January 3.
Dear Gordon:
You are right to be annoyed. I know I'm not a satisfactory love letter
writer. I have only to glance at the published correspondence of
Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning to realize that the warmth of my
style is not up to standard. But you know already--you have known a long
time--that I am not a very emotional person. I suppose I might write a
lot of such things as: "Every waking moment you are in my thoughts." "My
dear boy, I only live when you are near." But it wouldn't be absolutely
true. You don't fill all my thoughts; 107 orphans do that. And I really
am quite comfortably alive whether you are here or not. I have to be
natural. You surely don't want me to pretend more desolation than I
feel. But I do love to see you,--you know that perfectly,--and I am
disappointed when you can't come. I fully appreciate all your charming
qualities, but, my dear boy, I CAN'T be sentimental on paper. I am
always thinking about the hotel chambermaid who reads the letters you
casually leave on your bureau. You needn't expostulate that you carry
them next your heart, for I know perfectly well that you don't.
Forgive me for that last letter if it hurt your feelings. Since I came
to this asylum I am extremely touchy on the subject of drink. You would
be, too, if you had seen what I have seen. Several of my chicks are the
sad result of alcoholic parents, and they are never going to have a fair
chance all their lives. You can't look about a place like this without
"aye keeping up a terrible thinking."
You are right, I am afraid, about its being a woman's trick to make a
great show of forgiving a man, and then never letting him hear the end
of it. Well, Gordon, I positively don't know what the word "forgiving"
means. It can't include "forgetting," for that is a physiological
process, and does not result from an act of the will. We all have a
collection of memories that we would happily lose, but somehow those are
just the ones that insist upon sticking. If "forgiving" means promising
never to speak of a thing again, I can doubtless manage that. But it
isn't always the wisest way to shut an unpleasant memory inside you. It
grows and grows, and runs all through you like a poison.
Oh dear! I really didn't mean to be saying all this. I try to be the
cheerful, carefree (and somewhat light-headed) Sallie you like best; but
I've come in touch with a great deal of REALNESS during this last year,
and I'm afraid I've grown into a very different person from the girl you
fell in love with. I'm no longer a gay young thing playing with life.
I know it pretty thoroughly now, and that means that I can't be always
laughing.
I know this is another beastly uncheerful letter,--as bad as the last,
and maybe worse,--but if you knew what we've just been through! A
boy--sixteen--of unspeakable heredity has nearly poisoned himself with
a disgusting mixture of alcohol and witch hazel. We have been working
three days over him, and are just sure now that he is going to
recuperate sufficiently to do it again! "It's a gude warld, but they're
ill that's in 't."
Please excuse that Scotch--it slipped out. Please excuse everything.