dear letter have a 
 shadow on them, and the mornings that do 
 not bring your looked-for words are empty 
 of all matutinal freshness and splendor. 
 
84 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 It seems a long time to you — our fifteen 
 months of love and ten months of separa- 
 tion. Absence makes time seem long that 
 would have passed like a bird through a gar- 
 den. You can not know how sad it is to 
 think that I am the cause of our separation 
 
 — my ills and incapacities. I fear almost 
 that you will weary of loving me. 
 
 Then indeed I should despair of myself 
 and of life. I always have thought of you 
 as a queen to serve, as one compelling love 
 and making the terms hard. While I en- 
 treat your patience I have no right to speak 
 of patience to you. 
 
 Dear Katherine, will you understand these 
 loose words ? You will not feel, I think, the 
 depth of passion and of worship which surges 
 under their salt spray. But, yes — you will 
 
 — you must know better than all things else 
 that I love you perfectly and utterly. 
 
 My health is good again, but the weather 
 is for August unprecedented — continuous 
 rain. 
 
 I can not kiss you, nor will I delegate any- 
 
LOVE-LIFE 85 
 
 one to do so but the bright Apollo. He may 
 kiss you brown and sweet — but at a dis- 
 tance. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 28 AUGUST 
 
 Your short notes at long intervals touch 
 me, darling Katherine, like a dying sound 
 further and further withdrawing from my 
 hearing. True they still whisper the en- 
 chanting word — love, but I almost begin 
 to compute the time when they shall have 
 vanished utterly. Illness and care fill your 
 time, you say. Alas! that you should not 
 be free from painful solicitude for those you 
 love both near and far. 
 
 My health continues and my spirits are as 
 buoyant as hard work and little news from 
 you can make them. I dare not think how 
 happy I should be if you were by my side — 
 here at work with me — without almost re- 
 belling against destiny. How hard I shall 
 strive to make our income equal to our needs. 
 
 At the office I have not yet spoken about 
 advance of salary, because I feel my efforts 
 
86 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 have not met all the successes which would 
 justify it. But I have succeeded in gaining 
 a place in this newspaper writing and the 
 confidence of our manager. He expected to 
 raise my wage provided I did well, and I 
 am sure he will. A few dollars a week make 
 all the difference in the world between life's 
 weary monotony and its supremest vision. 
 
 I still hope to keep my promise and see 
 you in October. It may be that we can re- 
 turn together — that is, it is not all impos- 
 sible. How long notice would you have to 
 have, sweet Katherine? 
 
 But such glories depend — yes — on fifty 
 dollars a week. Is it not the most satanic 
 thing in life that Love must be a pensioner 
 of Mammon ? Not even he is free. But he 
 can yearn, and dream, and weep, and hope 
 without money. 
 
 To-day is my twenty-sixth birthday. 
 How gladly would I take the stripes from 
 you! 
 
LOVE-LIFE 87 
 
 NEW YORK 
 4 SEPTEMBER 
 
 Your letter this time is full of matter, dear 
 Katherine. Besides it is the second unan- 
 swered and so I feel outnumbered and out- 
 weighed. 
 
 Your father's advice about remaining in 
 this coast region I fully appreciate and shall 
 act upon. This however not on account of a 
 superior moral tone of affairs here, for New 
 York is ruled and robbed by as vile a set of 
 men as exist anywhere, but because here my 
 knowledge is more valuable to me than it 
 would be elsewhere. 
 
 We have to come to it in the end and 
 grasp squarely hold of the pestilent machine 
 — business. Then, in the keen contest for 
 bread, there is end of generous aspirations 
 for the race. My task now is to learn to 
 write what people want to read about cur- 
 rent affairs. If I can do this, I shall be 
 tolerably rewarded. 
 
 To anticipate anything would be ill- 
 judged. And in our marriage we will do 
 
88 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 nothing contrary to your parents' wishes. 
 You must be free to act without trepidation 
 and uncertainty. 
 
 You do not give me quite your whole con- 
 fidence, Katherine. You hint at somewhat 
 you never let me divine, so that I feel an un- 
 settledness too vague to name, too impalpa- 
 ble to dispel. Dearest, the world has neither 
 my confidence nor my great regard, but you 
 I both love and trust. I never thought I 
 deserved your love, and you know I was not 
 insensible to the great responsibility it 
 brought. Dear heart, always be frank with 
 me, as you are beloved by me. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 11 SEPTEMBER 
 
 My Light 
 
 I can not wait an answer to my last un- 
 kind letter, but beg you to forgive me for it 
 before your lines reach me. It was only for 
 a moment that I harbored the thought that 
 you were not frank with me, and in that mo- 
 ment I wrote. 
 
LOVE-LIFE 89 
 
 I could not understand the frequent al- 
 lusions in your letters to somewhat you would 
 tell me after a while, except as evidence of a 
 want of perfect confidence. But when I 
 think such a thought of you, or shadow it in 
 my letters, I am stung by an after-sense of 
 intolerable remorse. The thought that I 
 have given you pain makes me desperate. 
 In addition to all the sorrow I have been 
 obliged to be to you, I have not heart to add 
 another slightest grief for any cause. 
 
 Forgive my letter, or send it back to me, 
 won't you? How wretchedly weak we are! 
 It seems to me that nothing could ever in- 
 duce me to say or do aught painful to you 
 — and yet I do. But you must know how 
 I love you — better than life — even as I do 
 divine goodness and all beauty. 
 
 Soon I shall be in Ashburnham, and then 
 we will make all things right again. I sup- 
 pose the University is in full blast with the 
 intellects of my false friends roaring in the 
 furnace. 
 
 Here prospects move happily. I am en- 
 
90 LOVE-LIFE 
 
 gaged upon an investigation of our municipal 
 affairs with the view of making them theme 
 of a lively discussion. The work brings me 
 in contact with many unusual characters and 
 men of strange points of view. 
 
 To-day is our first fall day — clear, cool, 
 far-away. I feel well and if I thought you 
 would not be angry with me, I should be in 
 good spirits. 
 
Ill 
 
 LETTERS SENT FROM 
 NEW YORK 
 
NEW YORK 
 29 SEPTEMBER 
 
 Last night, dearest Katherine, I got back, 
 safe and sound after a disagreeable journey. 
 I had existed in the vortex of a cyclone of 
 dust, cinders, carbonic acid gas and iron 
 filings ever since I waved farewell to your 
 sweet face, and so you see I was not unpre- 
 pared to relish the luxury of city air and the 
 quiet of paved streets. 
 
 This morning, much refreshed, I shall go 
 to my duties. Already I feel the advantage 
 of this climate in a certain sense of ease and 
 quiet which I never enjoy in the dry, electric 
 clarity of Ashburnham. 
 
 Your letter was a great temptation — it 
 had awaited my hand so many days ! But, 
 after kissing it and holding it up to the light 
 in vain endeavor to read its message, I laid 
 it unopened in my desk as I promised. Now 
 here I give you warning that the only chance 
 you have of keeping my eyes off it is punctu- 
 ally to write me others. 
 
 93 
 
94 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 Give my love to the family, and do you, 
 Katherine, do your best to break the habit of 
 melancholy into which you have fallen. If 
 you do not, I shall have to honey you out of 
 it. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 8 OCTOBER 
 
 The best news I can send you, sweetest 
 heart, is that I got the letter — full of your- 
 self — resolutions, banter, effervescence and 
 all. The next best is that I am still enjoy- 
 ing good health. 
 
 I have committed our secret to my house- 
 people and they are anxious we should stay 
 with them during the great anniversary. It 
 is going to be difficult to find comfortable 
 quarters. These are not large or elegant, 
 but I think you might be satisfied for im- 
 mediate months to come. Boarding with 
 the family we should not need more than two 
 rooms. Such arrangement would settle our 
 domesticity but you, Katherine, must tell me 
 if you have objections to this plan. 
 
 Let me caution you not to overdo. Your 
 
LOVE-LIFE 95 
 
 strong spirit bears you too far. When I 
 make the great journey after you I must find 
 you no shade less brown, no shade less sweet, 
 with the same curved lip, the same tangled, 
 wind-blown hair. 
 
 Ah, Katherine, I am mad for a girl's grey 
 eyes. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 15 OCTOBER 
 
 Light of my life 
 
 What did I open my eyes upon this morn- 
 ing but your sweet letter — lying on my pil- 
 low ! How like a living thing the tiny billet 
 seemed, a love-bird weary after long flight 
 and quietly abiding my awakening ! 
 
 The world is growing mysterious to me 
 again after having lost most of its deep sig- 
 nificance. The immanence of a great pas- 
 sion warms the blood and makes spring in 
 the imagination. I seem to live two lives — 
 one of the dryest and hardest realism, my 
 world of work; the other of mysterious lights, 
 and sounds, and vast and beautiful things, 
 
96 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 and great ardors and happy hours — my 
 world of reverie. 
 
 I am glad that you agree with me about 
 our domestic order. It would be ill-advised 
 for us to undertake to settle ourselves at once. 
 Let us be together when we plan and choose 
 our neighborhood. The rooms here are to 
 be furnished anew for your coming, but since 
 the house will not permit, I can not give them 
 just the look I want. 
 
 We shall be married — te volente — in 
 February. In February, oh Katherine, if 
 God grants my supreme desire, I shall have 
 you here with me — here, oh Light, with me. 
 Time passes on leaden wings and it really 
 seems six months since I kissed the blossom 
 mouth and dainty chin. 
 
 My health holds good, although I suffer 
 constantly from colds. Let us hope that the 
 nursing you say you have in hand I shall 
 not need. I undertake that you shall have 
 all you can attend to in caring for my well 
 hours. 
 
 Our friend, the professor, could hardly 
 
LOVE-LIFE 97 
 
 deglutinate the evangelicism of the secta- 
 rian institution you name. 
 
 That popular work, " Force and Matter," 
 is in many respects a shallow thing. 
 
