University of Virginia Library

I HAD not thought to obtrude myself needlessly on
you ever again. Oppressed with the remembrance
that I have been a blight on a life that might otherwise
have been happy, I thought my only expiation was
silence. But it had not then occurred to me that possibly
you could feel and be pained by that silence. But
of late I have been very intimate with Mrs. Henderson,
whose mind is like those crystalline lakes we read of—
a pebble upon the bottom is evident. She loves you so
warmly and feels for you so sympathetically that, almost
unconsciously, when you pour your feelings into her
heart, they are revealed to me through the transparent
medium of her nature. I confess that I am still so selfish
as to feel a pleasure in the thought that you cannot
forget me. I cannot forget you. I never have forgotten
you, I believe, for a waking conscious hour since that
time when your father shut the door of his house between
you and me. I have demonstrated in my own
experience that there may be a double consciousness all
the while going on, in which the presence of one person
should seem to pervade every scene of life. You have
been with me, even in those mad fatal seasons when I
have been swept from reason and conscience and hope
—it has added bitterness to my humiliation in my weak
hours; but it has been motive and courage to rise up
again and again and renew the fight—the fight that must
last as long as life lasts; for, Caroline, this is so. In

some constitutions, with some hereditary predispositions,
the indiscretions and ignorances of youth leave a
fatal irremediable injury. Though the sin be in the
first place one of inexperience and ignorance, it is one
that nature never forgives. The evil once done can
never be undone; no prayers, no entreaties, no resolutions,
can change the consequences of violated law.
The brain and nerve force, once vitiated by poisonous
stimulants, become thereafter subtle tempters and traitors,
forever lying in wait to deceive and urging to ruin;
and he who is saved, is saved so as by fire. Since it is
your unhappy fate to care so much for me, I owe to you
the utmost frankness. I must tell you plainly that I am
an unsafe man. I am like a ship with powder on board
and a smouldering fire in the hold. I must warn my
friends off, lest at any moment I carry ruin to them,
and they be drawn down in my vortex. We can be
friends, dear friends; but let me beg you, think as little
of me as you can. Be a friend in a certain degree, after
the manner of the world, rationally, and with a wise
regard to your own best interests—you who are worth
five hundred times what I am—you who have beauty,
talent, energy—who have a career opening before you,
and a most noble and true friend in Miss Ida; do not
let your sympathies for a very worthless individual lead
you to defraud yourself of all that you should gain in
the opportunities now open to you. Command my services
for you in the literary line when ever they may be
of the slightest use. Remember that nothing in the
world makes me so happy as an opportunity to serve
you. Treat me as you would a loyal serf, whose only
thought is to live and die for you; as the princess of
the middle ages treated the knight of low degree, who
devoted himself to her service. There is nothing you
could ask me to do for you that would not be to me a
pleasure; and all the more so, if it involved any labor
or difficulty. In return, be assured, that merely by being
the woman you are, merely by the love which you have
given and still give to one so unworthy, you are a constant
strength to me, an encouragement never to faint
in a struggle which must last as long as this life lasts.
For although we must not forget that life, in the best
sense of the word, lasts forever, yet this first mortal
phase of it is, thank God, but short. There is another
and a higher life for those whose life has been a failure
here. Those who die fighting—even though they fall,
many times trodden under the hoof of the enemy—will
find themselves there made more than conquerors
through One who hath loved them.

In this age, when so many are giving up religion,
hearts like yours and mine, Caroline, that know the real
strain and anguish of this present life, are the ones to
appreciate the absolute necessity of faith in the great
hereafter. Without this, how cruel is life! How bitter,
how even unjust, the weakness and inexperience with
which human beings are pushed forth amid the grinding
and clashing of natural laws—laws of whose operation
they are ignorant and yet whose penalties are inexorable!
If there be not a Guiding Father, a redeeming
future, how dark is the prospect of this life! and who
can wonder that the ancients, many of the best of them,
considered suicide as one of the reserved rights of human
nature? Without religious faith, I certainly should.
I am making this letter too long; the pleasure of speaking
to you tempts me still to prolong it, but I forbear.

CAROLINE TO BOLTON.

My Dear Friend: How can I thank you for the confidence
you have shown me in your letter? You were

not mistaken in thinking that this long silence has been
cruel to me. It is more cruel to a woman than it can
possibly be to a man, because if to him silence be a pain,
he yet is conscious all the time that he has the power to
break it; he has the right to speak at any time, but a
woman must die silent. Every fiber of her being says
this. She cannot speak, she must suffer as the dumb
animals suffer.

I have, I confess, at times, been bitterly impatient of
this long reserve, knowing, as I did, that you had not
ceased to feel what you once felt. I saw, in our brief
interviews in New York, that you loved me still. A
woman is never blind to that fact, with whatever care it
is sought to be hidden. I saw that you felt all you
once professed, and yet were determined to conceal it,
and treat with me on the calm basis of ordinary friendship,
and sometimes I was indignant: forgive me the injustice.

