d before. Shuffle them about, and the work
of the world would yet go on.

True, a month ago it did seem a crisis. I wrote you as much. It did seem
a disturbing element in my life-work. One cannot view with equanimity
that which appears to be totally disruptive of one's dear little system
of living. But it only appeared so; I lacked perspective, that was all.
As I look upon it now, everything fits well and all will run smoothly I
am sure.

You know I had two years yet to work for my Doctorate. I still have
them. As you see, I am back to the old quarters, settled down in the old
groove, hammering away at the old grind. Nothing is changed. And besides
my own studies, I have taken up an assistant instructorship in the
Department of Economics. It is an ambitious course, and an important
one. I don't know how they ever came to confide it to me, or how I found
the temerity to attempt it,--which is neither here nor there. It is all
agreed. Hester is a sensible girl.

The engagement is to be long. I shall continue my career as charted. Two
years from now, when I shall have become a Doctor of Social Sciences
(and candidate for numerous other things), I shall also become a
benedict. My marriage and the presumably necessary honeymoon chime in
with the summer vacation. There is no disturbing element even there. Oh,
we are very practical, Hester and I. And we are both strong enough to
lead each our own lives.

Which reminds me that you have not asked about her. First, let me shock
you--she, too, is a scientist. It was in my undergraduate days that we
met, and ere the half-hour struck we were quarrelling felicitously over
Weismann and the neo-Darwinians. I was at Berkeley at the time, a
cocksure junior; and she, far maturer as a freshman, was at Stanford,
carrying more culture with her into her university than is given the
average student to carry out.

Next, and here your arms open to her, she is a poet. Pre-eminently she
is a poet--this must be always understood. She is the greater poet, I
take it, in this dawning twentieth century, because she is a scientist;
not in spite of being a scientist as some would hold. How shall I
describe her? Perhaps as a George Eliot, fused with an Elizabeth
Barrett, with a hint of Huxley and a trace of Keats. I may say she is
something like all this, but I must say she is something other and
different. There is about her a certain lightsomeness, a glow or flash
almost Latin or oriental, or perha