 Write to me often, and love me always, 
 always, always — 
 
 NEW YORK 
 24 OCTOBER 
 
 Dear heart 
 
 As the days pass that bring us nearer our 
 new life, the whole significance of the change 
 it implies dawns ever higher upon me. I 
 have lived on letters and dreams so long, 
 with one luminous fortnight only of your 
 presence, that I almost fear the rising sun of 
 Love that reddens the horizon. 
 
 How can I realize it ! There seems to me 
 to be a life's happiness in every one of the 
 many phases of our love-life which I fore- 
 dream in all its heights and depths of joy and 
 labor. You say it takes a wonderful deal of 
 patience to make a woman. Do you think a 
 man's life meets with less obdurate barriers? 
 
 We shall care little for the ceremony which 
 
98 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 joins us before men. But there is a sacra- 
 ment of marriage which I hope we shall re- 
 peat in our hearts, and it tells us with more 
 severity than the formulas of the church that 
 marriage is a state of cares and toils which 
 love must make sweet, that indeed its great- 
 est glory is its duty — that if it were relieved 
 of its burdens it would be robbed of its sanc- 
 tity and deepest joys. They do not love who 
 find love's sacrifices irksome. 
 
 But you will think I design a lecture when 
 I merely mean to echo the sentiment of your 
 dear letter, which is as full as your tender 
 heart of love's earnest purpose. 
 
 Through you I seem to get a glimpse and 
 breath of your golden and purple October. 
 Revel in it, sweet, and drink the wine of 
 health shed out of its lustrous skies. You 
 make the whole bright west fairer when I 
 think its light and air bathe your form. 
 
 In New York we have less of the poetry of 
 autumn and more of its material beneficence, 
 for it makes redder cheeks and keener ap- 
 petites than in Hesperia. You will grow 
 
LOVE-LIFE 99 
 
 stouter here, my slender Katherine. I hope 
 I shall continue to deserve your esteem. 
 
 February then is the month blessed above 
 all others — which is to give me your daily 
 companionship. That ought to compensate 
 for its short calendar. 
 
 My health is still unbroken — favete 
 Unguis — and my love reaches through this 
 letter and your hands to your household, and 
 especially to my new papa and mama. 
 Katherine's lover, 
 
 RONSBY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 2 NOVEMBER 
 
 I snatch an interval of leisure on this eve- 
 ning of election-returns — while everything 
 about me is in a whirl of excitement — to 
 write you, sweet, not a lecture for your sad- 
 hearted letter, but if possible a word of cheer. 
 It will be hard to send sunshine and breezes 
 to your soul, when I could not, with all my 
 kisses and chiding and chatter, keep you 
 from drooping while I was there. 
 
100 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 What terrible foreboding oppresses your 
 soul? I can not divine it. It seems some 
 terrible premonition. You say you were not 
 born for happiness. Oh, how you make my 
 heart ache with such cruel forecast! 
 
 If it be as to long life, none know the will 
 of fate. Feebleness or uncertain health at 
 your age is no evidence either of future ill- 
 health or of brief life. But why trouble our- 
 selves about what we should await with 
 cheerful acquiescence in the great and rev- 
 erend order of the world ! 
 
 You must be happy. The decree has gone 
 forth. It is my life's work, and failure in it 
 I can not brook. If I can not make you 
 happy and contented, I had better never been 
 born. You have said you do not care for 
 wealth, and whatever else you demand I un- 
 dertake to procure you. 
 
 Do you not know our life will be one long 
 sweet dream and worship of love ? — and can 
 you be sad-hearted when its dawn is but three 
 short months away? 
 
 Dear heart, you have not ice-water for 
 
LOVE-LIFE 101 
 
 blood in your veins, and you should let all 
 the old sad leavings of memory consume in 
 the divine flame of a new life and a real 
 passion. I shall be busied for many years 
 in studying out ways to love you, and all my 
 other years in repeating for mingled love's 
 and memory's sake my old joys. You must 
 not be sad, sweetheart, and all aweary of ex- 
 istence with the warm heaven of love im- 
 pending over you. It is wicked, do you 
 know ? 
 
 This letter I fear will not cheer you. If 
 it is confused, lay it to the uproar in the 
 street — a great political victory. 
 
 I am not feeling in best trim, but still I 
 am not ill. Doubtless you are well by this 
 and ought to have written and dispatched a 
 second letter. 
 
 AH my love to you. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 9 NOVEMBER 
 
 If my letters are short, Katherine, yours 
 are not long, and yet you have the more time. 
 
10-2 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 Somehow I find it unaccountably difficult to 
 write you long letters. In the first place 
 there is no little gossip from New York, for 
 we have so small acquaintance. 
 
 Then again it is always a lamentable fail- 
 ure when I endeavor to put in words what I 
 feel toward you. It is something so mys- 
 terious and gigantic, a great, dim, choking 
 emotion that will not unfold in speech or 
 song. 
 
 So it comes that my only resort — that a 
 most unfortunate and poor one — is to lec- 
 ture you, as you call it. Now and forever 
 more I abandon the resource — when I find 
 it one on which you can make so much better 
 draughts than I. Your first essay has been 
 so successful that it has effectively dis- 
 couraged me for the future. 
 
 But I must oft'er what reason I can for 
 my writing the letter to Witley. You saw it 
 of course and will therefore be able to judge 
 of the value of my plea. 
 
 You know I have no confidence in or re- 
 spect for the moral character of the man and 
 
LOVE-LIFE 103 
 
 could not therefore dream of making him a 
 confidential friend. He has, however, been 
 so persistently kind to me, and seemed to 
 build so much upon my good opinion, and 
 besides wrote me so ardent and eloquent a 
 letter, that I could not find it in my heart to 
 answer in terms not somewhat touched with 
 warmth. But I was careful to express only 
 that enthusiasm for humanity which is nat- 
 ural with me, and goes out to every one who 
 appeals to it — without meaning to establish 
 relations of personal confidence. Doubtless 
 he understood me in a personal sense. I 
 wished also to benefit him by pointing out 
 that the only foundation of friendship which 
 I recognize is that of personal honor and de- 
 votion to great and worthy aims. I overdid 
 the matter and felt that I had before your 
 letter brought it home to me with so much 
 force. 
 
 Your task, Kate dearest, shall not be as 
 hard a one as that of many wives in breaking 
 off their husbands' old enthusiasms. This 
 one is not real, you see, and there are only 
 
104 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 one or two that would really -cost me to give 
 up. 
 
 What you anticipate will surely be. Feb- 
 ruary will see the dawn of our new life — 
 whose glorious beauty and sweet hours are 
 of our own creating, built of the light and 
 heat of our souls alone. I am recovering 
 slowly from a very bad cough and have had 
 no prostration from pain. 
 
 Your far-too-emotional Ronsby 
 
 NEW YORK 
 18 NOVEMBER 
 
 Dearest 
 
 Your good-natured letter found me in bed 
 as usual, but this time with no intention of 
 at once getting up. A badly sprained ankle 
 will keep me housed for several days. Com- 
 ing out of The Hustings building last night 
 I stepped not quite clear of the last step — 
 which I meant to skip — and so doubled up 
 my ankle. Well, I am endeavoring to take 
 it philosophically. 
 
 Now, Katherine darling, do you fancy you 
 
LOVE-LIFE 105 
 
 can draw me into a lecture? Not a bit. It 
 is really your prerogative anyway, and I 
 never should have invaded it. I can not 
 find half as good cause as you can, nor lec- 
 ture half as well. I purpose to rely alto- 
 gether on cozening and finesse for accom- 
 plishing what infrequent aims I may have. 
 Do you take warning. 
 
 But in all seriousness, sweet, your penulti- 
 mate letter was excellent and deserves to be 
 acted upon by me. I have suffered a great 
 deal from the rudeness, ingratitude, duplicity 
 and insensibility of those I have trusted and 
 loved, and I have made resolutions before 
 now to forswear everything of the name of 
 friendship. 
 
 Such is the selfishness and insincerity of 
 men individually, and such the monstrous 
 injustice of social and business relations, 
 that it is impossible for a man of simple, 
 strong feelings to avoid the utmost wretched- 
 ness, if he interests himself deeply either in 
 individuals or in public and general affairs. 
 I have the impulses and the intellectual con- 
 
106 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 stitution of the old-time socialist, but my ex- 
 periences of social and political conditions 
 make me despair. It is intolerable. I can 
 not endure the constant sense of the great gap 
 between what is and what ought to be — yes, 
 and what might be if the twentieth part of 
 men's professions were realized in their 
 lives. 
 
 There is only one refuge, that is to the 
 world of art, science, learning and nature. 
 I will take from social relations the best, and 
 in my sheltered kingdom of the ideal and 
 impersonal build the bower of Love — the 
 only guest worthy of admittance. 
 
 But as I have to achieve this seclusion 
 while laboring in the very focus of the social 
 and political contest, you see the task is no 
 light one. I must study carefully all con- 
 flicting interests and ideas and champion 
 certain of them. Yet I must not allow them 
 really to involve my sympathies; and the 
 only way to do this is to keep ever before my 
 eyes the Gorgon thought that to all this 
 savage struggle there is little outcome of 
 
LOVE-LIFE 107 
 
 good to the persons engaged. Unutterable 
 poverty — I fear — will ever be the lot of 
 the millions, dishonest gains and arrogance 
 the preeminence of the few. 
 
 Still there are Homer and Plato, Beethoven 
 and Shakespeare, and Goethe, others too 
 many to name, and all nature, and you. 
 Yes, in you, Katherine, I shall find all the 
 human sympathy I need, and it will be of the 
 purest, deepest and most precious kind. 
 The one or two friends of whom I spoke are 
 bachelors, whom I know to be honest and 
 kind, and nothing could be more unobtrusive 
 than their friendship. 
 
