Not that they are
unkind; not that they are not angels! I told them at once that you
could send me no more money till you reached England, perhaps not
then; and they answered that God would send it; that He who had sent
me to them would send the means of supporting me; and ever since they
have redoubled their kindness: but it is intolerable, this dependence,
and on you, too, who have a father to support in his darkness. Oh,
how I feel for you! But to tell you the truth, I pay a price for this
dependence. I must needs be staid and sober; I must needs dress
like any Quakeress; I must not read this book nor that; and my
Shelley--taken from me, I suppose, because it spoke too much
'Liberty,' though, of course, the reason given was its infidel
opinions--is replaced by 'Law's Serious Call.' 'Tis all right and
good, I doubt not: but it is very dreary; as dreary as these black
fir-forests, and brown snake fences, and that dreadful, dreadful
Canadian winter which is past, which went to my very heart, day after
day, like a sword of ice. Another such winter, and I shall die, as one
of my own humming-birds would die, did you cage him here, and prevent
him from fleeing home to the sunny South when the first leaves begin
to fall. Dear children of the sun! my heart goes forth to them; and
the whir of their wings is music to me, for it tells me of the South,
the glaring South, with its glorious flowers, and glorious woods, its
luxuriance, life, fierce enjoyments--let fierce sorrows come with
them, if it must be so! Let me take the evil with the good, and live
my rich wild life through bliss and agony, like a true daughter of the
sun, instead of crystallising slowly here into ice, amid countenances
rigid with respectability, sharpened by the lust of gain; without
taste, without emotion, without even sorrow! Let who will be the
stagnant mill-head, crawling in its ugly spade-cut ditch to turn the
mill.
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