Our Lady of the Beeches: Prologue of Letters

LETTER I.

IN A BEECH FOREST, April 7.
DEAR PESSIMIST, — I have read your book through three times ; my copy has grown very shabby; the covers are stained, — I dropped it in a brook; the margins are covered with penciled notes. In a word, I love the book. Does this justify my writing to you, an absolute stranger ? By no means, I should say ; and yet, safe among my beeches, I am not afraid of doing so. I don’t know who you are, nor you who I may be, and if you should choose to ignore my letter, that is an easy way of making an end of it. The direct reason for my writing is this: —
The little pointed shadows of the new beech leaves, dancing over the ground, have reminded me of your shadow theory, and I have been wondering whether you really believe in that theory, or whether it is merely a poetic idea belonging to your pose as “The Pessimist. ” Do you really think that no life can be judged alone, “without consideration of the shadows of other lives that overlap it ” ?
This theory, sincerely believed in, would lead to a very comfortable philosophy of irresponsibility, and the more I study the Breviary, the more I wonder whether it is sincere, or merely an artistic point of view assumed for the occasion. Your chapter on Hamlet is delicious; Hamlet as a neurasthenic, treated in a way that tempts me strongly to the belief that you are a physician. I wonder! Is n’t it Balzac who says, “Les drames de la vie ne sont pas dans les circonstances, — ils sont dans le cœur ” ?
I have been sitting here, like Mr. Leo Hunter’s expiring frog, “on a log, ” trying to think over this theory in connection with yours of the shadows. I say trying to think, because, whatever other women may find their brains capable of, I much doubt whether my own ever gets further than musing— or even dreaming.
You say that if Hamlet had not been a nervous invalid, the trifling shock of his father’s murder and his mother’s marriage would not have been fatal to him, — such events being quite everyday in his age and country. Then you apply your shadow theory to him, the shadows, on his poor dazed brain, of his mother, of Ophelia, etc., —and go off into incomprehensibilities that make my poor dazed brain whirl.
I have read and re-read the abstruser parts of the book, trying to understand with I fear little success, but against one thing I protest. You speak of nature, and yet you avow that your studies are made in a laboratory ! Wise as you are and ignorant though I am, I am nearer nature here in my forest than you in your laboratory. The things that fall away from one, leaving one almost a child, when one is alone with trees!
The tone of your book is a curious one. It is not despairing, it is intellectual, it is charming, and yet — what is the use of being wise if it brings no more than it has brought you!
Another thing. Why do you say that you do not know German? You do, for your translations from poor Nietzsche are original. Chapter 5, paragraph 2 : “ Great people have in their very greatness great virtues, and do not need the small goodnesses of the small-brained.” Let it go at that. You are a great man, and do not need the bourgeois virtue of truth-telling. The last remark is rather impertinent, but it is one of those spring days when one grows expansive and daring, and, after all, the luxury of saying what one likes is rare.
So, good-by, Pessimist. Greetings from my beech forest and from myself. The small brook, much interested in the greenness of the valley, is rushing down over the stones with the noisy haste of things youthful, and I see one cowslip in a hollow. I wonder if even Pessimists love Spring!

And if you will be indulgent toward this feminine curiosity about your book, which has charmed a woman not easily charmed, let me know just this much: whether the Breviary expresses your real convictions, or is written as it were by a fictitious character.

If you will tell me this I shall be very grateful to you, and in any case let me thank you for having charmed away for me a great many hours. Address :

MADAME ANNETTE BONNET,

4 bis, rue Tambour, Paris. Madame Bonnet being an old servant, who will forward your note, if you are kind enough to write one, to me here in my forest.

LETTER II.

IK A LABORATORY, May 7.
To MY UNKNOWN CRITIC, — Should I explain, excuse, give a thousand and one reasons why four weeks have been allowed to pass without my acknowledging the kindly meant letter of a gracious critic? A “gentle” one, too, as the polite men of a hundred years ago used to say.
But why should I answer ? And why do I?

