Here, in this sweet centre, if a lady wishes “for to make eyes” at a man, by way of a letter, she does it without being told to do it by the said man’s wife.  And then to open, “Dear Mr. Lane,”—­Gosh Lizzie! isn’t that pretty warm!

My anger is so great that I am now sitting up in bed at the weary hour of two to relieve myself—­for otherwise I cannot sleep.

Your remarks upon the distraught condition of the public mind, the unfortunate fix into which the Polacks have fixed themselves, the heart-breaking cry that you send out for men to get together and be sensible, before they are sadder,—­these things have no lodgement in my soul-center.  For I am loved by a lady who speaks much of free speech and courage and candor and other virtues of prehistoric existence, but who talks of herself all through her letter and never of me at all.  How can the fire be kept burning with a cold back-log like that?  Talk about me!  That’s the first principle of all conversation—­even not amorous.  Well, you are a good woman, Mrs. Ellis, and I hope Mr. Ellis is well, and that you are not having trouble with the help.  Goodbye, Mrs. Ellis!

Come, sweet Elizabeth, let us join hands and go for a gay climb over the piney hills—­you can sing your minor note of sad distress—­your miserere, if you can, in the face of the puffy clouds, and I will laugh at you for having too much of world concern in your heart.  The blessings do not come to those who are “troubled about many things.”  The soul is an individual, you know.  We are saved by units not en masse.  Every individual is a species —­isn’t that what splendid Bergson says?  So come away from responsibilities and let your poor heart, which is so unselfish that it cannot rest, indulge itself in the luxury of a peaceful forgetting, for a few days.

Practically, this seems like a good place—­the process is to reduce you to a pulp and then gradually restore you to form.  I am just emerging from the mash.

Do give my greetings—­graduated calorically as your judgment suggests—­to the many friends in your neighborhood who have forgotten me.

Devotedly, yet very sore,

F. K. L.

[September]

This is a sentimental letter from a sentimentalist to a sent—­, for a sent—.  It is by way of atonement, chiefly.  I want to be forgiven for all the hard things I have said to you.  I feel that I owe you much, at least a good word, for all the bad ones I have given you.

You are a health-giver.  That’s not such a bad name, is it?  In fact I don’t know a better.  It doesn’t sound sentimental, no husband would be alarmed by it, and yet it carries in it implications of gaiety and tenderness and rompishness with a touch of mysterious adoration.  Altogether it is a very real large word that does not signify virtues but rather attractivenesses.  Mind, I don’t say that you have not the virtues—­all of them, offensive and defensive, but the attractivenesses