 Sweetheart, do you know you ought not 
 — but that is the opening of a lecture. I 
 mean I am not making sacrifices for you, 
 Katherine and it pains me to have you speak 
 in that way of what I am trying to do. I 
 would make sacrifices for you — any sacri- 
 fice. But to make you mine is not to make 
 a sacrifice for you, that is in the dativus corn- 
 modi, but for you — to get you, that is. I 
 can not make sacrifices. I can not offer a 
 
108 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 thousandth part of what you are worth. 
 
 Will your wedding cost you as much pains 
 as Meg's costs her? I had much rather 
 have you alive without a trousseau. 
 
 The rector of Saint Infidelius is still, I 
 see, worrying with the orthodox. He has 
 himself gone on from faith in a personal 
 deity to pure pantheism. Personal immor- 
 tality will go next. What an idle business, 
 preaching the religion of Spinoza to people 
 who have never understood the decalogue! 
 And then it is not Spinoza who preaches 
 either. 
 
 Ever and ardently your 
 
 RONSBY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 27 NOVEMBER 
 
 Shall I ever, my Katherine, be past the 
 necessity of sending you bad news! One 
 evil no sooner laid than another is at hand. 
 This time a severe cold has made me an in- 
 valid. All the fall I have suffered from a 
 stubborn cough. Last week it got worse and 
 
LOVE-LIFE 109 
 
 I had a high fever. The affection seems to 
 be chiefly bronchial, but there is danger of 
 serious issue. I am taking best care of my- 
 self. 
 
 Now, dearest, we can only be patient. 
 The old difficulty I have pretty well mas- 
 tered. Doubtless I shall conquer my new 
 enemy. My present anxiety is to be well-rid 
 of it before February comes with its golden 
 snows, luxurious rains, cheerful sleet and 
 dreamy breezes. 
 
 Your dear letter I have read and all its 
 inner sense deeply pondered. I see you have 
 been a little hurt by some things or ways I 
 wrote — more for idle banter than aught 
 else. Believe me, Katherine, I received your 
 faithful and wise reproof with the reverence 
 and love with which I am sure you gave it. 
 A noble woman is made " to comfort and 
 command," and I am sorry for any irritation 
 I showed. Really it was more in jest than 
 earnest. 
 
 But I do not agree with you that this 
 " first lesson " in our life service should be 
 
110 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 the last. What is needful is not that we 
 should learn to excuse or overlook fault in 
 each other, but that we should have perfect 
 confidence in the sweet and faithful spirit in 
 which advice is given. Only let our reproof 
 never be animated by a spirit of self-asser- 
 tion, or domineering, or fretful fault-finding 
 or of anything even more unkind than these. 
 But always let it be as true and gentle and 
 patient as love itself, and we shall both profit 
 by each other's judgment and observation. 
 We should not exert ourselves to repress our 
 advice, but to make it worthy of the dear and 
 sacred relation which we sustain. 
 
 Already we have begun preparations for 
 your coming. That is, we have chosen pa- 
 per and are having it put on the rooms. To 
 look at it does me great good — it has an air 
 of " for sure " about it, and is a trifling, ma- 
 terial evidence that Katherine is coming and 
 the dull days to that sunrise are not many 
 after all. 
 
 Do you ever stroll nowadays through the 
 woods and country lanes we know so well? 
 
LOVE-LIFE 111 
 
 What shall you do when you come to New 
 York for all your old country liberty? Here 
 you can go nowhere without the cars, and 
 must ride for an hour to get out of town. 
 You will have little of social life, for nothing 
 is of much weight here but immense wealth. 
 A literary and artist class there hardly seems 
 to be, at least the elements of such a class are 
 not organized. Snobbery and pretence rule 
 supreme — and some of the writers and 
 artists cravenly train with it and get down in 
 the dust to meet it. 
 
 But I have no serious apprehensions that 
 we shall find the time drag. Certainly I 
 shall not: I never do anyway, and with 
 Katherine I could live the ages of Brahm 
 and in Brahm's seclusion. 
 
 But what has put it in your head, sweet- 
 heart, that you must not write to me about 
 yourself? Why there is nothing else I care 
 a fig about. If you could photograph your 
 every movement, and record your every word 
 for an hour, it would make a letter I should 
 study with all my eyes and all my heart. 
 
112 LOVE-LIFE 
 
 It is past sunset, but the sun is still shin- 
 ing upon you, my Light. At this moment 
 you may be thinking of 
 
 Your ever faithful 
 
 RONSBY 
 
IV 
 
 LETTERS SENT FROM 
 NEW YORK 
 
NEW YORK 
 9 JANUARY 
 
 You want to hear from me, dear Katherine, 
 instead of from the nurse. I am very weak. 
 It is great effort to write, but for you I make 
 it. 
 
 We are waiting — after long weeks of 
 pneumonia — to see whether a solidified lung 
 makes a favorable termination, or whether it 
 will do the reverse. 
 
 Have patience, darling, whatever happens. 
 I have the best of care. 
 
 Yours forever 
 
 RONSBY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 14 JANUARY 
 
 Since I wrote you last, Katherine — I re- 
 member the few dismal lines — I have 
 gained in strength. Signs are good, but it 
 is not yet certain the termination will be 
 favorable. 
 
 What is certain is that in any event my 
 
 IIS 
 
116 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 convalescence will be long and tedious. 
 This week closes my connection with The 
 Hustings. Friends have held my place for 
 me to this time. But I can not impose fur- 
 ther on their goodness. 
 
 Well — there is nothing for it but a new 
 start in the world under less favorable cir- 
 cumstances than before. For now my 
 health stands in the way that was open to me. 
 What I shall do I can not decide. But for 
 one reason it would not be of the remotest im- 
 portance to my feelings. 
 
 You know what makes the future full of 
 solicitude to me. At times it seems to me to 
 have been a criminal act by which I linked 
 another's happiness to the unsettled and un- 
 sound body of my fortune. I had nothing, 
 not even health, and yet I dared to ask for 
 your love. It is impossible for me to rid 
 myself of the idea that I have done you and 
 yours a great wrong. All our happy plans 
 are once more dissipated, and the future 
 again opens up a boundless waste with no 
 blossom in sight. 
 
LOVE-LIFE 117 
 
 Have you patience, dear? I could not 
 blame you if you had not. But if you have, 
 and will still wander with me, hoping some- 
 where and sometime to join the aching cur- 
 rent of our lives in one full stream of love — 
 if you have, my heart shall never swerve 
 from its one desire, and my labor shall be to 
 compass it. 
 
 All this may be premature, for my life is 
 not yet secure. Do not be over-anxious, 
 Katherine, on my account. You know your 
 presence would be inexpressibly delightful 
 to me, but you could not nurse me as you 
 think, and then there is much that would 
 embarrass you here. My care is of the best. 
 Do you only write frequently. But utter 
 your whole heart. 
 
 Yours, yours, yours 
 
 NEW YORK 
 19 JANUARY 
 
 My own Katherine 
 
 You can not imagine with what pleasure 
 I read your letter of the 13th written on re- 
 
118 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 ceiving my first note. I have sent you a full 
 sheet since, but it fell between. 
 
 My heart is glad that you can take so 
 reasonable and patient a view of our circum- 
 stances, which are in themselves distressing 
 enough without being made more so by an 
 impractical and impatient temper. Heaven 
 knows I am both impractical and impatient ; 
 but I endeavor to simulate prudence, and 
 patience, and especially I rejoice when I get 
 outside assistance. 
 
 You know I have little or no hope — it is 
 not an element of strength with me — but I 
 cultivate self-renunciation. Still I can not 
 relinquish the dream we dreamt two years 
 next May. It stands to me for life. It is 
 all life means to me. In the prostration and 
 weakness of my present condition it is diffi- 
 cult to realize that I ever may be strong and 
 sound again, but others have recovered and 
 my case is promising well according to my 
 doctor's opinion. I am constantly gaining 
 strength. 
 
 I write these lines sitting in a great leather 
 
LOVE-LIFE 119 
 
 chair, propt and blanketed. I sit up a 
 couple of hours a day, read considerable 
 light matter, have a chat with our academic 
 friend and write to you and mother. 
 
 I am glad to hear Meg's husband is bet- 
 ter. What ails us wretched men of to-day 
 that we have so little health ? It is a shame 
 for us to marry, and a wonder that anybody 
 will have us, especially the nicest girls in the 
 world. There are a few sound men yet. 
 They ought to be -at a towering premium. 
 Caeciis Amor! My love to the family; a 
 * thousand kisses for you. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 31 JANUARY 
 
 By the time you receive these lines your 
 patience will be worn very thin, I fear. 
 There is not only the long interval of your 
 own making which you have had to wait out, 
 but also several days of my proper neglect. 
 
 You will forgive me, however, when you 
 hear that I have been so busy all this time 
 gaining strength that I think I ought to be 
 forgiven. After all I have not gained a very 
 
120 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 great deal. When I shall be quite well is 
 a question. I make it out sometime next 
 summer — that is if I get well at all. 
 
 Now, dearest girl, what a queer little head 
 that is of yours! It makes up its heroic 
 mind to be patient and brave under painful 
 circumstances, but the result of the effort is 
 only to create a greater restlessness and 
 brooding in another quarter. Home " that 
 has not for long been so quiet and restful " 
 becomes an intolerable confinement, and my 
 Katherine longs to strike out into the wide 
 world and do something for its good. She 
 asks if I know any opening. 
 
 Of course manual employments are out of 
 the question for my delicately bred girl. 
 The professions are virtually closed against 
 women — that is women can not yet move in 
 them with the freedom of a member in good 
 standing. Then moreover my sweet Kath- 
 erine has no profession. She could hardly 
 take to the Bohemian existence of certain 
 ladies of the press I know. There remains 
 the art pedagogic; but she would learn little 
 
LOVE-LIFE 121 
 
 teaching school and not see the world on very 
 unfamiliar sides. 
 
