ffort and make me of some value to myself.

I went yesterday to see my old studio: sorry things were those strivings
of mine,--false endeavors to realize conceptions that must have some
other interpreter than marble. Forms are but weak appeals, words are
coarse ones; music alone, my dear friend, is the true voice of the
heart's meanings.

How a little melody that a peasant girl was singing last night touched
me! It was one that _she_ used to warble, humming as we walked, like
some stray waif thrown up by memory on the waste of life.

So then, at last, I feel I am not a sculptor; still as little, with all
your teaching, am I a scholar. The world of active life offers to me
none of its seductions; I only recognize what there is in it of vulgar
contention and low rivalry. I cannot be any of the hundred things by
which men eke out subsistence, and yet I long for the independence of
being the arbiter of my own daily life. What is to become of me? Say,
dearest, best of friends,--say but the word, and let me try to obey
you. What of our old plans of 'savagery'? The fascinations of civilized
habits have made no stronger hold upon me since we relinquished that
grand idea. Neither you nor I assuredly have any places assigned us at
the feast of this old-world life; none have bidden us to it, nor have we
even the fitting garments to grace it!

There are moments, however,--one of them is on me while I
write,--wherein I should like to storm that strong citadel of social
exclusion, and test its strength. Who are they who garrison it? Are they
better, and wiser, and purer than their fellows? Are they lifted by the
accidents of fortune above the casualties and infirmities of nature?
and are they more gentle-minded, more kindly-hearted, and more forgiving
than others? This I should wish to know and learn for myself. Would they
admit us, for the nonce, to see and judge them? let the Bastard and the
Beggar sit down at their board, and make brotherhood with them? I trow
not, Billy. They would hand us over to the police!

And my friend the courier was not so far astray when he called us
vagabonds!

If I were free, I should, of course, be with you; but I am under a kind
of mild bondage here, of which I don't clearly comprehend the meaning.
The chief minister has taken me, in some fashion, under his protection,
and I am given to understand that no ill is intended me; and, indeed,
so far as treatment and moderate liberty are concerned, I