South than North.
In a sense it is always summer, but winter on my place would be like
summer in Norway--just bitingly fresh, happily alert. I'm writing
in the summer now. I look out of the window and see hundreds of
acres of cotton-fields, with hundreds upon hundreds of negroes at
work. I hear the songs they sing, faint echoes of them, even as I
write. Yes, my black folk do sing, because they are well treated.

Not that we haven't our troubles here. You can't administer
thousands of acres, control hundreds of slaves, and run an estate
like a piece of clockwork without creaks in the machinery. I've
built it all up out of next to nothing. I landed in this country
with my little fortune of two thousand pounds. This estate is worth
at least a quarter of a million now. I've an estate in Jamaica,
too. I took it for a debt. What it'll be worth in another twenty
years I don't know. I shan't be here to see. I'm not the man I was
physically, and that's one of the reasons why I'm writing to you
to-day. I've often wished to write and say what I'm going to say
now; but I've held back, because I wanted you to finish your girl's
education before I said it

What I say is this: I want you and Sheila to come here to me, to
make my home your home, to take control of my household, and to let
me see faces I love about me as the shadows enfold me.

Like your married life, mine was unsuccessful, but not for the same
reason. The woman I married did not understand--probably could not
understand. She gave me no children. We are born this way, or
that. To understand is pain and joy in one; to misconceive is to
scatter broken glass for bare feet. Yet when I laid her away, a few
years ago, I had terrible pangs of regret, which must come to the
heart that has striven in vain. I did my best; I tried to make her
understand, but she never did. I used at first to feel angry; then
I became patient. But I waked up again, and went smiling along,
active, vigorous, getting pleasure out of the infinitely small
things, and happy in perfecting my organization.

This place, which I have called Moira, is to be yours--or, rather,
Sheila's. So, in any case, you will want to come and see the home I
have made this old colonial mansion, with its Corinthian pillars and
verandah, high steps, hard-wood floors polished like a pan, every
room hung in dimity