From a beech forest to a laboratory is a wide leap, a rude transition, one, my critic, that, if you could make it, would cause you to rub your eyes, and stare, and blink (forgive the unromantic picture that I draw),and cry, “Wait till I collect my senses.”
It is no wonder that you would be dizzy, for a moment at least, and think that some rude hand had roughly called you back from a land of dreams, beautiful dreams, and dragged you into a dazzling light of stern, hard, unromantic facts. It is all very well to lie in your beautiful forest, and watch the lights and shadows play, and dream that you know the truth.
Truth is not found in dreams, dear lady. It is found, if ever, in laborious observation of facts, in patient, drudging study of nature. What do you know of truth ? Do you not see that it is absurd, your calling me to account for my book? You are idling with the emotions that nature stirs within you, and I have studied that nature for years. Not the nature only of trees and flowers, but the nature that is everything, — the spring of the universe. You watch a cowslip and fancy yourself close to the heart of the world, while we scientists crush every emotion that the real naked facts of nature may not be obscured. There is no passion in the soul of the scientist.
But I am rude, and after all it is only a difference in the point of view. You in your beech forest watch the effect of nature on the human heart, — not on the soul, as you imagine! We in our laboratories see the warring and antagonizing force of nature ; the world as it is, not as man loves to picture it to himself. Why, then, dreamer, do you ask me whether I really believe in my own theories? Pardon me that I forgot myself for the moment, and became too earnest, perhaps impatient, but — you “ wonder whether I am really in earnest! ”
If there is one exasperating thing in the world to a man who has spent his best years looking down, deep down, into the recesses of life, seen things as they are, and detected their false coloring as well as the deceit practiced on the senses of this jabbering, stupid flock of sheep called mankind, — it is to be told that he does not really believe in what he has learned by years of hard work.
Why should I pretend to believe something which I do not ? Is it to enjoy the fancies excited by — But I forget. You live in a beech forest.
After all, everything is only a question of the vibration of one’s cerebral molecules. They vibrate transversely and one is displeased, — yours will vibrate transversely, no doubt, in reading this answer to your charming letter; and though I am bearish, I will admit that mine vibrated perpendicularly on reading your kind words of appreciation.
About my theories, dear lady, the little book you have read is only the forerunner of a much more comprehensive, and much duller, volume which is to come out soon; may I refer you to that ? I will only say now, in two words, that I do believe that everything in the world is relative, and that every life is a resultant, as physicists say, of all the forces of its environment. No life could be what it is if isolated from all others, — surely even a dreamer in a forest must know that ?
Only a small fraction of the knowledge of any human being can be credited to himself. Ninety-nine per cent is the result of the accumulated knowledge of the generations which have preceded him, and of his contemporaries. So his personality is in part the inherited characteristics of his ancestors, in part the traits engrafted upon the soil by suggestions (subtle and unconscious often) from the lives about him. Upon him is impressed the composite individuality of many lives.
But I am talking too much, and I doubt not you will think me garrulous, as well as unappreciative! I admit the lie about the German, the reason being that my incognito must be kept, on account of the new book. As a rule, what you call the “bourgeois virtue ” of truth-telling is mine. Forgive my roughness. Perhaps to-morrow — who knows ? — might find me in a milder mood, when I would tear up this ungrateful letter. But then, would I write another?
Who are you ? I wonder what you are like, whether — But it does n’t matter.

LETTER III.

May 8.
To THE FOREST DREAMER, — Since writing you I have re-read your letter, and I am struck with two things.
The first, that I should have written as I did to an utter stranger; that to this stranger, who carefully conceals every trace of her identity, I, of all men, should have orated and scolded through ten pages or more!
The second point that astonishes me is that this unknown has told me absolutely nothing of herself beyond the fact that she once sat on a log like an expiring frog, and that she wrote from a beech forest.
Do you take my amazement amiss ? If so, I must in defense offer half a hundred or more of letters — all unanswered — sent me by as many daughters of Eve, of many nations, for you do not appear to know that the Breviary has been translated into both French and German.
Some of these dear creatures have sent me pages of heart-history, and one or two their photographs. It is an irony of fate that you, the one whose letter irritated or charmed me into a reply, should be she who tells me nothing of herself! May I not know something? Your incog is at least as safe as mine. Even from the shadowy indication I can glean from your writing, your mode of expression, etc., I think I have made a picture from them not wholly unlike the original: you are not, I am sure, more than twenty - seven, you are married, you are — But — from the security of your forest, will you not tell me a little of yourself ?

LETTER IV.

IN THE BEECHWOOD, May 28.
To the laboratory from the beechwood, all hail! And you should see the grace with which every bough sways downward, while the glossy leaves quiver with pleasure, and the shadows — my shadows — chase each other across the moss, and the cuckoo calls.

So I am a dreamer ? A dreamer in a forest! Since writing to you, O Pessimist, this dreamer has been far from her dear trees. She has been at a court, she has walked a quadrille with a King and supped with an Emperor.
She has worn satin gowns and jewels that contrasted oddly with her wind-browned face; she has flirted lazily with tight-waisted youths in uniform; she has learned something of a certain great Power’s China Policy that President McKinley would love to know, — and she has been bored to death, — poor dreamer!
Last night, near to-day, after a long journey and a two hours’ drive through a silvery world, she reached the old house among the trees that she loves; and now here she is again, high on the hill in the mottled shadows at which you laugh. The lilies of the valley have come, and the brook is shrinking in the heat.
Just as she reached this corner of the world where she idles away so much time, a cuckoo called to her, — the first, mind you, that she had heard this year!
Instead of turning money in her pocket, she paused, poor dreamer, to find a happiness in her heart to turn! The servant’s explanation would be incomprehensible to you, if quoted, but what he brought were your two letters, arrived during the tarrying at courts, and forgotten in the hurry of arrival.
Thank you. Thank you for telling me that you really do believe in your book. Do you know, Pessimist, that in spite of the tone of the book, your theories are merciful? If every life is the result of its environments, and every character the result of heredity and surroundings, then people should judge each other more tenderly. Without knowing it, are you one of those who have pessimism in their mouths, optimism in their hearts ?
Do not be angry with me, a mere dreamer in a beech forest (do you particularly despise beeches ?), for daring to suggest thus a sort of unconscious insincerity in what you profess to believe. Remember, opinions are merely points of view, and what I think comes to me partly from my grandfather the bishop, partly from my great-great-great-uncle the pirate!