 Now, my Light, what shall I advise? I 
 am conscious that this discontent is the 
 fruit of disappointments which I feel more 
 keenly than you because, if for no other rea- 
 son, I am their cause. 
 
 If you wish to fit yourself — in case of 
 necessity — to earn your own support, you 
 should best devote yourself to some specialty 
 of letters, or science, while you have time at 
 your disposal. But I forbear for obvious 
 reasons for further advice on this subject. 
 
 Give my love and felicitations to the 
 vc6wfx(f)ot. To you, my Katherine, I can 
 not send love for you already have my whole 
 heart in your keeping. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 7 FEBRUARY 
 
 You will excuse the delay and the brevity 
 of this note, dearest, when I tell you that for 
 the last four days I have been suffering from 
 the discontinuance of anodynes, and have 
 
122 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 slept little. Otherwise, the doctor says, I 
 have gained. 
 
 Your last dear letter deserves a better an- 
 swer and shall have it sometime, let us hope, 
 in that future where we are obliged to locate 
 so much of our happiness. I have to-night 
 no mind for any of the items that make up a 
 letter. I only know and feel in undimin- 
 ished distinctness how great and true my love 
 is and how wholly it involves me whether I 
 live or die. After all that is all. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 12 FEBRUARY 
 
 Another long delay, Katherine, but if you 
 knew how hard it is in this weariness and 
 unchanging condition to get about a letter, 
 you would rather wonder that I write at all 
 than that I am not prompt. I grow better, 
 the doctor says, but I hardly realize it. I 
 still suffer and am oh, so weary of my room 
 and bed! 
 
 To say that I am lonesome would faintly 
 express my sense of utter desolation. It is 
 
LOVE-LIFE 123 
 
 no longer an acute sense, but a sort of at- 
 mosphere I breathe and absorb — that has 
 wrought my whole being to its tone and na- 
 ture. 
 
 My resolution is taken to go home to Cath- 
 ness — but that may not be for months. I 
 must make a long pause and take a new 
 start in the world on another plane of ex- 
 perience and purpose, if I am ever again to 
 meet life's duties. 
 
 This terrible affliction may not be without 
 its fruits to me, for certainly I had needed a 
 calmer and less obscure purpose. Not to be 
 ever striving after the unattainable, but to 
 gauge our tasks to our forces is indispensa- 
 ble to the conduct of life. 
 
 I know that we shall both grow in that 
 serene wisdom which is the fruit of self- 
 limitation. We long to be together and to 
 enjoy the bliss of perfect companionship, but 
 we should not be utterly cast down because 
 we are debarred from paradise for a time, 
 and a time, too, in which we can do much to 
 ensure the permanence and depth of our hap- 
 
124 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 piness whenever we are once admitted. We 
 can come to realize, ever more clearly 
 through our trial, that our love is a perfect, 
 pure and exhaustless spring in w^hose abun- 
 dance we can securely trust. 
 
 This prosy letter has not at all expressed 
 my meaning and I do not feel strength 
 enough to write another and a better. Be- 
 lieve me 
 
 Ever your own altogether 
 
 NEW YORK 
 15 FEBRUARY 
 
 Your letters get better and mine w^orse, 
 dearest. The last of yours was very full of 
 you. But I write with so much difficulty, 
 and under such a weight of unhappy cir- 
 cumstances, that I think for all the comfort 
 my letters can bring you they might be writ- 
 ten by an acquaintance. But that acquaint- 
 ance would have to have more discretion than 
 one good friend of mine. 
 
 Indeed, dear Katherine, I have written you 
 the worst account of mvself. I have all 
 
LOVE-LIFE 125 
 
 along feared that a consumption might es- 
 tablish itself, which would make way with 
 me altogether. But the doctor is now san- 
 guine. 
 
 I do not wish to inspire you with any 
 delusive hope. Although I gain strength 
 constantly, I am harassed by a cough which 
 may mean bad for me. Do not think I 
 would deceive you for one moment. I hope 
 a short time will decide definitely my situa- 
 tion and prospect of health — for everything 
 depends on that. My present state is inex- 
 pressibly painful. 
 
 I note your transmission of the rector's 
 message about " grit." Dear, it is not a 
 question of grit. I can not and will not 
 marry as a sick man, and if I am well I 
 will conspire against destiny to achieve the 
 happiness which only your love can confer. 
 I believe that you appreciate the reasons 
 which inspire my resolution. I know that 
 you are more anxious for my happiness than 
 your own in all you think or do. 
 
126 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 NEW YORK 
 26 FEBRUARY 
 
 I am your debtor for two letters, dearest. 
 I delayed answering the first in order to let 
 our correspondence get once more in step. 
 We do not average more than one letter a 
 week, and it is better that they succeed one 
 another, as orderly letters should. How 
 mischievous it is of you to take my remarks 
 about your writing in such a refracted light ! 
 I shall not soon venture to speak again of 
 those little thin sheets of delight you send. 
 
 You pity me in my loneliness. I can not 
 say I bear it with complete patience. But 
 patience is all I have for it. I long for the 
 end, whatever it may be. But longing does 
 not clear the uncertain future. 
 
 Why should I be displeased at your going 
 to a reception? That would be a pretty 
 piece of male tyranny — when I am unable 
 to share a gaiety with you to insist that no 
 one else shall ! Dear, you must follow your 
 own heart, assured that I shall never wish 
 you to act other than sincerely. 
 
LOVE-LIFE 127 
 
 I sit up almost all day now, and go from 
 room to room. But the cough remains. 
 
 Ah me ! for every bosom-nestling joy, 
 Behold a sudden doom far in the sky ! 
 
 NEW YORK 
 7 MARCH 
 
 It is when I write to you, Katherine, that 
 I feel most acutely how slow my recovery is. 
 I do not seem able to gather strength beyond 
 a certain point. Perhaps with fairer weather 
 my convalescence will take a new start. 
 
 I much wish to set out for home early 
 next month. What will be my joy once 
 more to greet your sweet face ! My heart is 
 too full of wild longings and sad foreboding 
 for me to dwell upon the thought of our meet- 
 ing. 
 
 Meg's husband, ill on his w^edding trip, 
 will gladly be at home, where alone we find 
 the sanctuary of sorrow and pain — the only 
 place where one can suffer without humilia- 
 tion. There is an eternal incongruity be- 
 tween marriage and sickness — between the 
 
128 LOVE-LIFE 
 
 lo Hymen and the Ai, ai, of the sick bed — 
 which even the pitifulness of Love can not 
 justify. 
 
 I have the slightest curiosity to know what 
 action the University will take upon the de- 
 cision of the legislature to consolidate the 
 classical chairs. If it threatens to disturb 
 the idyllic little home of Professor Rochester 
 the decision is unpardonable. What are 
 universities for if not for professors ! 
 
 Dearest Katherine, you misunderstood me 
 in my last letter. By " following your own 
 heart " I meant that I would have you do 
 whatever your heart permits — that is what- 
 ever you do not feel to be inconsistent with 
 the love you have for me. 
 
LETTERS SENT FROM 
 NEW YORK 
 
NEW YORK 
 2 APRIL 
 
 They wrote you of the hemorrhages, dear- 
 est Katherine. I undertake to write these 
 lines myself — they are lines no other soul 
 can indite for me. 
 
 In answer to your last letter so golden- 
 warm with love and memories I must send 
 words of despair. The disease is making 
 headway. It is a struggle now of vitality 
 with consumption, and where is there any 
 vitality in this exhausted frame? The bat- 
 tle is lost before begun. As yet I do not suf- 
 fer greatly. 
 
 I have written for mother to come. In- 
 deed she may be here before my summons 
 reach her. I have picked out all your let- 
 ters and tied them up so that they will come 
 to you, if I never do. I attend to such mat- 
 ters that they may be off my mind, and I 
 beg you, too, if the worst happens, to keep 
 such of my books as you care for, and give 
 131 
 
132 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 the rest with my manuscripts to my family. 
 
 Now, Light of my life, I must turn my 
 face to look upon the end. I can not turn it 
 from you, from what is sweetest and divinest 
 in this feeble life of mine, but all else I must 
 shut out till I grow in love with darkness. 
 I can not think for you — nor advise you one 
 word in this hour. In the future I hope you 
 may be happy in some way which a merciful 
 heaven will devise. You will be miserable 
 now and I will not try to console you. How 
 can I? — do I not suffer pang for pang? 
 
 But the end of life is rest for me and for 
 you. When I see the inevitable portal, that 
 gate of forgetfulness, I long to make haste 
 and sink within its protecting, saving 
 shadows. 
 
 But I shall have strength to write again, 
 perhaps many times. Goodbye for the pres- 
 ent. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 12 APRIL 
 
 Your letters, sweet Katherine, have never 
 been so dear to me as during these dark days. 
 
LOVE-LIFE 133 
 
 Your love never shone so strong and clear as 
 now when fed on no airs of hope, but burning 
 up from the depths of your true, great heart. 
 
 Oh, Kate, it is the cruelest stroke of fate 
 that threatens us, the most bitter infliction 
 which life has for innocent hearts — the de- 
 feat of life and love upon the very threshold 
 of their fruitful union. What we have dared 
 and dreamed has been only a preparation for 
 that life which I fear we shall never taste. 
 We have nothing left but to meet the in- 
 evitable and inscrutable decree with a seren- 
 ity and courage as great as our love. We 
 can show the same spirit in misfortune that 
 would have made fortune for us something 
 nobler than mere success. 
 
 The doctor holds out some encouragement 
 to me yet, but I am loath to take it. He 
 thinks I shall soon be able to travel, and that 
 if I go to Colorado I may still recover — that 
 is, live to be a consumptive. But better 
 early death than such a life — such a death 
 in life. A few years of invalidism, of slow 
 torture that is, in the very presence of all my 
 
134 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 unattainable desires — that would be no 
 gift. 
 
