haunts me; I see it at times in my working hours; it peers
at me often from the surging night-throngs of upper Broadway; it passes
dimly across my vision before I fall asleep. It has become a symbol to me
of the long agony of human history. Because I know the misery of that face
and the evil that has produced it, because I know that misery has been in
the world from the beginning and shall endure to the end, and because my
heart is sickened at the thought,--that is why I rebel so bitterly against
a doctrine that turns away from all spiritual consolation for some vainly
builded hope of a socialistic paradise on this earth. I have heard one of
these humanitarians avow that he and practically all his friends were
materialists, and such they are even when they will not admit it. Dear
girl, believe me, I have lived over in my mind and suffered in my heart
the long toil and agony which the human race has undergone in its effort
to wrest some assurance of spiritual joy and peace from these clouds of
illusion about us; I have read and felt what the Hindu ascetic has written
of lonely conflict in the wilderness; I have heard the Greek philosophers
reason their way to faith; I have comprehended the ecstasy of the early
Christians; I have taken sides in the high warfare of mediaeval realists
against the cheap victory of nominalism. I know that the word of
deliverance has been spoken by all these and that it is always the same
word. And now come these humanitarians, with their starved imaginations,
who in practice, if not in speech, deny all the spiritual insight of the
race and seek to lower the ideal of mankind to their fools' commonwealth
of comfort in this world. Because I revolt from this false and canting
conception of brotherly love, am I therefore devoted to "conscientious
selfishness"? Ah, I beg you to revise your reading of this book of my
heart, and to remodel your criticism.

But I am saying not a word of what is most in my thoughts. In two days I
shall set out for a trip to the South which will bring me to Morningtown.
Will you turn away in horror if you see a wretched creature hobbling with
cloven hoof up the scented lane of your village? For sweet charity's sake,
for your own sweeter sake, believe that his heart is full of love however
wrong his mind may be.

-----

[1] Much of the routine matter in regard to
reviewing has been omitted from these letters.
----------------------------------------------------