Joking aside, why must my dreams in a forest be of a necessity less profitable to me personally than are to you what after all are only your dreams in a laboratory ? God — and I mean the universal Master, not the prejudiced president of any narrow sect — gave us nature as a guide, or at least as a help. Do you, among your crucibles and tests, find the peace and rest that I do here under my great, quiet, understanding trees ?
And I am not a child — nor even an elderly child — of nature. I may be a dreamer, but I am a woman of the world with open eyes, and I know that what I see in the world I learn to understand here, far from its din and hurry.
The wood is full of cuckoo-clocks, striking all sorts of impossible hours, — dream-hours, dream-clocks, — despise them as much as you like, for you haven’t them, poor scientist! Now the nearest dream-clock has struck twenty-three, which is time for lilies-of-the-valley-picking, so good-by.
Thank you for your letter. I say for your letter, because the second was simply a burst of graceful inconsistency. If I am only a bundle of molecules, cerebral and otherwise, why should you wish to know what I look like, and who I am ?
Believe me, your desire is — let us say — nothing but an irregular vibration of cerebral molecules! and I am “as other men (sic!) are,” I am just “Snug the Joiner.”
This is a leaf from the biggest, wisest, and dearest of my beeches. It has just fluttered down to me, and I think wishes to go to you. Good-by.

LETTER V.

June 10.
And so you are still to be a myth to me, my Fair Unknown? Well, —it does not matter. Thank you for your letter. You are a poet. I like you, I like your forest, I like your brook and your cuckoos. Won’t you tell me more of them ?
So you find my questions, my curiosity, inconsistent with devotion to science ? Why ? There is a type of New England woman who thinks that when a man marries he becomes a monk. Do you think that because a man takes the study of nature as his life-work, he becomes a monk ? Rather, is not a woman part of nature? And because I have written a somewhat dry book, am I to have no interest in things charming? I rather think my cerebral molecules are jingling and tingling over your letter as would those of any one of your tight-waisted lieutenants. However, to-morrow comes work again, and you will be forgotten.
So my forest dreamer has been to court, and danced with kings and emperors, and — been bored to death withal. I wonder whether she felt like Alice, when she told her Wonderland kings, “You are nothing but a pack of cards ” ?
At all events, I am glad that my dreamer is a woman of the world, and because of being that, fond of her beech forest. This all tells me much. And so you are “as other men are ” ! When a woman is as other men are, she has developed much that other women do not know. She is a woman of whom a man may make a friend. They speak the same language, think the same thoughts, — and each knows that the other can understand. Good - night. Write me again.

LETTER VI.

June 26.
After being called a “Fair Unknown ” it is painful to be obliged to undeceive you. However, I must do this, for though my cerebral molecules may be charming, I am outwardly not attractive. I was born with slightly crossed eyes and large red ears, which misfortune many tears have failed to remedy.
I notice a startling amount of worldliness in your last letter, and as I fear you will no longer care to hear from a person afflicted as I am, I will take time by the forelock and bid you good-by now.
Ainsi, adieu.

LETTER VII.

July 10.
It is not true! Do you think that science is a study so unprofitable that I have devoted myself to it for years without having learned something of cause and effect ?
No woman with crossed eyes and (Heaven save the mark) “large red ears ” could ever have written the letters you have written me!
You are not only charming, but you are beautiful. I ’d stake my professional reputation on this. Your forest, your kings and emperors, your cuckoos and cowslips, may be all a pose; you may be old, you may be Madame Annette Bonnet yourself for all I know, but you are, or have been, beautiful; men have loved you, women have envied you, you have known power.
Deny this, if you dare, on your word of honor!

LETTER VIII.

August 10, THE LABORATORY.

Are you never going to write me again ?

LETTER IX.

August 25, BERLIN.

No.

LETTER X.

September 17.
DEAR PESSIMIST, — Did you think me very horrid ? Did your cerebral molecules rub each other into shreds, — tranverse shreds ?
It was not nice of me, but I was not in a letter-writing frame of mind, and I could n’t write, even to you whom I don’t know. I was away from home, amid crowds of people, —people I don’t like; I was worried and irritated in more ways than one.

And now!
Here I am again by my brook, which is rushing noisily in frantic haste, swollen by recent rain; the birches, dear butterfly trees, are losing their poor wings; there are coppery lights on the beech leaves; the ferns are drying, and here and there the duskiness of autumn is lit by the scarlet of a poisonous fungus. Quite near me is a lizard’s hole, and out of it peers a small bright eye. I like lizards. One of my happinesses is that of being free from little fears — fears of bats; of poor wee snakes; of blundering winged things. The only thing of the kind of which I have a horror is the creature called a “black beetle, ” and as I have never seen one, and know it chiefly through a translation of Le Petit Chose that I read when almost a child, I cannot say that the horror is very vivid. But this is absurd, my writing you about black beetles !

