The soul at times can do anything with matter. I
have been busying myself with Sainte-Beuve's seven volumes on the Port
Royal development. I like him (Sainte-Beuve). His capacity of seeing,
doing justice to all kinds of natures and sentiments, is wonderful. I
am sorry he is no longer our side the veil.
There is a redbird (cardinal grosbeak) singing in the orange trees
fronting my window, so sweetly and insistently as to almost stop my
writing. I hope, dear friend, you are well--better than when you wrote
last.
It was very sweet and kind of you to write what you did last. I
suppose it is so long ago you may have forgotten, but it was a word of
tenderness and sympathy about my brother's trial; it was womanly,
tender, and sweet, such as at heart you are. After all, my love of you
is greater than my admiration, for I think it more and better to be
really a woman worth loving than to have read Greek and German and
written books. And in this last book I read, I feel more with you in
some little, fine points,--they stare at me as making an amusing
exhibition. For, my dear, I feel myself at last as one who has been
playing and picnicking on the shores of life, and waked from a dream
late in the afternoon to find that everybody almost has gone over to
the beyond. And the rest are sorting their things and packing their
trunks, and waiting for the boat to come and take them.
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