nconscious
failure, he knows nothing.

Here I have remembered for you a bit of a poem that took hold of me some
while ago and touched on the same unkindness: only here the flower is
conscious of the wrong done to it, and looks forward to a day of juster
judgment:--

"What have I done?--Man came
(There's nothing that sticks like dirt),
Looked at me with eyes of blame,
And called me 'Squinancy-wort!'
What have I done? I linger
(I cannot say that I live)
In the happy lands of my birth;
Passers-by point with the finger:
For me the light of the sun
Is darkened. Oh, what would I give
To creep away, and hide my shame in the earth!
What have I done?
Yet there is hope. I have seen
Many changes since I began.
The web-footed beasts have been
(Dear beasts!)--and gone, being part of some wider plan.
Perhaps in His infinite mercy God will remove this man!"

Now I am on sentiment and unjust judgments: here is another instance,
where evidently in life I did not love well enough a character nobler than
this capering and accommodating boy Benjy, who toadies to all my moods.
Calling at the lower farm, I missed him whom I used to nickname "Manger,"
because his dog-jaws always refused to smile on me. His old mistress gave
me a pathetic account of his last days. It was the muzzling order that
broke his poor old heart. He took it as an accusation on a point where,
though of a melancholy disposition, his reputation had been spotless. He
never lifted his head nor smiled again. And not all his mistress' love
could explain to him that he was not in fault. She wept as she told it me.

Good-by, dearest, and for this letter so full of such little worth call me
what names you like; and I will go to Jemima, Keziah, and Kerenhappuch for
the patience in which they must have taken after their father when he so
named them, I suppose for a discipline.

My Beloved, let my heart come where it wants to be. Twilight has been on
me to-day, I don't know why; and I have not written it off as I hoped to
do.--All yours and nothing left.

LETTER XLIX.

Dearest: I suppose your mother's continued absence, and her unexplanation
of her further stay, must be taken for unyielding disapproval, and tells
us what to expect of February. It is not a cordial form of "truce": but
since it lets me see just twice as much of you as I should otherwise, I
will not complain so lo