Your last letter, or last but one, was amusing. I neither affirm nor deny the truth of what you say in it, but it amused me. You say, O Wise Man, that men have loved, women envied me. And have I loved any man, and envied any woman? You see, I am in a sentimental September mood.
I have been learning how I missed my trees during the hot, hot days, and how my trees missed me, — the days when a blue mist softens the distance, when the pine smell is the strongest, the shadows the blackest of the year, when no place on earth is bearable except the depths of a thick-knit wood. Don’t snub me by calling this poetical, for you know you wrote that you wished to hear about my trees and my brook, — which was crafty of you!
To-day I have visited all my deserted friends; the dream tree, the wisdom tree,— a great beech, the butterfly tree, and they all looked sadly at me, and I at them. The face in the wisdom tree, a combination of knots and branches, cowled in summer by leaves, frowns at me to-day in evident disapproval of my wasted midsummer. A bird has built her nest in one of the eyes, which somehow gives it the air of the sternest of monkish confessors. Only the cedars and pines and firs are unchanged. They are tonic, but a wee bit unsympathetic. One great fir has a wound in his side as large as my hand, but he holds his head as erect as ever, and does not seem to notice his heart’s blood oozing down his rough bark. I should not dare pity him, which is fatal to a true sympathy. I found a mushroom, and ate it. Perhaps it was a toadstool.

You will think me mad, you will snub me.
I don’t mind being thought mad, for I am used to it, and rather agree with the theory in my heart of hearts; but I object to being snubbed. So, to avoid that, let me hasten to snub you first. I saw in Amiel’s Journal, the other day, a most fitting sentiment, which please accept with my compliments: “Science is a lucid madness, occupied in tabulating its own hallucinations.”
Think me crazy, “ tabulate ” me, and go on making nasty messes in crucibles, — or are crucibles the soap-bubbly things that explode ? — but if your laboratory holds one single object as consoling to you on blue days as is one of my trees to me, even on a wet September evening, I ’ll eat that object!
The sun is going down the hill, and so must I. Good-night.

LETTER XI.

IN THE WILDS OF MAINE, October 2.
Bonjour, l’Tnconnue! Your letter has just been brought to me, and though Heaven knows you don’t deserve it,I sit down at once by the lake, to answer. I missed you, cross-grained though I am, and though I fully recognize the way in which you, Our Lady of the Beeches, intend to use this humble devotee, I am glad to hear from you once more, and put myself at your disposition.
Your kings and queens, your people whom you “don’t like,” know nothing of the dreamer. They know the slightly mocking writer of your letter of June 26, —they know nothing of the beech forest, nothing of the impetuous, natural, warm-hearted woman that the Primo Facto meant you to be.
And I, insignificant scientific worm, am to be your safety valve. Did you think I did not realize all this ? As you never intend to tell me who you are, you feel safe. You are safe. No one shall ever see one of your letters, and I shall make no effort to find you out.
Dear lady, will your crossed eyes twinkle with amusement when I tell you that your letters have been the means of sending me up here, away from the haunts of woman, to rest an over-tired nervous system? Without the small packet in my writing-table I should have betaken myself to the comparative simplicity of Bar Harbor; with the small packet I came here, — three weeks ago. I am alone, but for my guide. There are little beech trees here, too, — a few, — many pines, a small lake, birds, and quiet. In spite of these charming things, however, I am not happy. The quiet gets on my nerves, and if your letter had not come to-day, I should probably have been off to-morrow.
Solitude is bad, I see, for me. My sins loom great among the rusty pine stems, my neglected opportunities stare me in the face, my utter insignificance is brought home to me in a way I do not like. You are too young to feel the reproach of wasted years, or you could not love your forest as you do.
May I know your age ? And — do not snub me — if you have troubles small enough to be talked about, and choose to do so, tell me them. Advice helps no mortal, but it suggests self-help.
Now good-by. I must go and make coffee. I suppose you do not know the smell of coffee rising among sunbaked pines ?

LETTER XII.

