There! I will not write another
word until I can give you a word of cheer. Why don't you toss me
overboard? Your life is full of cheer and hard work; but I cannot be like
you. Marjorie and Morris were busy at the dining-room table when I left
them, with their heads together over my old Euclid. We are giving them a
lift up into the sunshine and that is something. What do you want to send
Marjorie to school for? What can school do for her when I give her up to
you? Give yourself to her and keep her out of school. The child is not
always happy. Last communion Sunday she sat next to me; she was crying
softly all the time. You could have said something, but, manlike, I held
my peace. I wonder whether I don't know what to say, or don't know how to
say it. I seem to know what to say to you, but, truly Prudence, I don't
know how to say it. I have been wanting to tell you something, fourteen,
yes, fourteen years, and have not dared and do not dare to night.
Sometimes I am sure I have a right, a precious right, a sacred right, and
then something bids me forbear, and I forbear. I am forbearing now as I
sit up here in my chamber alone, crowded in among my books and the wind
is wild upon the water. I am gloomy to-night and discouraged. My book,
the book I have lost myself in so long, has been refused the fourth time.
Had it not been for your hand upon my arm awhile ago it would be now
shrivelled and curling among the ashes on my hearth.
"Who was it that stood on London Bridge and did not throw his manuscript
over? Listen! Do you hear that grand child of yours asking who it was
that sat by his hearth and did not toss his manuscript into the fire?
Didn't somebody in the Bible toss a roll into the fire on the hearth? I
want you to come to talk to me.
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