University of Virginia Library

I. Joseph to Philip.

Since I wrote to you from Prescott, dear Philip, three
months have passed, and I have had no certain means of
sending you another letter. There was, first, Mr. Wilder's
interest at —, the place hard to reach, and the business
difficult to investigate. It was not so easy, even with the
help of your notes, to connect the geology of books with the
geology of nature; these rough hills don't at all resemble
the clean drawings of strata. However, I have learned all
the more rapidly by not assuming to know much, and the report
I sent contained a great deal more than my own personal
experience. The duty was irksome enough, at times;
I have been tempted by the evil spirits of ignorance, indolence,
and weariness, and I verily believe that the fear of
failing to make good your guaranty for my capacity was the
spur which kept me from giving way. Now, habit is beginning
to help me, and, moreover, my own ambition has something
to stand on.

I had scarcely finished and forwarded my first superficial
account of the business as it appeared to me, when a chance
suddenly offered of joining a party of prospecters, some
of whom I had already met: as you know, we get acquainted
in little time, and with no introductions in these parts.
They were bound, first, for some little-known regions in

Eastern Nevada, and then, passing a point which Mr.
Wilder wished me to visit (and which I could not have
reached so directly from any other quarter), they meant to
finish the journey at Austin. It was an opportunity I
could not let go, though I will admit to you, Philip, that I
also hoped to overtake the adventures, which had seemed to
recede from me, rainbow-fashion, as I went on.

Some of the party were old Rocky Mountain men, as wary
as courageous; yet we passed through one or two straits
which tested all their endurance and invention. I won't say
how I stood the test; perhaps I ought to be satisfied that
I came through to the end, and am now alive and cheerful.
To be sure, there are many other ways of measuring our
strength. This experience wouldn't help me the least in a
discussion of principles, or in organizing any of the machinery
of society. It is rather like going back to the first
ages of mankind, and being tried in the struggle for existence.
To me, that is a great deal. I feel as if I had been
taken out of civilization and set back towards the beginning,
in order to work my way up again.

But what is the practical result of this journey? you will
ask. I can hardly tell, at present: if I were to state that I
have been acting on your system of life rather than my own,
—that is, making ventures without any certainty of the consequences,—I
think you would shake your head. Nevertheless,
in these ten months of absence I have come out of my
old skin and am a livelier snake than you ever knew me to
be. No, I am wrong; it is hardly a venture after all, and
my self-glorification is out of place. I have the prospect of
winning a great deal where a very little has been staked, and
the most timid man in the world might readily go that far.
Again you will shake your head; you remember “The

Amaranth.” How I should like to hear what has become
of that fearful and wonderful speculation!

Pray give me news of Mr. Blessing. All those matters
seem to lie so far behind me, that they look differently to
my eyes. Somehow, I can't keep the old impressions; I
even begin to forget them. You said, Philip, that he was
not intentionally dishonest, and something tells me you are
right. We learn men's characters rapidly in this rough
school, because we cannot get away from the close, rough,
naked contact. What surprises me is that the knowledge is
not only good for present and future use, but that I can take
it with me into my past life. One weakness is left, and you
will understand it. I blush to myself,—I am ashamed of
my early innocence and ignorance. This is wrong; yet,
Philip, I seem to have been so unmanly,—at least so unmasculine!
I looked for love, and fidelity, and all the virtues,
on the surface of life; believed that a gentle tongue was the
sign of a tender heart; felt a wound when some strong and
positive, yet differently moulded being approached me!
Now, here are fellows prickly as a cactus, with something at
the core as true and tender as you will find in a woman's
heart. They would stake their lives for me sooner than
some persons (whom we know) would lend me a hundred
dollars, without security! Even your speculator, whom I
have met in every form, is by no means the purely mercenary
and dangerous man I had supposed.

In short, Philip, I am on very good terms with human
nature; the other nature does not suit me so well. It is a
grand thing to look down into the cañon of the Colorado, or
to see a range of perfectly clear and shining snow-peaks
across the dry sage-plains; but oh, for one acre of our green
meadows! I dreamed of them, and the clover-fields, and

the woods and running streams, through the terrific heat of
the Nevada deserts, until the tears came. It is nearly a
year since I left home: I should think it fifty years!

