ght of you; but the life I lead is slowly crushing
my energies. Over and over again, I have taken up my pen; and over and
over again, I have laid it aside, recoiling from the thought of myself
and my existence; too miserable (perhaps too proud) to tell you what a
wretched creature I am, and what thoughts come to me sometimes in the
wakeful hours of the night.

"After this confession, you wonder, perhaps, why I write to you now.

"I really believe it is because I have been threatened with legal
proceedings by my creditors, and have just come victoriously out of a
hard struggle to appease them for the time. This little fight has roused
me from my apathy; it has rallied my spirits, and made me feel like my
old self again. I am no longer content with silently loving my dearest
friend; I open my heart and write to her.

"'Oh, dear, how sad that she should be in debt!' I can hear you say
this, and sigh to yourself--you who have never known what it was to be in
want of money since you were born. Shall I tell you what my husband earns
at the University? No: I feel the blood rushing into my face at the bare
idea of revealing it.

"Let me do the Professor justice. My Animated Mummy has reached the
height of his ambition at last--he is Professor of Chemistry, and is
perfectly happy for the rest of his life. My dear, he is as lean, and
almost as dirty, as the wretch who first perverted him. Do you remember
my once writing to you about a mysterious Hungarian, whom we found in the
University? A few years since, this man died by suicide, as mysteriously
as he had lived. They found him in the laboratory, with a strange
inscription traced in chalk on the wall by which he lay dead. These were
the words:--'After giving it a fair trial, I find that life is not worth
living for. I have decided to destroy myself with a poison of my own
discovery. My chemical papers and preparations are hereby bequeathed to
my friend Doctor ----, and my body is presented as a free gift to the
anatomy school. Let a committee of surgeons and analysts examine my
remains. I defy them to discover a trace of the drug that has killed me.'
And they did try, Julie--and discovered nothing. I wonder whether the
suicide has left the receipt for that poison, among his other precious
legacies, to his 'friend Doctor ----.'

"Why do I trouble you with these nauseous details? Because they are in no
small degree answerable for my debts. My husband devotes all his leisure