 I look for mother here to-night and my 
 heart aches for her when I think how incon- 
 solable she will be. In one of your late let- 
 ters, Katherine, you wonder if I do not think 
 it heartless in you because you do not come. 
 How can you think me so wrapt up in my- 
 self, so blind to the obstacles in your way? 
 No, no — but I can not write more. I am 
 very weak. 
 
 You can not write too often to 
 
 Your 
 
 RONSBY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 18 APRIL 
 
 This is only a few lines that I feel able 
 to write at this time, even to you my best and 
 dearest — whose sweet letters are so rich in 
 comfort to me who am not rich in it. Do 
 write as often as the distillation of love fills 
 your heart's cup of pity for our common lot. 
 
LOVE-LIFE 135 
 
 As soon as the weather gives promise of a 
 few clear days and my strength gets to where 
 it was before the last attack, mother and I 
 shall start. My only hope is in the efficacy 
 of change of air. 
 
 But better than all hope is the inalienable 
 consciousness that I have been, am, and shall 
 be loved by my heart's queen, the tenderest 
 and sweetest lady in the world. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 24 APRIL 
 
 I send this note, dear Katherine, on the 
 eve of setting out for Cathness. When you 
 receive it we shall, if nothing happens, be at 
 home. We can not go to Ashburnham and 
 to you for obvious reasons. The journey 
 will be great trial to my strength. But it is 
 imperative. As soon as we reach home I 
 shall let you know how the way used me. 
 
 Imagine, dearest, the thoughts that oc- 
 cupy me at this moment, and the longings 
 youward. I can not write what I have in 
 
136 LOVE-LIFE 
 
 mind. The weather is favorable, and we 
 have secured the state-room in a sleeping 
 car. 
 
 Your adventurous 
 
 RONSBY 
 
VI 
 
 LETTERS SENT FROM 
 CATHNESS 
 
CATHNESS 
 28 APRIL 
 
 You will be glad, my Katherine, to learn 
 that I reached home without mishap. I have 
 good hope that I may improve with the ad- 
 vancing summer. 
 
 We can not meet yet a while, dear, but be 
 sure I shall seize the first opportunity to give 
 myself the greatest happiness that now lies 
 within the horizon of my possibilities. I 
 must first settle down here and wait for be- 
 ginning benefits of change of air. The 
 weather will be steadier and more innocent 
 shortly. 
 
 I have nothing in the world to do but 
 seek healing. The quest of the Golden 
 Fleece was not more difficult, nor was its 
 prize half so glorious — for I seek life itself 
 and a sweeter Medea. Who knows the toils 
 and dangers by the way? There is one sov- 
 ereign lord of fortune, that is Courage. 
 
 Let your letters be not few, precious Light. 
 139 
 
140 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 3 MAY 
 
 Bad weather; and I too depressed to write 
 you, Kate dearest. To-day I am better, but 
 still in no wise to put my heart on paper. 
 Wherefore this feeble utterance. 
 
 Your sweet letters, which have been com- 
 ing to me from east and north, are ever ten- 
 derer and truer with the weary time. I con- 
 fess it, Katherine, when I first loved you I 
 did not believe you capable of such divine 
 constancy. I loved you for lighter things. 
 But now I may love and worship you for all 
 my soul can figure to itself of worshipful and 
 lovely. 
 
 You will have patience now to wait till 
 we can once more renew our vows in the 
 sacred solitude of the oaks, and the more 
 sacred presence of Love who will " sneeze his 
 approbation on the right." I do not want to 
 leave home while I am so much of an invalid 
 as to need particular care. 
 
LOVE-LIFE 141 
 
 CATHNESS 
 9 MAY 
 
 I am not yet able, dear, to write the letter 
 I purposed — which I intended should carry 
 to you some, at least in small part, presenta- 
 tion of my present mind and mood. You 
 know what weather we have had. While I 
 can not see greater strength, I do find myself 
 sensibly relieved from the suffocation which 
 has so long tormented me. 
 
 We have a young lady cousin of mine 
 staying with us, who is already become the 
 admiration of our town. Not yet twenty, 
 she is a widow of nearly six months, and be- 
 longs to that class of women I find unendura- 
 ble. With as little heart as understanding, 
 she conceives herself irresistible and talks 
 of her triumphs ad nauseam. Still the poor 
 child must be endured and as soon as possible 
 married off. Unhappy the man ! 
 
 How proud I am of my dearest Katherine 
 when I see such miserable frauds of women, 
 A tender true heart that loves unselfishly, and 
 seeks and understands a love which is not the 
 
142 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 mere surprise of the senses effected by an 
 unwomanly expenditure of womanly charms 
 — but why should I go on to describe what 
 I love to her I love? 
 
 CATHNESS 
 16 MAY 
 
 Saturday I received a letter from your dear 
 hand and heart, and it bore the date of 
 Thursday. Does, then, time drag so slow 
 with you that you get two days wrong in your 
 reckoning? Ah, me! If I were to date my 
 letters by my heart I think I should have to 
 change the century figures at least. 
 
 Your letter, Katherine, was oversanguine 
 of seeing me soon. Certainly I shall come to 
 you before all my weakness is " lost in the 
 ruddy glow of health " — if that may ever be. 
 Improvement is so very slow, and I have so 
 much to gain before I shall be anything but 
 a miserable sick man, that I can not promise 
 myself as near the happiness of being with 
 you. I am still so weak that my hand 
 trembles almost too much to allow me to 
 write. I barely master it. 
 
LOVE-LIFE 143 
 
 How can you say, dearest, that I can not 
 realize what our long separation has cost 
 you? Do you love me better than I love 
 you? It is impossible. Your tenderness 
 and constancy have surprised and over- 
 whelmed my heart with joy — have made me 
 feel speechless and powerless — from the ful- 
 ness of the passionate love which they evoked 
 in my own breast for you. Anything and 
 everything borne for your sake seems little 
 to me. 
 
 I can never comprehend a love toward me 
 like mine toward you, nor do I crave it. Not 
 that I would reject it. But how could I 
 know or profit by a love which neither in life 
 nor death finds any adequate expression! 
 
 If heaven wills we shall some day, after 
 many years of loving, discuss which of us 
 loved best. But I fear — how sweet the 
 fear ! — that with hands clasping close we 
 shall come to no sure measure. 
 
 Do not be too hopeless of seeing me in a 
 few weeks, for we can not tell how fair 
 weather may build. 
 
144 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 Write, write to your convalescent 
 
 RONSBY 
 
 23 MAY 
 
 Your frightened little extravagant note, 
 dearest, with the apprehension that if I were 
 not ill I must be pouting, was somehow so 
 weak in the feet that it was overhauled by the 
 letter following it before it reached my hand, 
 and I received both together. But letter and 
 note were so full of the tremulous joy and 
 fear of your priceless love, my Katherine, 
 that they made me unspeakably happy. In 
 the darkest hour of pain and despair I have 
 but to recall to mind that Katherine loves 
 me — really, truly, tenderly, devotedly loves 
 me, and I experience such a thrill of joy as 
 the angels in heaven do not know. 
 
 Oh, my tender-hearted, darling girl, when 
 will this weary time come to an end, and the 
 sun rise for us whose glorious light reddened 
 our skies and freshened the winds of dawn 
 in our hearts two years ago! It is the sole 
 
LOVE-LIFE 145 
 
 link that binds me to the love of life, but it 
 is mightier than all ambitions, all dreams. 
 
 People talk to me of the failures of mar- 
 ried life and point out instance after instance 
 where selfishness, idleness, pride, vanity, ar- 
 rogance and worthlessness have made homes 
 into hells — you must hear not a few dis- 
 courses of like nature. And yet while I fully 
 comprehend the truth of it all, I can not feel 
 a single fear save that our marriage may not 
 be soon enough — or not at all. That I 
 shall always love you I know. That your 
 love will be as constant I unfalteringly trust. 
 For me there is^no alternative but death. 
 
 Shall I tell you of the highest proof of my 
 confidence in the depth and strength of your 
 love ? It is the fact that notwithstanding my 
 dark prospects, and my solicitude for your 
 happiness, I have not withdrawn from a rela- 
 tion which would certainly be a sore burden 
 to the generality of young women situated 
 similarly to yourself. My pride and scrupu- 
 lousness would compel me to take upon my- 
 self any burden that could lighten another's. 
 
146 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 But I have so believed in the pure fervor of 
 your love that I have not dared to undertake 
 the responsibility of acting for you. Can 
 you put yourself in my place, and doyou un- 
 derstand the motives to which I refer ? 
 
 However, as you say in your own letter, 
 only the coming years can fully reveal the 
 love that fills our hearts and labors now in 
 vain for utterance. 
 
 The last two days I have gained much in 
 strength. I do walk out and even ride horse- 
 back. I think it cannot be later than the 
 second week in June when I shall be able to 
 see you — to spend some time with you be- 
 fore going to Colorado. 
 
 Write often. 
 
 In unspeakable impatience yours 
 
 29 MAY 
 
 This morning I have risen with the sun, 
 dearest, for the purpose of getting these lines 
 ready to send to the early post, having al- 
 ready delayed till I begin to stand in fear of 
 
LOVE-LIFE 147 
 
 one of those desperate little notes of yours 
 suspecting me of some incredible aberration 
 of mind or misfortune. 
 
 The fact is, Katherine dearest, the bad 
 weather of last week depressed me much. I 
 was feeble and dispirited. But in the last 
 few days I have gained amazingly. Yester- 
 day I felt better than I have since the illness 
 began. 
 
 An old army surgeon of this town will 
 have it that I have not suffered any falling 
 away of the lung, but that my trouble is 
 bronchial. He urges me to spend the sum- 
 mer roughing it, that is, in crossing the plains 
 in a wagon. 
 
 Your wish that I should be in Ashburn- 
 ham during Commencement I can hardly 
 share. I remember my old students with 
 liveliest pleasure, but between associations 
 too painful to revive, and others too sacred to 
 behold the profanation of, I prefer to stay 
 away. 
 