LONDON, October 25.
So you will be my confessor, my patient safety valve ? Are you not afraid of being overwhelmed by an avalanche of sentimental semi-woes? What if I should write you that I am that most appalling creature, une femme incomprise ? Or that I am pining with love for a man not my husband ? Or that I adore my husband, while he wastes his time in greenrooms ? Or — or — or — Pessimist, where is thy pessimism, that thou riskest such a fate ?
However, as it happens, I have no woes to pour into even your sympathetic and invisible ear. I am quite as happy as my neighbors, and even of a rather cheerful disposition. Bored at times, of course, —who isn’t? That is all.
In a few days I go to Paris, after a very charming visit in England, where I have met many very interesting and delightful people, among others the Great Man.
He is a great man, the Napoleon of the eye-glass, though I have heard that he is not Napoleonic, in that he has a conscience, whose existence lie carefully hides behind a mask of expediency. It amused me, while stopping in the house with this man and studying in a humble way his face and his manners, to read certain European papers describing him as slyness and unscrupulousness in person!
Do you like gossip? I love it myself, and here is a good story. A certain R. H. told a lady of his acquaintance that she might choose for herself a certain gift, — say a tiara of diamonds, costing £2000. The lady, seeing a very beautiful one for £4000, bought it and had it sent with the bill for £2000 to the royal giver, and paid the extra two thousand herself. So far, good. But wasn’t it one of life’s little ironies that the gift, greatly admired by H. R. H., should have been sent by him to a younger and fairer friend, and that the poor fading one should have had to pay for half of it!
England rings with such tales. It is a curiously anomalous country, Respectability is its God,yet it readily, almost admiringly, forgives the little slips of the smart set. One woman, Lady X, told me, “Oh yes, Lord Y is my aunt Lady F’s lover.” On seeing my expression, she added, with a laugh, “Everybody has known it for years, so some one else would have told you if I had n’t. Besides, she is received everywhere.” So she is. An awful old woman with a yellow wig, — poor soul.
So you do not love solitude? And you miss people. Possibly I love my beeches so, because I can never be alone with them more than a few hours at a time. Possibly, but I don’t believe it.
My portrait has just been done by a great English painter, and I was much pleased that he himself suggested doing it out of doors! The background is a laurel hedge, glistening and gleaming in the sun. The picture is good, but it flatters me.
I have been trying again to understand the more scientific parts of the book, but I can’t! This will probably reach you in your beloved laboratory. Are your fingers brown and purple ? Do you wear an apron when you work ? If so, I will make you one!
Good-by, and a pleasant winter to you. Thanks for the kindness in your letter.

LETTER XIII.

THE LABORATORY, November 11.
Please make me an apron! Could it have a beech-leaf pattern ?
Thanks for your charming letter, which I will answer soon. I am just off to Paris, — affaire de Sorbonne. Don ’ t mock at my laboratory, dear Our Lady of the Beeches! I have been as happy as a child ever since I got back to it. Forests may be all very well for the young, — I am too old for them and need hard work. Good-by!

LETTER XIV.

December 13, THE LABORATORY.
DEAR LADY, — I sit by my table. The “ soap-bubbly things that explode ” are pushed aside, to make room for an electric lamp; I am beautiful to behold in the beech-leaf pattern apron!

I landed yesterday, to find the package awaiting me, and the contents exceeded my wildest, most sanguine expectations ! Did you yourself put in all those wee stitches ? I notice that the border is sewed on extra, — did you do it ? It took me some time to solve the mystery of the strings, — it is years since I wore a bib, — but now, they are neatly tied around my waist and about my neck. It falls in graceful folds, — it is perfect.
There is only one drawback to my happiness in my new possession, — the well-founded fear of making a spot on it, or burning a hole in it! By the way, speaking of burning holes in things, I burnt a large one, the other day, in my thumb, — luckily my left one. It hurt like mad, kept me awake two or three nights, and did no good to my temper.
Once I got up (it was in Paris, you know) and went out for a tramp. You don’t know the Paris of two o’clock in the morning. It had rained, there was a ragged mist, the lights reflected their rays in ruts and pools; the abomination of desolation is Paris at two o’clock in the morning, — to cross-grained foot passengers. You were in Paris that night, probably dancing at some ball—“lazily flirting with a tight-waisted ” somebody.
I thought of you as I plodded through the dreary streets and laughed at the remembrance of my first letter to you, — a pedantic outpouring of heavy-handed indignation. Our Lady of the Beeches must have smiled at it. Will she smile again at what I ’m going to tell her now ? A carriage passed me at a corner of the rue Royale, and the lights flashed over the face of its occupant ; a woman wrapped in a dark furred coat. The idea came to me that it was — you. I wonder! She had lightish, brilliant hair and a rather tired face.
If I had been — well — several years younger, I should have followed the carriage; but I remembered my promise, and let it pass without hailing the hansom near by. The horses were grays, the carriage dark green — I did n’t notice the livery.
Rue Tambour, 4 bis — it wasn’t breaking my word to drive to rue Tambour, was it ? I walked in a pouring rain (good for a feverish thumb!) the length of the deserted street to 4 bis. Six stories high, respectable, dull, with a red light in the hall. And there dwells Madame Annette Bonnet, sweet sleep to her.
Where are you now ? Lady without troubles, in what part of the world are you smiling away the winter in cheerful content ?

Write me again when the spirit moveth you.
The night I visited rue Tambour was November 26.

LETTER XV

RUE TAMBOUR, 4 bis, PARIS,
Christmas Day.

The night you visited rue Tambour I sat high up in 4 bis, watching a sick woman.

My poor old nurse was taken ill a few days before, and as she has only me in the world, I moved from my hotel here, and have been with her ever since. I leave to-morrow, but have a fancy for writing to you from here, so forgive this paper, which I couldn’t wound her by refusing, and try to admire the gilt edges.

