Rodman will take this packet and leave it with you when he finds
opportunity. It is not in any real sense a letter, so I am in no danger
of incurring your father's displeasure. You will probably have heard new
rumors concerning my father during the past few days, for Peter Morrill
has been to Enfield, New Hampshire, where he says letters have been
received stating that my father died in Cortland, Ohio, more than five
years ago. I shall do what I can to substantiate this fresh report as I
have always done with all the previous ones, but I have little hope of
securing reliable information at this distance, and after this length
of time. I do not know when I can ever start on a personal quest myself,
for even had I the money I could not leave home until Rodman is much
older, and fitted for greater responsibility. Oh! Waitstill, how you
have helped my poor, dear mother! Would that I were free to tell you how
I value your friendship! It is something more than mere friendship! What
you are doing is like throwing a life-line to a sinking human being.
Two or three times, of late, mother has forgotten to set out the supper
things for my father. Her ten years' incessant waiting for him seems to
have subsided a little, and in its place she watches for you. [Ivory
had written “watches for her daughter” but carefully erased the last two
words.] You come but seldom, but her heart feeds on the sight of you.
What she needed, it seems, was the magical touch of youth and health and
strength and sympathy, the qualities you possess in such great measure.
If I had proof of my father's death I think now, perhaps, that I might
try to break it gently to my mother, as if it were fresh news, and see
if possibly I might thus remove her principal hallucination. You see
now, do you not, how sane she is in many, indeed in most ways,--how
sweet and lovable, even how sensible?
To help you better to understand the influence that has robbed me of
both father and mother and made me and mine the subject of town and
tavern gossip for years past, I have written for you just a sketch of
the “Cochrane craze”; the romantic story of a man who swayed the
wills of his fellow-creatures in a truly marvellous manner. Some local
historian of his time will doubtless give him more space; my wish is to
have you know something more of the circumstances that have made me
a prisoner in life instead of a free man; but prisoner as I am at the
moment, I am sustained just now by a new courage. I read in my copy of
Ovid last night: “The best of weapons is the undaunted heart.” This will
help you, too, in your hard life, for yours is the most undaunted heart
in all the world.