 Yet, thinking further, I do hope to be in 
 Ashburnham before Commencement, and. 
 
148 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 once I am there, something besides the senior 
 class miist be com-mensa to drive me away. 
 There is one magnet in Ashburnham, or near 
 the town, sufficient to draw me, were there 
 any avoBo<i, from the region of Hades — it 
 would charm me back from Paradise. 
 
 You must be prepared, dearest, to see a 
 sick man who has lost, not to speak of out- 
 ward semblance, nearly all his spirit and a 
 large share of his judgment. He preserves 
 nothing intact but his love which seems to 
 have increased at the expense of everything 
 else. Do not take my delay as a model, but 
 write immediately to your anticipating 
 
 RONSBY 
 
 CATHNESS 
 8 JUNE 
 
 I am just able to pen these lines, dearest 
 Katherine. A cold rain-storm a week ago so 
 aggravated my throat that I had the greatest 
 difficulty in breathing. I have not suffered 
 so much before — in the same length of time. 
 It all followed days of rapid amendment and 
 
LOVE-LIFE 149 
 
 has disheartened me. I fear it will delay my 
 visit to you. 
 
 But, sweet, why have you not written? 
 You must not forget that I live by the breath 
 of your love. In a few days I hope to do 
 better than these lines. 
 
 Your suffering Ronsby 
 
 13 TUNE 
 
 Your note of Monday reached me to-day. 
 I sent a note last Thursday telling you why 
 I was delayed, and I am extremely sorry and 
 vexed to find it not posted. It goes with this. 
 
 It is incredible what continuous storms we 
 have had, and equally incredible how I suf- 
 fer in such an atmosphere. Two weeks of 
 uninterrupted fine weather would do me a 
 world of good. To-day dawned fair after a 
 night of rain, but now, at evening, a storm is 
 coming out of the west. 
 
 Katherine dearest, I know what you have 
 borne from delay. I think I know. Only 
 God knows what it has cost me. I can not 
 
ISO THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 come to you in my present state, although I 
 hoped by this time to be able to. 
 
 This tension of waiting has become almost 
 too great for my poor strength to bear. Suf- 
 fering has weakened my will, and even my 
 understanding, it sometimes seems to me. 
 You, dear, while you love me at all must 
 have patience with my misery, I would 
 bear greater things for you. 
 
 CATHNESS 
 20 JUNE 
 
 A few moments in which to pen you a line 
 and get it off in to-day's mail. Yesterday 
 and to-day have been the first really fair 
 days we have had this June, and already I 
 improve. I have been brought low by bad 
 weather and must gain a great deal before I 
 shall feel fairly like a convalescent. 
 
 It gave me sorrow, my faithful Katherine, 
 to learn that the misunderstanding of an un- 
 lucky sentence in my last letter caused you 
 pain. I said " while you love me at all " 
 not from a feeling that you might cease to 
 love me, but from a sense of how hard your 
 
LOVE-LIFE 151 
 
 task would be while you love me at all. I 
 can not feel fully, I admit, that so great and 
 sweet a treasure as your love is surely mine 
 under all vicissitudes. But that is not any 
 fault of yours, dearest. It is because I find 
 it hard to realize its truth. 
 
 There are many things I long to say to 
 you. My heart promises itself a great un- 
 burthening, and a great strengthening, from 
 our meeting. My happiness seems some- 
 times near, and sometimes very far. Noth- 
 ing stands in our way but feeble health. A 
 summer may restore that or it may never be 
 restored. What a terrible suspense ! 
 
 I close to reach the post. 
 
 CATHNESS 
 26 JUNE 
 
 The present fair weather is adding to my 
 strength, Katherine, but it happens to me as 
 to other weakened persons — the process of 
 recovery is more painful, at least more haras- 
 sing, than extreme debility. I have a dread- 
 ful aversion to pen and ink which only my 
 still greater desire to hear from you enables 
 
152 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 me fitfully and unsatisfactorily to overcome. 
 
 It adds to the hardship of writing that I 
 can not send you cheerier news. Everyone 
 will have it that my lungs are not seriously 
 affected, that the difficulty is bronchial. 
 Whatever it is, it so distresses me that I do 
 not gain strength sufficient to effect a rapid 
 cure. 
 
 I must go to the mountains before long and 
 I fear I shall not be in a condition to make 
 you a visit. Perhaps you will say that any 
 condition is suitable for that. But I can 
 not find the resolution to go to your father's 
 house till I look more like filling the char- 
 acter in which I come. 
 
 You will not misunderstand, Katherine 
 dearest. I do not surmise any loss of sym- 
 pathy. Your family has always been very 
 kind. My ow^n pride prescribes my action. 
 I hope between now and the middle of July 
 I shall pick up sufficiently to enjoy the privi- 
 lege of seeing you. 
 
 I had almost forgotten your query about 
 Japan. I should much like to be a Jap. If 
 
LOVE-LIFE 153 
 
 you have any influence with the Mikado, and 
 he will assign me an estate in the most de- 
 lightful part of his empire, I will sever the 
 ties that bind me to the land of Our Fathers 
 and, taking with me what is dearer to me 
 than all lands, become his liege subject. 
 Your cherry-eating, fan-vibrating invalid 
 
 RONSBY 
 
 CATHNESS 
 INDEPENDENCE DAY 
 
 Five days of rain and cloud have again 
 brought me low, dearest. I have been un- 
 able to write. The suffocation I endure is 
 unspeakable. It has worn upon my nerves 
 and made me utterly unfit to be seen. 
 
 It is no longer of use to try to give ex- 
 pression to the disappointment and unhappi- 
 ness which my condition causes me. They 
 are beyond expression. They are as great 
 and terrible as the longing I have felt, and 
 the happiness I have missed, are great and 
 sweet. 
 
 And how can I comfort you when I have 
 
154 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 no comfort? When I can not bear my own 
 wretchedness how shall I lighten yours? 
 There is but one thought in which I find re- 
 lief, such as it is — our suspense and my 
 pain can not be of much longer duration. 
 This summer and autumn must tell. 
 
 Dear heart, you remember my first con- 
 fession of love — it was a confession of my 
 own love. Still now I have the stranger 
 confession of your love. Again a wonderful 
 sense has ripened within me during all these 
 days of absence and pain — a blessed, ex- 
 haustless certainty that your love is very 
 love and the sweet, divine sister of mine. 
 Before, I believed you loved me and thought 
 you loved me, but it is only of late that I 
 seem to know it. Do you call this a sick 
 man's vagary? 
 
 CATHNESS 
 13 JUXY 
 
 What wild surmises will not have passed 
 through that dear, high-carried little head of 
 yours, Katherine, on account of my long de- 
 lay? I must confess, sweet, that I have not 
 
LOVE-LIFE 155 
 
 been able to write before. Days of drench- 
 ing rain hindered recuperative energies of 
 body. But now I am better, and planning 
 to start for Colorado. 
 
 You suggest pretty plainly, Katherine, that 
 I have not the courage to live. I wish it 
 were not true. You have more of such cour- 
 age than I, and you must make up for the 
 lack in me. I shall always come to you for 
 the inspiration of strength. 
 
 There seems now only one thing in the 
 world I fear — ill-health. If ill-health I 
 ever conquer, there is no fate nor fortune I 
 would exchange for mine, because you will 
 share it whatever it may be. 
 
 Your martyr of love and patience 
 
 CATHNESS 
 24 JULY 
 
 You doubtless have looked for a letter 
 from the far west, dearest Katherine, and 
 here comes the old post-mark of that little 
 town — of which you know so little as not 
 to know that it prospers two railways, and 
 
156 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 that it is possible for the naughty lover of the 
 sweetest lady in the world to escape to the far 
 mountains without passing through Ash- 
 burnham, the home of that lovely girl and 
 object of his avoidance. 
 
 I was too unwell to venture on the journey 
 last week. I have been actually unable to 
 write, or I should have told you sooner of the 
 delay. Since yesterday I am better and in 
 hopes I shall breathe the dry air of Colorado 
 before the end of the week. All arrange- 
 ments are made even to purchase of tickets. 
 
 These letters, my darling Light, report no 
 good news and are most unsatisfactory. All 
 our future is in such a dense mist as to blot 
 out the sweet visions absent lovers use to 
 console separation. 
 
 We can not discuss our plans for the happy 
 time to come with any heart. We can not 
 even praise Love between us for so fearful 
 a joy as his presence is to us. We can only 
 clasp hands silently in the dark, and with a 
 patience akin to despair await the uncertain 
 outcome. 
 
LOVE-LIFE 157 
 
 Only a man's heart knows the pain it is 
 to make the object of its love and tenderest 
 worship a sharer in such gloom, instead of 
 the happy bride and the sovereign lady of 
 his whole and happy life. 
 
 A thousand things remain unsaid between 
 us, but I trust your true and deep heart to 
 divine them. 
 
VII 
 
 LETTERS SENT FROM 
 COLORADO 
 
DENVER 
 4 AUGUST 
 
 Katherine darling 
 
 A word must satisfy my desire to write 
 and yours to hear. 
 
 I reached Denver last night in better spir- 
 its than when on Monday afternoon I left 
 home — and that notwithstanding the fatigue 
 of a long journey, and the annoyance of even 
 longer delays. Through the failure of roads 
 to connect, and delays by washouts, I grad- 
 ually became used to the dry thin air of Colo- 
 rado and already feel great relief. 
 
 I have to send so many letters to-day that 
 I must beg your indulgence for this. Write 
 at once that I may be assured that the golden 
 fetter which I carry about the world, and 
 which links me to life and hope, is not loosed 
 at its other end. 
 
 TALAPACO 
 17 AUGUST 
 
 Another letter, Katherine dearest, in that 
 long, long correspondence which had made 
 
 i6i 
 
162 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 the very look of paper and ink suggestive to 
 me of hope deferred and heart-sickness. 
 