With this mail goes another report to Mr. Wilder. In
three or four months my task will be at an end, and I shall
then be free to return. Will you welcome the brown-faced,
full bearded man, broad in cheeks and shoulders, as you
would the—but how did I use to look, Philip? It was a
younger brother you knew; but he has bequeathed all of his
love, and more, to the older.

II. Philip to Joseph.

When Madeline hung a wreath of holly around your
photograph this morning, I said to it as I say now: “A
merry Christmas, Joseph, wherever you are!” It is a
calm sunny day, and my view, as you know, reaches much
further through the leafless trees; but only the meadow on
the right is green. You, on the contrary, are enjoying
something as near to Paradise in color, and atmosphere,
and temperature (if you are, as I guess, in Southern California),
as you will ever be likely to see.

Yes, I will welcome the new man, although I shall see
more of the old one in him than you perhaps think,—nor
would I have it otherwise. We don't change the bases of
our lives, after all: the forces are differently combined,
otherwise developed, but they hang, I fancy, to the same
roots. Nay, I'll leave preaching until I have you again at
the old fireside. You want news from home, and no miserable
little particular is unimportant. I've been there, and
know what kind of letters are welcome.

The neighborhood (I like to hover around a while, before
alighting) is still a land where all things always seem the
same. The trains run up and down our valley, carrying a
little of the world boxed up in shabby cars, but leaving no
mark behind. In another year the people will begin to
visit the city more frequently; in still another, the city
people will find their way to us; in five years, population
will increase and property will rise in value. This is my
estimate, based on a plentiful experience.

Last week, Madeline and I attended the wedding of
Elwood Withers. It was at the Hopeton's, and had been
postponed a week or two, on account of the birth of a son
to our good old business-friend. There are two events for
you! Elwood, who has developed, as I knew he would,
into an excellent director of men and material undertakings,
has an important contract on the new road to the coal
regions. He showed me the plans and figures the other
day, and I see the beginning of wealth in them. Lucy,
who is a born lady, will save him socially and intellectually.
I have never seen a more justifiable marriage. He was
pale and happy, she sweetly serene and confident; and the
few words he said at the breakfast, in answer to the health
which Hopeton gave in his choice Vin d'Aï, made the unmarried
ladies envy the bride. Really and sincerely, I
came away from the house more of a Christian than I went.

You know all, dearest friend: was it not a test of my
heart to see that she was intimately, fondly happy? It was
hardly any more the face I once knew. I felt the change
in the touch of her hand. I heard it in the first word she
spoke. I did not dare to look into my heart to see if something
there were really dead, for the look would have called
the dead to life. I made one heroic effort, heaved a stone

over the place, and sealed it down forever. Then I felt
your arm on my shoulder, your hand on my breast. I was
strong and joyous; Lucy, I imagined, looked at me from
time to time, but with a bright face, as if she divined what
I had done. Can she have ever suspected the truth?

Time is a specific administered to us for all spiritual
shocks; but change of habit is better. Why may I not
change in quiet as you in action? It seems to me, sometimes,
as I sit alone before the fire, with the pipe-stem
between my teeth, that each of us is going backward
through the other's experience. You will thus prove my
results as I prove yours. Then, parted as we are, I see
our souls lie open to each other in equal light and warmth,
and feel that the way to God lies through the love of
man.

Two years ago, how all our lives were tangled! Now,
with so little agency of our own, how they are flowing into
smoothness and grace! Yours and mine are not yet complete,
but they are no longer distorted. One disturbing, yet
most pitiable, nature has been removed; Elwood, Lucy, the
Hopetons, are happy; you and I are healed of our impatience.
Yes, there is something outside of our own wills that
works for or against us, as we may decide. If I once forgot
this, it is all the clearer now.

I have forgotten one other,—Mr. Blessing. The other day
I visited him in the city. I found him five blocks nearer
the fashionable quarter, in a larger house. He was elegantly
dressed, and wore a diamond on his bosom. He came to
meet me with an open letter in his hand.

“From Mrs. Spelter, my daughter,” he said, waving it
with a grand air,—“an account of her presentation to the
Emperor Napoleon. The dress was—let me see—blue moiré

and Chantilly lace; Eugénie was quite struck with her figure
and complexion.”

“The world seems to treat you well,” I suggested.

