o vanish clean away into nothing. Only your
encompassing eyes peer at me with solemn expostulation out of the
shimmering form I conjure up and call my lover. Is it quite fair, Philip?
And as for your character, my hope is that, in spite of your mental pose
as a sage, you have an unreasonable disposition, a chaotic temper. A long
term of years with a serene, gentle-spirited man would be unbearable to
me. Rather than prolong the futility of existence with one I could not
provoke, even enrage, I should commit suicide. My own disposition is so
equally divided between perversity and repentance that I could not endure
the placidity, the ennui, of a level turnpike existence.

And now isn't it an evidence of your high-minded heartlessness, that in
the same letter where you sue for love you also introduce a philosophical
discussion and show even more heat in maintaining it than you do in your
amorous petition? Why I cannot take warning and fly to the ends of my
earth away from you now while there is yet time, is a mystery to me!

And so you expect to make such a pother in your opposition to the spirit
of the times that all the world will hear you. Dear Master, I doubt if you
will! Your bells ring too high up. The angels in heaven may hear you, but
men are not listening in that direction. I did not reply to your
contention against Lyman Abbott, because it is a far cry from you to me on
this subject. In consciousness we are at opposite ends of a great problem,
and I think the normal man walks somewhere between. Besides, I am not sure
that I understand your position; I am not familiar with the starry
highways of your mind. Still, in a general way it has always seemed to me
that material things are, after all, "counters which represent spiritual
realities." And I take comfort in the fact that it must require us all to
work out the Great Plan,--humanitarian, sage, pilgrim, ascetic, even the
butcher and candlestick maker. And while we do not know it, really we are
working together for one end hidden now in the divine economy of far-off
destiny and justice.... To me the wonder of wonders is that I may some day
light a little taper in your upper chamber myself, and kneel together with
you before the same window to worship. Only, dear Heart, please get your
deity named before I come!

P.S.--As to my spelling, that is a coquettish licence I take with the
genealogy of words. And you may tell your proofreader that the letter _r_
has never