How curious that you should have been rodering about underneath our windows that night. It was her worst one, and I sat up till dawn. Several times I went to the window and looked out at the rain. I was very anxious and very sad. I love old Annette; she gave me all the mothering I ever had, and one doesn’t forget that.

The young doctor, hastily called in when she fainted, was unsatisfactory, being too busy trying to show me, in delicate nuances, his full appreciation of the strangeness of the presence in that house of such a woman as I; the nurse, a stupid Sister of Charity, made me very nervous; if I had known you were below, who knows whether I would not have rushed down for a word of sympathy ? But now I am happier again, the dear old woman is nearly well, and her sweet taking-for-granted of my kindness to her, better than all the gratitude in the world.

Thanks for your letter. I am glad that you like the apron. I did make it myself, — every stitch, and a terrible time I had finding the famous beechleaf pattern! Only please wear it, burn holes in it (instead of your poor thumb) and really use it. Then, when it is worn out, I ’ll make you another. Did I tell you how old I am ? I am twenty-nine.

By the way, olive oil and lime water is a very good remedy for burns. Remember this, as you will doubtless go on burning yourself from time to time! Good-by.

LETTER XVI.

January 14, THE LABORATORY.
DEAR LADY, - What, in your wisdom, do you think of this story ? A woman, whom I have known for more years than she would care to remember, has just enlivened us by running away from her husband with a man whom every one knows and nearly every one dislikes. The town has been agog with the tale for the past week; it has been the occasion of much excited conversation at two or three dinners where I was, and the different view-points of different people have interested me greatly. The retrospective keenness of observation of almost all those men and women is delightful; but as for myself, though I have known many men and some women, and flattered myself that I knew more than a little about human nature, this case has floored me. Listen, and then tell me what you think.
She is a woman of forty-two or three, handsome, fairly clever, masterful, with a faint idea of metaphysics and some knowledge of archæology. Her husband is a good sort, with plenty of money, who let her do about as she liked, — even to the extent of blackening her eyebrows. The other man is thirty-four, with padded shoulders and a lisp. He wears opal shirt-studs, and was formerly suspected of a bracelet. He has no money, no profession, no prospects. Off they went one moonlight night, and as Mr. — will divorce her, they will marry, and live on — love, in New Jersey. Do you think it possible for two rational beings to live on love, in New Jersey? And yet they must love each other, or they would n’t have done it.
The question and the collateral ones suggested by it have been distracting me greatly. When I was twenty — or even twenty-five, I could — in fact did — believe in the sufficiency of one mail and one woman to each other. I no longer do, however, and know few people who could swear to such a belief. My sister-in-law, a clever woman, with whom I have discussed the affair, seems inclined to envy them, — she herself has been a widow for years, and shows no disposition to change her estate; but I am conscious of pitying them both. Are n’t they going to wake up in a few weeks at most, and loathe each other ? Tell me what you think ?
Even assuming that Browning is right in his Soul-Sides theory, must not two people, as isolated as they must be, be bored to death by each other’s soulsides after a time ? People rarely tell each other the whole truth in the discussion of such questions, chiefly because every one has a certain amount of pose ; but you, woman of the world, from your forest, could tell me fearlessly your inmost thoughts about the matter. If you wish to!
I like to think of you caring for your old nurse, and I am glad you were in the house that night when the spirit in my feet led me to it.
This disembodied friendship has a great charm for me, and I like knowing of you all that you will allow me to, though I grant you that did we know each other personally much of the interest would be lost. You are wise in telling me nothing of your outside personality, your name, your home, your looks, etc., but let me know what you can of your character, your thoughts, your feelings.
I would willingly tell you my name, but it would not interest you, and would change the whole attitude of things, perhaps disastrously to me. We would be friends if we met, you and I, but each would keep from the other something that he or she would tell the next comer. Our view-points would influence, not the character of each other, but what each would be willing to show the other.
Would there not be a great charm in being absolutely truthful to each other by letter? In showing each other — you know what I mean. The idea is not original, but we have drifted unconsciously into the beginning of an original exposition of it.
I am over forty years old. I have never had any especial fondness for women as a whole; I am a busy man, with an engrossing life-work that, even were my temperament other, would prevent my ever trying to penetrate your incognito.
You are a young and (I insist) beautiful woman, living in the world, occupied with the million interests of the woman of the world; consoled on the other hand for the inevitable slings and arrows of life by a curiously strong love of nature and a certain intelligent curiosity as to things abstruse.
Granted, then, that I am (alas!) no impetuous boy, to fall in love with you and rush across the world to find you out, — that you are no lonely sentimentalist with a soul-hunger, — why not be friends?
You say you have no troubles. Good ! Then tell me your joys. What I will be able to give you, Heaven knows! I am asking much, and can probably give little — or nothing, though one thing I can do. I can send you books, if you will let me, books that would never come in your way, probably, and that you will love.
And you will — do! — give me many pleasant thoughts, instantaneous daydreams, so to say, gleams of sunshine that brighten my hours of hard work.

