It seems as if you must have written, and the letter
somehow gone astray, because I know, of course, you would write.
Yesterday we were both out of our senses with mingled pity and
indignation at that dreadful stick of a Casaubon,--and think of poor
Dorothea dashing like a warm, sunny wave against so cold and repulsive
a rock! He is a little too dreadful for anything: there does not seem
to be a drop of warm blood in him, and so, as it is his misfortune and
not his fault, to be cold-blooded, one must not get angry with him. It
is the scene in the garden, after the interview with the doctor, that
rests on our mind at this present. There was such a man as he over in
Boston, high in literary circles, but I fancy his wife wasn't like
Dorothea, and a vastly proper time they had of it, treating each other
with mutual reverence, like two Chinese mandarins.
My love, what I miss in this story is just what we would have if you
would come to our tumble-down, jolly, improper, but joyous country,--
namely, "jollitude." You write and live on so high a plane! It is all
self-abnegation. We want to get you over here, and into this house,
where, with closed doors, we sometimes make the rafters ring with fun,
and say anything and everything, no matter what, and won't be any
properer than we's a mind to be. I am wishing every day you could see
our America,--travel, as I have been doing, from one bright, thriving,
pretty, flowery town to another, and see so much wealth, ease,
progress, culture, and all sorts of nice things.
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