last week,
determined to return by the next steamer to Dusseldorf. We were both
very wretched at this final parting. But as I have often seen people
making great sacrifices to others, and then letting them lose all the
benefit of the sacrifice, by the manner of it, I summoned up courage,
and appeared before my father calm and acquiescing, and--you will think
me passionless, perhaps hard-hearted--I soon became so. I read, over and
over again, your arguments, and I confess I was willing to be persuaded
by them. But, after all, my point of sight is not yours, and you can not
see objects in the proportions and relations that I do. You say I have
exaggerated notions of filial duty, that I have come to mature age and
ripe judgment, and that I should decide and act for myself; that in the
nature of things the conjugal must supersede the filial relation, and
that I have no right to sacrifice my life-long happiness to the remnant
of my father's days; and above all, that I am foolish to give in to his
prejudices, and _selfishness_, you added, dear, and did not quite efface
the word. Now I see there is much reason in what you say, and I have
only to answer that I can not leave my father with a shadow of his
disapprobation. I can not and I will not. Our hearts have grown
together. God forms the bond that ties the child to the parent, and we
make the other, and rotten it often proves. Susy, you lost your parents
when you were so young, that you can not tell what I feel for my
surviving one. Since my mother's death and Alice's marriage, he has
lived in such dependence on me, that I can't tell what his life would be
if I were to leave him; and I will not. You tell me this is unnatural,
and a satisfactory proof to you that I do not love Carl Heiner. O
Sue----'

'Here must be our first hiatus. We can only say that the outpouring of
our young friend's heart satisfied us that beneath her serene surface
there was an unfathomable well of feeling, and that her friend must have
been convinced that 'love's reason' is _not_ always without reason. The
letter proceeds:

'I very well know that my father is prejudiced, Sue, but old men's
prejudices become a part and parcel of themselves, and they can not be
cured of them. My father's do not spring from any drop of bitterness,
for he has not one--nor from egotism, for he has none of it; but, as you
know, his early life was in Boston, and his only society is there, and
he naturally partakes the opi