where,
indeed, as long as I am thus alone, I can enjoy no comfort. Let me come
to you. I will put up with any thing for the sake of seeing you, though
it be but once a day. Any garret or cellar in the dirtiest lane or
darkest alley will be good enough for me. I will think it a palace, so
that I can _but_ see you now and then.

Do not refuse--do not argue with me, so fond you always are of arguing!
My heart is set upon your compliance. And yet, dearly as I prize your
company, I would not ask it, if I thought there was any thing improper.
You say there is, and you talk about it in a way that I do not
understand. For my sake, you tell me, you refuse; but let me entreat you
to comply for my sake.

Your pen cannot teach me like your tongue. You write me long letters,
and tell me a great deal in them; but my soul droops when I call to mind
your voice and your looks, and think how long a time must pass before I
see you and hear you again. I have no spirit to think upon the words and
paper before me. My eye and my thought wander far away.

I bethink me how many questions I might ask you; how many doubts you
might clear up if you were but within hearing. If you were but close to
me; but I cannot ask them here. I am too poor a creature at the pen,
and, somehow or another, it always happens, I can only write about
myself or about you. By the time I have said all this, I have tired my
fingers, and when I set about telling you how this poem and that story
have affected me, I am at a loss for words; I am bewildered and bemazed,
as it were.

It is not so when we talk to one another. With your arm about me, and
your sweet face close to mine, I can prattle forever. Then my heart
overflows at my lips. After hours thus spent, it seems as if there were
a thousand things still to be said. Then I can tell you what the book
has told me. I can repeat scores of verses by heart, though I heard them
only once read; but it is because _you_ have read them to me.

Then there is nobody here to answer my questions. They never look into
books. They hate books. They think it waste of time to read. Even Peggy,
who you say has naturally a strong mind, wonders what I can find to
amuse myself in a book. In her playful mood, she is always teasing me to
lay it aside.

I do not mind her, for I like to read; but, if I did not like it before,
I could not help doing so ever since you told me that nobody could gain
your love who was not fond of books. And y