&nb
sp;                                        Riverdale, new York. 
          
                                             April, 7, ’03. 
Dear MACALISTER,—­Yours arrived last night, and God knows I was glad to get it, for I was afraid I had blundered into an offence in some way and forfeited your friendship—­a kind of blunder I have made so many times in my life that I am always standing in a waiting and morbid dread of its occurrence.

Three days ago I was in condition—­during one horribly long night—­to sympathetically roast with you in your “hell of troubles.”  During that night I was back again where I was in the black days when I was buried under a mountain of debt.  I called the daughters to me in private council and paralysed them with the announcement, “Our outgo has increased in the past 8 months until our expenses are now 125 per cent. greater than our income.”

It was a mistake.  When I came down in the morning a gray and aged wreck, and went over the figures again, I found that in some unaccountable way (unaccountable to a business man but not to me) I had multiplied the totals by 2.  By God I dropped 75 years on the floor where I stood.

Do you know it affected me as one is affected when he wakes out of a hideous dream and finds that it was only a dream.  It was a great comfort and satisfaction to me to call the daughters to a private meeting of the Board again and say, “You need not worry any more; our outgo is only a third more than our income; in a few months your mother will be out of her bed and on her feet again—­then we shall drop back to normal and be all right.”

Certainly there is a blistering and awful reality about a well-arranged unreality.  It is quite within the possibilities that two or three nights like that night of mine could drive a man to suicide.  He would refuse to examine the figures; they would revolt him so, and he could go to his death unaware that there was nothing serious about them.  I cannot get that night out of my head, it was so vivid, so real, so ghastly.  In any other year of these 33 the relief would have been simple:  go where you can cut your cloth to fit your income.  You can’t do that when your wife can’t be moved, even from one room to the next.

Clam spells the trained nurse afternoons; I am allowed to see Mrs. Clemens 20 minutes twice a day and write her two letters a day provided I put no news in them.  No other person ever sees her except the physician and now and then a nerve-specialist from New York.  She saw there was something the matter that morning, but she got no facts out of me.  But that is nothing—­she hasn’t had anything but lies for 8 months.  A fact would give her a relapse.

The doctor and a specialist met in conspiracy five days ago, and in their belief she will by and by come out of this as good as new, substantially.  They ordered her to Italy for next winter—­which seems to indicate that by autumn she will be able to undertake the voyage.  So Clara is writing a Florence friend to take a look round among the villas for us in the regions near that city.  It seems early to do this, but Joan Bergheim thought it would be wise.