“Another turn of the wheel. However, it showed me
what I am capable of achieving, when a strong spur is applied.
In this case the spur was, as you probably guess, Mr. Held,—
honor. Sir, I prevented a cataclysm! You of course know
the present quotations of the Amaranth stock, but you can
hardly be aware of my agency in the matter. When I went to
the Oil Region with the available remnant of funds, Kanuck
had fled. Although the merest tyro in geology, I selected a
spot back of the river-bluffs, in a hollow of the undulating
table-land, sunk a shaft, and—succeeded! It was what somebody
calls an inspired guess. I telegraphed instantly to a
friend, and succeeded in purchasing a moderate portion of
the stock—not so much as I desired—before its value was
known. As for the result, si monumentum quœris, circumspice!”

I wish I could give you an idea of the air with which he
said this, standing before me with his feet in position, and
his arms thrown out in the attitude of Ajax defying the lightning.

I ventured to inquire after your interest. “The shares
are here, sir, and safe,” he said, “worth not a cent less than
twenty-five thousand dollars.”

I urged him to sell them and deposit the money to your
credit, but this he refused to do without your authority.
There was no possibility of depreciation, he said: very
well, if so, this is your time to sell. Now, as I write, it
occurs to me that the telegraph may reach you. I close this,
therefore, at once, and post over to the office at Oakland.

Madeline says: “A merry Christmas from me!” It is

fixed in her head that you are still exposed to some mysterious
danger. Come back, shame her superstition, and
make happy your

III. Joseph to Philip.

Philip, Philip, I have found your valley!

After my trip to Oregon, in March, I went southward,
along the western base of the Sierra Nevada, intending at
first to cross the range; but falling in with an old friend of
yours, a man of the mountains and the sea, of books and
men, I kept company with him, on and on, until the great
wedges of snow lay behind us, and only a long, low, winding
pass divided us from the sands of the Colorado Desert.
From the mouth of this pass I looked on a hundred miles of
mountains; there were lakes glimmering below; there were
groves of ilex on the hillsides, an orchard of oranges, olives,
and vines in the hollow, millions of flowers hiding the earth,
pure winds, fresh waters, and remoteness from all conventional
society. I have never seen a landscape so broad,
so bright, so beautiful!

Yes, but we will only go there on one of these idle epicurean
journeys of which we dream, and then to enjoy the wit
and wisdom of our generous friend, not to seek a refuge from
the perversions of the world! For I have learned another
thing, Philip: the freedom we craved is not a thing to be
found in this or that place. Unless we bring it with us, we
shall not find it.

The news of the decline of the Amaranth stock, in your
last, does not surprise me. How fortunate that my telegraphic
order arrived in season! It was in Mr. Blessing's

nature to hold on; but he will surely have something left.
I mean to invest half of the sum in his wife's name, in any
case; for the “prospecting” of which I wrote you, last fall,
was a piece of more than ordinary luck. You must have
heard of White Pine, by this time. We were the discoverers,
and reaped a portion of the first harvest, which is never
equal to the second; but this way of getting wealth is so
incredible to me, even after I have it, that I almost fear the
gold will turn into leaves or pebbles, as in the fairy tales.
I shall not tell you what my share is: let me keep one
secret,—nay, two,—to carry home!

More incredible than anything else is now the circumstance
that we are within a week of each other. This letter,
I hope, will only precede me by a fortnight. I have one
or two last arrangements to make, and then the locomotive
will cross the continent too slowly for my eager haste. Why
should I deny it? I am homesick, body and soul. Verily,
if I were to meet Mr. Chaffinch in Montgomery Street, I
should fling myself upon his neck, before coming to my
sober senses. Even he is no longer an antipathy: I was
absurd to make one of him. I have but one left; and
Eugénie's admiration of her figure and complexion does not
soften it in the least.

How happy Madeline's letter made me! After I wrote
to her, I would have recalled mine, at any price; for I had
obeyed an impulse, and I feared foolishly. What you said
of her “superstition” might have been just, I thought.
But I believe that a true-hearted woman always values
impulses, because she is never at a loss to understand them.
So now I obey another, in sending the onclosed. Do you
know that her face is as clear in my memory as yours? and as
—but why should I write, when I shall so soon be with you?