You see that such a course is of no use, as a means of
making one forget. To know one's self passionately beloved
by another who never avows it, is something dangerous
to the imagination. It gives rise to a thousand
restless conjectures, and is fatal to peace. We can
reconcile ourselves in time to any certainty; it is only
when we are called upon to accommodate ourselves to
possibilities, uncertain as vaporous clouds, that we weary
ourselves in fruitless efforts.

Your letter avows what I knew before; what you
often told me in our happy days: and I now say in
return that I, like you, have never forgotten; that your
image and presence have been to me as mine to you,
ever a part of my consciousness through all these years
of separation. And now you ask me to change all this
into a cool and prudent friendship, after the manner of
the world; that is to say, to take all from you, to accept

the entire devotion of your heart and life, but be careful
to risk nothing in return, to keep at a safe distance from
your possible troubles, lest I be involved.

Do you think me capable of this? Is it like me? and
what would you think and say to a friend who should
make the same proposition to you? Put it to yourself:
what would you think of yourself, if you could be so
coldly wary and prudent with regard to a friend who
was giving to you the whole devotion of heart and
life?

No, dear friend, this is all idle talk. Away with it!
I feel that I am capable of as entire devotion to you as I
know you are to me; never doubt it. The sad fatality
which clouds your life makes this feeling only the more
intense; as we feel for those who are a part of our own
hearts, when in suffering and danger. In one respect,
my medical studies are an advantage to me. They have
placed me at a stand-point where my judgment on these
questions and subjects is different from those of ordinary
women. An understanding of the laws of physical
being, of the conditions of brain and nerve forces, may
possibly at some future day bring a remedy for such
sufferings as yours. I look for this among the possible
triumphs of science,—it adds interest to the studies and
lectures I am pursuing. I shall not be to you what
many women are to the men whom they love, an added
weight to fall upon you if you fall, to crush you under
the burden of my disappointments and anxieties and
distresses. Knowing that your heart is resolute and
your nature noble, a failure, supposing such a possibility,
would be to me only like a fever or a paralysis,—a subject
for new care and watchfulness and devotion, not
one for tears or reproaches or exhortations.

There are lesions of the will that are no more to be
considered subject to moral condemnation than a strain

of the spinal column or a sudden fall, from paralysis.
It is a misfortune; and to real true affection, a misfortune
only renders the sufferer more dear and redoubles
devotion.

Your letter gives me courage to live—courage to
pursue the course set before me here. I will make the
most of myself that I can for your sake, since all I am
or can be is yours. Already I hope that I am of use to
you in opening the doors of confidence. Believe me,
dear, nothing is so bad for the health of the mind or the
body as to have a constant source of anxiety and apprehension
that cannot be spoken of to anybody. The
mind thus shut within itself becomes a cave of morbid
horrors. I believe these unshared fears, these broodings,
and dreads unspoken, often fulfill their own prediction
by the unhealthy states of mind that they bring.

The chambers of the soul ought to be daily opened
and aired; the sunshine of a friend's presence ought to
shine through them, to dispel sickly damps and the
malaria of fears and horrors. If I could be with you
and see you daily, my presence should cheer you, my
faith in you should strengthen your faith in yourself.

For my part, I can see how the very sensitiveness of
your moral temperament which makes you so dread a
failure, exposes you to fail. I think the near friends of
persons who have your danger often hinder instead of
helping them by the manifestation of their fears and
anxieties. They think there is no way but to “pile up
the agony,” to intensify the sense of danger and responsibility,
when the fact is, the subject of it is feeling now
all the strain that human nerves can feel without cracking.

We all know that we can walk with a cool head
across a narrow plank only one foot from the ground.
But put the plank across a chasm a thousand feet in
depth, and the head swims. We have the same capacity

in both cases; but, in the latter, the awfulness of the
risk induces a nervous anxiety that amounts to a paralysis
of the will.

Don't, therefore, let this dread grow on you by the
horror of lonely brooding. Treat it as you would the
liability to any other disease, openly, rationally and hopefully;
and keep yourself in the daily light and warmth
of sympathetic intercourse with friends who understand
you and can help you. There are Eva and Harry—
noble, true friends, indebted to you for many favors,
and devoted to you with a loyal faithfulness. Let their
faith and mine in you strengthen your belief in yourself.
And don't, above all things, take any load of responsibility
about my happiness, and talk about being the
blight and shadow on my life. I trust I am learning that
we were sent into this world, not to clamor for happiness,
but to do our part in a life-work. What matter is
it whether I am happy or not, if I do my part? I know
all the risks and all the dangers that come from being
identified, heart and soul, with the life of another as I
am with yours. I know the risks, and am ready to face
them. I am ready to live for you and die for you, and
count it all joy to the last.

I was much touched by what you said of those who
have died defeated yet fighting. Yes, it is my belief
that many a poor soul who has again and again failed
in the conflict has yet put forth more effort, practiced
more self-denial, than hundreds of average Christians;
and He who knows what the trial is, will judge them
tenderly—that is to say, justly.

But for you there must be a future, even in this life.
I am assured of it, and you must believe it: you must
believe with my faith, and hope in my hope. Come
what will, I am, heart and soul and forever,