 How near we seemed last fall to that hap- 
 piness which is among the few things in this 
 world that I have been content to adore in 
 great entirety, without analysis. 
 
 We were to be happy first of all because 
 \\t were to be together. Then because we 
 were to have a thousand opportunities to 
 serve each other. How many pursuits in 
 common! How many little plans for our 
 own happiness and the happiness of others! 
 How divine and sweet the paths of duty and 
 of w^isdom-seeking which we were to tread 
 with inseparable feet of love ! 
 
 But I told you I could not analyze that 
 happiness which enchains me to life. Those 
 are not its elements. It is not in pursuits or 
 duties or enjoyments, but there is a real God 
 
 Ah, it eludes us like a mirage ! 
 
 But all these things are so, 
 
 And all the world is bitter as a tear ! 
 
 I do not write these despondent lines be- 
 
LOVE-LIFE 163 
 
 cause of any special, or new, cause of de- 
 spair. I am even slightly better, or at least 
 easier. But certainly the disease is stubborn. 
 I get but little sleep at night by reason of 
 coughing, and have so little strength and en- 
 ergy by day that a short walk exhausts me. 
 For reading and writing I have lost every 
 inclination. What this climate will do for 
 me I have not yet seen, but I begin to despair. 
 I fear, Katherine, you do not say how ill 
 you are. Trouble and care wear upon you 
 terribly, just as you revive with great fresh- 
 ness and vigor under the stimulants of joy 
 and hope. Unhappy I that cause you pain ! 
 As always and ever yours 
 
 TALAPACO 
 28 AUGUST 
 
 In many of my letters, dear Katherine, 
 written under the discouragement of pain and 
 depression, I have no heart to try to tell you 
 the untenable things that love continually 
 prompts to say, and I write you little, meagre 
 notes about my sufferings. Oh, how great 
 
164 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 and patient your love is that makes so much 
 of the feeble words of tenderness that my 
 poor letters sometimes convey! If they 
 " come like refreshing breezes from the 
 west," imagine the storm of imprisoned emo- 
 tions from which they proceed. 
 
 If it were not for you, darling, I know that 
 all the misery of these months would have 
 utterly destroyed my susceptibility to every- 
 thing sweet and joyful and beautiful. But 
 the simple thought of you refreshes and re- 
 stores me. When nothing else will stimu- 
 late my exhausted and nerveless sense from 
 its torpor, your name, or some token of you, 
 will awaken the nameless ecstasy which 
 dazed me for more than a week together one 
 spring we remember. 
 
 And, oh, how I gloat over your dear letters 
 and their precious assurance of love. But 
 it is so vain! so vain! — to try to unbur- 
 den my poor heart on paper. It aches more 
 and more at the thought of its unattainable 
 happiness. 
 
 I am glad to tell you that I have walked 
 
LOVE-LIFE 165 
 
 two miles and ridden on horseback as many 
 as eight without great fatigue. But the 
 cough remains, especially at night. 
 
 You must not let my condition interfere 
 with your journeying, Katherine dear. You 
 need the relief change of scene gives, and we 
 can manage not to be wholly without news 
 of each other. Then I feel very hopeful of 
 being better. This is my twenty-seventh 
 birthday. It seems a long time since I was 
 born. 
 
 TALAPACO 
 
 11 SEPTEMBER 
 
 When I have gained sufficient strength to 
 write, dearest, I scarcely have sufficient cour- 
 age to tell you that I have had a backset, and 
 improvement is, at least for the time, checked. 
 
 It seems that to you I am under obligations 
 to get well, that I must not fail. No one 
 else has such interest in my health. I know 
 how patient and hopeful you are, and yet 
 it will not relieve me from an almost appre- 
 hensive sense of respdnsibility. How fool- 
 
166 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 ish I am, you will say. And so I am — but 
 when was ever Love altogether wise ? 
 
 I seem to have recovered my usual strength 
 — that is, now usual — but the last ten days 
 I have suffered extremely. Every afternoon 
 a storm has risen back of us in the mountains, 
 and if the rain did not as frequently reach 
 us, we had its atmospheric conditions. 
 Doubtless this has aggravated the malady. 
 
 You will soon start journeying, my high- 
 heart, and in your faring you must not ne- 
 glect me. A letter will reach me from any 
 place in the country as well as from Ash- 
 burnham. 
 
 How can you speak of my " shunning " 
 you, Katherine, even in fun — is it that the 
 poor child tries to make fun to conceal the 
 aching heart? You know the only reason 
 that I did not visit you was that I was in no 
 fit condition to be guest at any house. Per- 
 haps you do not know how dreadfully de- 
 pressing this illness is, and how one suffering 
 it has not enjoyment of a single faculty, or of 
 a single feeling. I do not purpose to return 
 
LOVE-LIFE 167 
 
 to Ashburnham till I am greatly improved 
 — if that may ever be — and then you shall 
 see how carefully I shun you. 
 
 TALAPACO 
 12 OCTOBER 
 
 You will have been disappointed, Kath- 
 erine, at not finding a letter awaiting your 
 return. But you must know that other folks 
 make excursions too. While you were flit- 
 ting from town to town I was on a camping 
 trip to Manitou and The Garden of the Gods. 
 I read your letters from Boston and Phila- 
 delphia for the first time yesterday. I do 
 not know but only fancy you are at home, 
 and I do hope the trip was helpful to my 
 darling, high-hearted girl. 
 
 A camping tour of two hundred miles was 
 certainly good for me. The cough had kept 
 me in bed the greater part of days. Weather 
 was unsettled and I had taken cold. But 
 jolting along in a covered wagon and sleep- 
 ing in a tent afforded great relief from the 
 suffocation. 
 
168 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 Season for campers is getting late, still I 
 must go again this year. And next spring 
 — if I live till then — I must fit myself for 
 a long campaign. 
 
 Would not your mother, or your father, or 
 the lately wedded pair come and spend next 
 summer with you in sight of the noble moun- 
 tain parks? We might then be together. 
 How much that would do for me, who can 
 tell ? Certainly it is the only thing that still 
 has power to make me wish to live. To live 
 is to be with you. That is the last great un- 
 submerged highland of my life's desires. 
 
 Another time a better letter. 
 
 TALAPACO 
 6 NOVEMBER 
 
 You have long expected these lines, dear 
 Katherine. I have long been unable to write 
 them, and at last I almost feel like taking 
 refuge in some friendly hand to do it for me. 
 
 But no — we have lived in the face of a 
 great calamity, and when it is time to take 
 any resolution in regard to it, we must do it 
 together. 
 
LOVE-LIFE 169 
 
 I have been very sick. I can not give you 
 any idea of what I suffered, and now I am 
 just able to be up a few hours in the twenty 
 four. My power of recovery I no longer be- 
 lieve in. I have gained nothing with the 
 exception of the temporary stimulus from a 
 new climate — the disease has gone steadily 
 on. , 
 
 Katherine dear, it is not wise for us to 
 entertain further hopes. I can not bear that 
 you should go on in any illusion which must 
 soon be dispelled. I write dispassionately 
 because all passion of words is less than the 
 things I feel. Were I even to live a few 
 years of the invalidism they call recovery, I 
 should not be myself. 
 
 My vigor of mind, as well as of body, has 
 been permanently injured. I have been 
 brought to renounce all hopes of life because 
 a dim and fluctuating hope is far greater tor- 
 ture to me than utter resignation. 
 
 I can advise nothing. My heart aches for 
 myself and feels unutterable depression for 
 you that I have made thus unhappy. 
 
170 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 I must leave it all to you, as I leave life to 
 you. I am too feeble to feel much save one 
 thing — a love that is my poor life, and yet 
 far greater. 
 
 TALAPACO 
 
 17 NOVEMBER 
 
 My Katherine, your letter overwhelms me 
 with a flood of emotion. I have thought of 
 nothing else for two days but the great, sweet 
 soul revealed in those high-hearted lines — 
 how it is the very fulfillment of my dream 
 and ideals — what I dared not ever hope to 
 see. 
 
 Oh, Kate, you say I seem to want to put 
 you from me and that I have misread you. 
 In this, dear, you misread me, save in the 
 opinion that I have not always had a faith 
 equal to the strength of your truth. But 
 would it not be great presumption for one to 
 imagine himself loved with that divine 
 strength and perfect passion which only the 
 sad fortune of our lives enables you to prove 
 so soon? 
 
 I have always made it a rule to expect of 
 
LOVE-LIFE 171 
 
 others as little as possible, and not to em- 
 barrass anyone by taking him for a saint 
 or a hero. And dear, if I have not been 
 willing to exact of you all your great heart 
 stands ready to give, will you not forgive 
 me? 
 
 But I do feel that it is best for us to look 
 upon the darkest side of our fortune as the 
 one fate has turned to us. It distresses me 
 beyond measure to think that you have the 
 bitter fact still to accept. I can not get ready 
 to die till you have accepted it, and till I 
 know that you have the wisdom and strength 
 to do what is wisest and best. 
 
 It would be, as you say, much easier to 
 die than to live on, the ruined half of a 
 broken life, were it not for this very bitter 
 thought in death — that we leave one whom 
 we love better than life to the lonely years of 
 a companionless existence. But after all it 
 is perhaps the easier lot to die. 
 
 I do not suffer a great deal now but am 
 very weak and seldom out of bed. The exer- 
 tion of writing this has quite fatigued me, 
 
172 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 and I must defer much I would say to another 
 time. Write often to 
 
 Your RoNSBY 
 
 TALAPACO 
 
 13 DECEMBER 
 
 You never had a feebler correspondent, 
 dear Katherine, than he who forces himself 
 to scrawl these words. For two weeks I have 
 been confined to bed with influenza, and I am 
 incredibly weak from suffering and confine- 
 ment. 
 
