t me to tell father "the whole truth,"--how you first
fascinated me with editorial magnanimity, then baited me with compliments,
and later with deepest confidences, and finally slipped into my Arcadia
disguised as a philosopher, but, when you had got entire possession,
declared yourself a victorious lover! I wonder that you can contemplate
the record you have made in this matter without blushing!

As for your "infidelity," and what you call your "faith," I think father
will denounce them both as blasphemous. Religion to father is something
more than "the poetry he believes in." It has the definition of
experience, miracles, and a whole body of spiritual phenomena quite as
real to him as your upper-chamber existence is to you. Only father has
this advantage of you, he has a real Divinity, with all the necessary
attributes of a man's God. His "voice of happiness" speaks to him from the
stars, and he does not call it an echo, as you do, of a fair voice within
your own heart. Father gets his salvation from the outside of his warring
elements; you speak to your own seas, "Peace be still!" As for me, between
you, I stand winking at Heaven; and I say: "It is evident that neither of
them understands this mystery of life; I will not try to comprehend. I
will be good when I can, and diplomatic when I must, and leave the rest to
heaven and earth and nature." Meanwhile, I advise you not to quote your
pagan authorities to father. If the very worst comes, you may say that you
have almost scriptural proof of my affections,--and mind you say
affections, father could not bear the romantic inflection of such a term
as love. It sounds too secular, carnal, to him.

You ask me if I will consent to abandon such a life as our forest offers
and come with you into "this great solitude of people" which you call New
York. Philip, when a man holds a starling in his hand he does not ask the
bird whether it will stay here or wing yonder, but he carries it with him
where he will; and the starling sings, no less in one place than in
another, because its nature is to sing. But, I think, dear Master, the
motive which prompts the song in the cage is not the same as the impulse
to sing in the forest. So it is with me. If we live here among the trees,
where their green waves make a summer sea high in the heavens above our
heads, I could be as content as any bird is. But if you make our home in
the city, or in the midst of a desert for that matter, I could n