Madame
Modjeska, William Vaughn Moody and many others of my friends
distinguished in the arts.

All my publishing interests and most of my literary friends were in New
York (my support came from there), hence my frequent coming and going.
Whether this constant change, these sudden and violent contrasts in my
way of life strengthened my fictional faculty or weakened it, I can not
say, but I do know that as the head of a family I found concentrated
effort increasingly difficult and at times very nearly impossible.
Constance was ailing for a year, and was a source of care, of pain to
me, as to her mother. At times, many times, her sufferings filled me
with a passionate pity, a sense of rage, of helplessness. Indeed both
children were subject to throat and lung disorders, especially when in
the city.

Oh, those cruel coughing spells, those nights of burning fever, those
alarming hours of stupor or of terrifying delirium! "Can science find no
check upon these recurrent forms of disease?" I demanded of our doctor.
"Must humanity forever suffer the agonies of diphtheria and pneumonia?
If so why bring children into the world?"

We always knew when these disorders had set in, we knew all the signs
but no medicine availed to stop their progress. Each attack ran its
course in spite of nurse and drug whilst I raged helplessly and Zulime
grew hollow-eyed with anxious midnight vigil. Death was a never-absent
hovering shadow when those bitter winter winds were blowing, and
realizing this I came to hate the great desolate city in which we lived,
and to long with the most passionate ardor for the coming of April's
sun.

One of the first signs of spring (so far as Mary Isabel was concerned)
was the opening of the "White City," a pleasure park near us, and the
second event quite as conclusive and much more exciting was the coming
of the circus. These were the red letter days in her vernal calendar,
and were inescapable outings, for her memory was tenacious. Each May she
demanded to be taken to the "Fite City" and later "the Kings and Queens"
and "the fairies" of the circus claimed her worship. Together we saw
these glorious sights, which filled her little soul with rapture.

For two years my estrangement from the old Homestead was complete, but
when one April day I found myself passing it on my way to St. Paul, I
was constrained to stop off just to see how my father and the garden
were coming on.

This was late April, and the day