 It is wrong for you, darling, to distress 
 yourself because of your inability to do for 
 me. There is little that all the world could 
 do if it were leagued to help me, and it is not 
 a little after all that you do who are my great 
 reason for caring at all to live. 
 
 We have been having a long cold spell 
 here with abundant ice and snow for the 
 sports. It is hard on me, and I feel that the 
 winter and I have embraced for mortal com- 
 bat. Which will see the other go out I can 
 
LOVE-LIFE 173 
 
 only conjecture. If I live till warm weather, 
 I shall have a new chance. 
 
 Oh, how much I should like to say a thou- 
 sand things that rise inchoate in my weak 
 spirit and, like the feeble shades in Virgil, 
 will never rise clara in luminis ora. My 
 heart is full of love and pity whenever your 
 dear image comes before me. But I feel 
 stricken dumb and all speech seems vain. 
 
 Keep up courage, Katherine dearest — I 
 do not say hope, but courage. I feel that 
 your own health is in great danger from your 
 painful anxiety. Spare your own health 
 and live — for while you live my better part 
 defies the gloom of Orcus. 
 
 TALAPACO 
 
 NEW year's day 
 
 My anxiety to hear from you, dearest, 
 urges me to endeavor a letter. Oh, how 
 weary I am of reporting to you one unfavor- 
 able turn after another! A dull attack of 
 the old neuralgia and a fresh cold have 
 greatly aggravated the cough. 
 
174 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 The New Year opens with a bright, cold 
 morning over a world of snow. It does not, 
 however, seem like a New Year to me, but 
 some old worn-out year, lived through ages 
 ago, whose weary paths I must enter upon 
 again. Where are the high and hopeful 
 resolutions of other New Years ! — impel- 
 ling tasks to be finished before the end! — 
 dazzling visions of great things to be 
 achieved in the long perspective of future 
 years! The very faculty of hope with the 
 power to resolve, and all interest in life- 
 tasks, seem to have left me forever. I hardly 
 retain my identity. 
 
 Your letters abate no jot of their hopeful 
 tone. May fate some day grant me power to 
 reward your loving trust! The miseries of 
 years would be forgotten in one short season 
 of such tranquil joy as love can fill our lives 
 with. 
 
 How easy it would be for those deaf pow- 
 ers of heaven to cure the wrongs of the past, 
 when they have Love to help ! Still patience 
 and resignation are our only stays. I wait 
 
LOVE-LIFE 175 
 
 for the warm airs of spring as the wrecked 
 mariner looks for the rescuing sail. The 
 question is — can I live till then? 
 
 I write under the painful apprehension 
 that this letter may find you sick and unable 
 to welcome this poor New Year's greeting. 
 How poor a thing is a letter! One hand- 
 clasp, one kiss were worth a thousand of 
 them. 
 
 Ever and always your 
 
 RONSBY 
 
 TALAPACO 
 16 JANUARY 
 
 By this time, dearest Katherine, you are 
 wanting to know how I fare. Well, I get up 
 every day notwithstanding there is no let-up 
 in distressing weather. Snow has covered 
 the ground since the first of December, and 
 last night we had a fresh fall and freeze-up. 
 
 I have opportunity to secure the manag- 
 ing editorship of a newspaper in one of the 
 nearby towns. If my health only permitted 
 me to undertake the duties ! — which of 
 
176 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 course it does not. I think I might discharge 
 the merely editorial labor. But even to do 
 that I must make a gain of strength with the 
 spring. 
 
 How happy I should be if it were to turn 
 out as I wish! Then we might renew our 
 old drives, but this time through The Gar- 
 den of the Gods and the glens of Manitou. 
 Could you come to stay somewhere in my 
 neighborhood next summer? You know I 
 can not reach the fulfillment of our great de- 
 sire of being together — but we might at 
 least be near each other. 
 
 I know you have no idea of the change ill- 
 ness has made in my person. How would 
 you relish a cadaverous and feeble lover? — 
 a lover with bronchitic tones and not energy 
 sufficient to respond to your most moderate 
 exactions? Have you realized such condi- 
 tions as actually mine ? — or would they 
 strike you with most painful surprise? It 
 seems, you say, that your place is with me 
 under all circumstances, and surely I can 
 not defend an opposite opinion. But then 
 
LOVE-LIFE 177 
 
 we should be freed from the constant presence 
 of, and daily dependence upon, strangers. 
 
 I have not more patience than there is real 
 need of. Heaven knows how that is. What 
 can we do? You make a suggestion. With 
 life itself in a most uncertain balance, we are 
 bold, it seems to me, to plan at all. I fear 
 you distress and rack your dear head with 
 schemes to effect the impossible. You are 
 so often ill of late, I fear this unhappiness is 
 wearing you out. Tell me truly, is it mental 
 trouble and worry that so sap your health? 
 Oh, what shall I do if your spirit fails you 
 and I can not help you! Spare me this. 
 
 18 JANUARY 
 
 Your short letter referring to Stanford's 
 death came a few hours ago. 
 
 Ill again, and as ever from some mental 
 agitation is its painful preface. How ear- 
 nestly I pray that this heartfelt loss of a 
 friend may at last release you from the 
 almost ever-present, haunting thought which 
 
178 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 your distracted heart fed with its best blood. 
 
 In those months, long ago, I was not un- 
 aware in any important particular of the 
 turmoil in that dear breast, which often ren- 
 dered it insensible to my presence. But I 
 hoped that in the end it would grow calm 
 with no mingled image glowing in its depths. 
 Then, too, how could I blame you when I 
 had acted with such indiscretion as to claim 
 you in the very agonies of the old attach- 
 ment ? Your love for Stanford did not prove 
 what both had hoped. Still, I had no right 
 for that reason so totally to disregard it, to 
 count it as nothing from the moment I felt 
 some assurance that your inmost heart was 
 mine. 
 
 But we are happy in the terrible expe- 
 riences of the last two years, for with all else 
 it has ground to dust it has not spared the 
 doubts and involuntary misgivings of those 
 earliest days. My only anxiety now is that 
 you should forever dismiss from your soul 
 the last wretched reproaches. If turned 
 from there no other heart will shelter them 
 
LOVE-LIFE 179 
 
 and they will perish. Rely upon my per- 
 fect love, my perfect confidence, nay, more, 
 my pride in the unequalled devotion and con- 
 stancy with which I am so blessed as to be 
 loved. 
 
 When last I saw the dear boy in New York 
 he was the very image of manly vigor and 
 health. I little dreamed he would precede 
 me along the dusty way that lights us to the 
 grave. 
 
 I still hold my own in the midst of bad 
 weather. 
 
 Yours forever 
 
 TALAPACO 
 
 11 FEBRUARY 
 
 To-day I am strong enough to sit up and 
 write a few lines to you, dearest Katherine. 
 For nearly two weeks I have been prostrate 
 with a great aggravation of illness. It is 
 the worst attack I have had and has brought 
 me nearer the end. Unless my strength re- 
 acts soon I have but a short time to live — 
 perhaps three or four weeks. Nor can I look 
 
180 THE PROFESSOR'S 
 
 upon an escape from this attack as anything 
 but a short reprieve of an inevitable sentence. 
 
 To-day may be a turning-point. I can 
 not say — this disease is so treacherous. I 
 have done with hope, however, and will not 
 again be lifted up only to be dashed into an 
 abyss. 
 
 If the end is really near, shall I see you? 
 I do not try to write what can not be written, 
 what I feel at this moment with your image 
 in my heart. 
 
 TALAPACO 
 23 FEBRUARY 
 
 Still in bed, Katherine dear, unable from 
 weakness and the inconveniences of illness to 
 be about. 
 
 Two unanswered letters from your dear 
 hand lie beside me on my pillow. They are 
 very brief and seem to bear evidence of a soul 
 in unutterable misery. Oh, I could destroy 
 myself out of grief when I think it is I who 
 have brought you to this. Is it not mad- 
 ness for a frail mortal, subject to such scorns 
 and cruelties of nature, to dare to invite an- 
 
LOVE-LIFE 181 
 
 other to partake of the nectar of love, a 
 draught only for the happy gods? — a mad- 
 ness that multiplies our miseries a thousand 
 fold. 
 
 Death has lost all its terrors for me save 
 one, and that is because my dearer self is yet 
 beyond all assuaging and calming power of 
 my spirit. I can answer for my poor self, 
 but how can I, how dare I die for you? 
 
 I have sent for mother to come, both in 
 view of the danger of a speedy close, and, in 
 other event, for the sake of her presence. 
 The weather is fair at present, but we have to 
 look for a blustering and changeable spring, 
 unfavorable to sick lungs. 
 
 Now my Light, if your continued ill health 
 is the result of mental anxiety, without any 
 important contributing physical cause, what 
 are we to think but that your nature is far too 
 frail and sensitive for the serious responsi- 
 bilities of life? I know what cause and 
 excuse you have for excessive sorrowing, but 
 I would rather know that you were squarely 
 sick of something time might cure than that 
 
182 LOVE-LIFE 
 
 all this distress were the soul's oppression 
 under the cross of life. 
 
 Write me, darling, more about yourself — 
 what you do and what you think of besides 
 this poor, unworthy invalid, the equal thrall 
 of Love and Death. 
 
 TALAPACO 
 8 MARCH 
 
 If my unsteady hand finishes this page, 
 Katherine, my treasure, it will be all I can 
 hope. My condition is worse only in that I 
 suffer more. We are having a great snow 
 storm. You must not stop your blessed let- 
 ters to me, darling, because I can not answer 
 them. I have no other correspondent now 
 
 to whom I write avroy/aa^iKws. 
 
 My dreams of you grow more and more 
 vivid, and I have lived through many a 
 lovely season by your side absorbed in the 
 tenderest and noblest delights of life. 
 
 But my hand sinks and my feeble hours 
 are few. 
 
 God be with you. Light and Life. 
 
 RONSBY 
 THE END 
 
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