This has grown to be a volume, and if, after all, you only laugh at me, O dreamer? I ’ll only say, if you must snub, snub gently!
There is a heart-breaking hole burnt in the front breadth (!) of the apron, and a terrible tear at the root of one of the bib-strings. I forgot I had an apron on, and nearly hanged myself getting down from a ladder on which I ’d been standing driving some nails in the wall. My sister-in-law mended it, and offered even to make me another, but I would n’t have it.
I hope you ’ve not forgotten your promise ?
Dear Lady of the Beeches, good-by.

UETTEK XVII.

February 1,
In a small room high in a tower.
Why should I snub you ? On the contrary I am pleased — flattered, possibly — by your letter. Another thing, — you have put into words something that I have felt for years. The influence of the character of another person, not on one’s own character, but on the choice of the side of one’s character that one is willing to show that person.
If I have a virtue (besides that of modesty, you see!) it is that of frankness. I think I may honestly say that I know no woman with less of conscious pose. Yet even when striving with somewhat untoward circumstances to be perfectly natural, I am conscious of something more than mere justifiable reserve.
The side I show to one person is never, do what I will, the same side I show to another, and, as the French say, that afflicts me, in morbid moments. “Each life casts a shadow, be it ever so slight, on the lives about it, and is shadowed by those lives. The sun showing through a combination of blue and green, though the same sun, throws a light different from that it throws when it shines through blue and red.”
You will remember this quotation, though it is not exact.
In moments of self-confidence, which are more frequent than the morbid ones, I tell myself that one must respect one’s moods, which are a part of one’s self after all. Am I right? Is this a bit of what you, O Wise Man, call so gently “an intelligent interest in things abstruse ” ?
This interest in one’s self, in one’s motives, is of course a kind of vanity, but surely if one honestly tries, one can learn to know one’s self better than any other person’s self, and one’s self belongs to humanity as much as does one’s neighbor.

So we are to be friends. I am glad. I am glad you are not young, I am glad you are a busy man. And you must indeed be busy between your laboratory and your metaphysics. I like busy men, and I am glad you understand so well the advantages of our not knowing each other personally.

Frankly, I should be terribly influenced by external things. It could never be the same. If your eyes happened to be blue instead of brown, or brown instead of gray, I should be disappointed. Also, if you had a certain kind of mouth I should be quite unable to like you. Observe how gracefully I ignore the possibility of your being influenced by such trifles. Your great mind being sternly bent on molecules, you no doubt would not even notice whether I am tall or short, bony or baggy! But you will think this very foolish babbling, after the profundity of my beginnings.

About your story. I agree with you in pitying her. In such cases I am always inclined to pity the woman. And this woman has put everything into the scale against the love of a man years younger than she, as well as having taken from him, at least for a time, the companionship of other men and women, his club, all his menus.

As a merciful Providence in the mystery of his wisdom has created man polygamous, woman monogamous (by instinct, which is, after all, what counts), every man, unless his love for a woman is backed and braced by a lot of other things, the respect of his kind, amusement, occupation, etc., is bound to tire of her after a time.

Even backed by these things, how many a perfectly sincere love wanes with time!

Poor soul! I hope her husband will divorce her soon, and at least give her the legal possession of the lisp and the opals, before the charm of her position, her house, her friendships with other people, in a word, before his love — under the removal of the host of gracious “shadows” chased away by the stern sun of solitude — has begun its absolutely inevitable waning.

There is my opinion; take it for what it ’s worth.

I have just been out for a walk through softly melting snow, on which all shadows are blue, into the beechwood. The snow was so deep that I could not go far, but I stood under a big, knobby old fellow near the edge, and looked up the slope, up which the blue shadows slanted.

A wood in winter is very beautiful. The white quiet was not yet broken by the thaw, though the branches gleamed black in the moist air; all little twigs seemed sketched in ink against the snow. The sun behind me threw a red glow for a second over it all, edging the shriveled leaves clinging here and there with fire.

The snow will soon be gone, leaving the ground an untidy mass of slippery red soil, and I will put on rubber boots, take a stick, and pay a round of visits on the slope. The winter has been hard, and some of my friends will have suffered.

There is a pastel portrait hanging opposite me as I write, and I think you must be like it. I don’t mean as to features, but in a certain air of quiet determination and knowing what you are about.

I forgot to tell you that the other day, in a certain old university town, I was taken to see a chemical laboratory. It made me think of you, dear Pessimist, and I admit that the retorts and crucibles have a certain charm, to say nothing of all the other things, nameless to me.

I shall be glad to have the books. Don’t forget to send them.

Since my walk, by the way, I am less fearful for the poor woman with the blackened eyebrows. Possibly she has great charm, and possibly he is too completely under her sway to tire of her. I hope so, and I have seen it, only in my case the woman was greatly the social superior of the man. At all events, they interest me, and she was certainly better and more courageous in running off with him than she would have been in doing what nine women out of ten — over here, at least — would have done.

It is late; I must dress for dinner. Shall I wear yellow or pink ?

Good-night, amigo di mi alma.

LETTER XVIII.

