us. We are in our
snuggery this evening, as usual. I think you must know it as well as I do
by this time. The lovely white bed in the alcove, the three windows with
lace curtains dropping to the floor, the grate with its soft, bright
fire, the round table under the chandelier, with Miss Prudence writing
letters and I always writing, studying, or mending. Sometimes we do not
speak for an hour. Now my study hours are over and I've eaten three
Graham wafers to sustain my sinking spirits while I try to fill this
sheet. Somehow I can think of enough to say--how I would talk to you if
you were in that little rocker over in the corner. But I think you would
move it nearer, and you would want to do some of the talking yourself. I
haven't distinguished myself in anything, I have not taken one prize, my
composition has never once been marked T. B. R, _to be read_; to be read
aloud, that is; and I have never done anything but to try to be perfect
in every recitation and to be ladylike in deportment. I am always asked
to sing, but any bird can sing. I was discouraged last night and had a
crying time down here on the rug before the grate. Miss Prudence had gone
to hear Wendell Phillips, with one of the boarders, so I had a good long
time to cry my cry out all by myself. But it was not all out when she
came, I was still floating around in my own briny drops, so, of course,
she would know the cause of the small rain storm I was drenched in, and I
had to stammer out that--I--hadn't--improved--my time and--I knew she was
ashamed of me--and sorry she--had tried to--make anything out of me. And
then she laughed. You never heard her laugh like that--nor any one else.
I began to laugh as hard as I had been crying. And, after that, we talked
till midnight. She said lovely things. I wish I knew how to write them,
but if you want to hear them just have a crying time and she will say
them all to you. Only you can never get discouraged. She began by asking
somewhat severely: 'Whose life do you want to live?' And I was frightened
and said, 'My own, of course,' that I wouldn't be anybody else for
anything, not even Helen Rheid, or you. And she said that my training had
been the best thing for my own life, that I had fulfilled all her
expectations (not gone beyond them), and she knew just what I could do
and could not do when she brought me here. She had educated me to be a
good wife to Will, and an influence for good in my little sphere in my
down-