y spirit or some emanation of my body, but, however it is,
I am there always pursuing her as once I did in reality, until at last I
lay hold of her and draw her into my arms beneath that ancient oak. I kiss
her once and twice and a third time, gazing the while into her startled
eyes. Then an inexpressible sweetness takes possession of me, a shudder
runs through my veins, and of a sudden all is dark; I am sinking down,
down, in unfathomable abysses, until abruptly I awake. No words can convey
the mingled reality and remoteness of these sensations. Jessica, Jessica,
you have troubled the very sources of my being; you have abandoned me to
contend with shadows and the fear of shadows.

L

JACK TO PHILIP

DEAR MR. TOWERS:

You have not wrote to me yet. The weather is fine and things come up here
and bloom out doors. But the old gentleman says we are out of the ark of
safety. He have made up his mind to be damned any how. He says the Lord
have turned his face against us. But I guess really it is the young lady
that is showing off. She stands on her hind legs 'most all the time now.
She have back slid out of nearly everything and have quit going to church.
She does the same kind of meanness I do now, and don't care. She is jolly
all the time, but she aint really glad none. She have got a familiar
spirit in the forest that you can't see with your eyes. But she meets him
under a big tree, and sometimes she cries. She don't let me come, but I
creep after her and hide, so as to be there if he changes her into
something else. The old gentleman have quit his religious cussing now and
have took to fussing. But he can do either one according to the bible. He
knows all the abusing scripture by heart. But the young lady have hardened
her heart. She is dead game, and she aint skert of him, nor of the bible,
nor nothing. And she aint sweet to nobody now but me. If you answer this,
I will show it to her.

Your trew friend,

JACK O'MEARA.

P.S.--She wore your letter all one day inside her things before she give
it to the old man.

LI

FROM PHILIP'S DIARY

Humanitarians are divided into two classes--those who have no imagination,
and those who have a perverted imagination. The first are the
sentimentalists; their brains are flaccid, lumpish like dough, and without
grip on reality. They are haunted by the vague