March 16.
Thank you. I can write you only a few words, dear lady, as I have had pneumonia, and am still almost helpless. Your letter was given me to-day, and Heaven knows how often I have re-read it. I suppose that by this time you are busy hunting the first violets ? Send me one.
It is an infernal thing to be ill; a worse thing to be ill and alone. It is just as well, perhaps, that I can’t write, for I am in a state approaching the tearful.
If I had married the girl whom I once loved, my eldest child might have been nineteen, and, if a girl, sitting there in the big chair with the firelight on her hair. I am growing old; I drivel. If I were even ten years younger I should want you awfully. It is hard to feel that one is too old for falling in love with the most charming woman in the world, — and you are she, of that I am sure.
Have you dimples, and blue veins in your temples ? My nurse has come, and is scolding me for disobeying her. She has no dimples; she has an imperial instead.
Write me soon, and forgive all this idiocy. I am to have a poached egg. If it is slippery, I won’t eat it. Would you? C. R. S.

LETTER XIX.

March 30.
Poor dear! I am so sorry that you have been ill. Are you better now ? Here is the violet, poor wee thing! bringing a most cordial and sincere greeting from me to you.
It is awful to be ill, and it is worse to be ill and alone. A nurse with an imperial would hardly improve matters, I suppose, though, all things considered, perhaps the imperial was a blessing in disguise.
You were, despite your potential daughter of nineteen, in a dangerous state of mind when you wrote that note, Mr. Pessimist! But now, no doubt, you are back at work, at least no longer shut in your room, and all is well.
This last month has been an anxious one for me. My poor Annette, fired with ambition as to window-cleaning, fell off a chest of drawers and broke her leg, a few days after I wrote you. She was in Paris ; I — far from there. She is the embodiment of health as a rule, but she is over sixty, and to make matters worse, fell to fretting for her husband, a creature charming in his way, but with whom she had never been able to live in peace, and whom she left twenty years ago and more.
Her letters to me have been very touching. Years ago they had a child, a poor little thing born lame, and it seems that Père Bonnet’s one good quality, beyond great charm of manner, and a tenor voice fit for the heavenly choir, was his utter devotion to Le Mioche. I know no other name for him. Le Mioche lived only four years, but those four years, looked back on, through the kindly mist of something over thirty, have grown to be of paramount importance to the poor old woman. Her man, she wrote me, used to carry Le Mioche in a sort of hammock on his back, and then, while he worked, Le Mioche sat in a heap of sawdust covered with her man’s coat, and looked on. Le père Bonnet was working in a lumber camp at that time, — indeed, they lived in a log hut built by his own hands. Le Mioche had a precocious fondness for mushrooms, and many times “mon homme ” brought a hatful home with him, and tenderly fed them to the poor child — raw! The grave is somewhere there in the Maine woods, and several times, of late, Annette has expressed to me her longing to visit it once more with the recreant Bonnet, who, “after all, ” was the father of Le Mioche.
It would be a pitiful pilgrimage, would it not ? She was a high-spirited, handsome woman, as I first remember her. Now she is old and bent, this very longing for the husband she hated in her youth being a pathetic indication of her weakness. He, I gather, for I remember him very faintly, was a handsome, light-hearted creature who simply could n’t understand her mental attitudes, and whom her ideas of faithfulness and honor bored to death. Think of the meeting, drawn together over the grave of Le Mioche !
I suspect her of having written to him, poor soul! Does this bore you ? I hope not, for it really is “being friends,” as children say. My mind is full of Annette and her troubles, so I tell you of them. It is at least a suggestive story enough. I hope your friend who ran away with the man with the opals had no Mioche!
To-morrow I go south on a yachting trip. We leave Italy about April 15, and I don’t know where we shall go, so do not hurry about writing, though I am always glad to have your letters.
Has not your book come out ?

I will write you some time from the yacht, and in the meantime, behiit’ dich Gott.
You signed your initials to your note, do you remember ?

LETTER XX.

ON BOARD THE YACHT X —, May 3.
Just five minutes in which to beg a great favor of you. Le père Bonnet needs money, and I cannot get ashore to send it him. Will you send him $200 at once, with the inclosed note ?
We shall be in England next week en route for home, and I will of course send you the money at once. I know that this is very dreadful, but I have no one in America to do it for me, and Annette writes, urging me to send it at once, as a miracle has come to pass, and he wishes to go to France to see her.
You see, I trust you, in giving you the address of this man who would tell you all about me. I will send you the money in English banknotes, registered, care Harper Brothers.
Thanking you a thousand times in advance, believe me to be sincerely your friend,
W. Z.

LETTER XXI.

May 20, THE LABORATORY.
Thank you for trusting me. Père Bonnet has his money, and as I sent no address he could not write to acknowledge it, and I know no more of you, dear Lady of the Beeches, than I did before. That is— do I not ? Am I not learning to know so much that it is more than just as well that I know no more? Thank you for signing the initials of your name, and thank you again for trusting me.
I am tormented by an insane desire to tell you my name, but I dare not. I know you would snub me, and possibly you might never write me again. So good-by. I have been writing to you for hours with this result.
C. R. S.
Bettina von Hutten.

(To be continued.)