_Vailima_, _July_ 14, 1894.
MY DEAR ADELAIDE,—. . . So, at last, you are going into mission work?
where I think your heart always was. You will like it in a way, but
remember it is dreary long. Do you know the story of the American tramp
who was offered meals and a day’s wage to chop with the back of an axe on
a fallen trunk. ‘Damned if I can go on chopping when I can’t see the
chips fly!’ You will never see the chips fly in mission work, never; and
be sure you know it beforehand. The work is one long dull
disappointment, varied by acute revulsions; and those who are by nature
courageous and cheerful and have grown old in experience, learn to rub
their hands over infinitesimal successes. However, as I really believe
there is some good done in the long run—_gutta cavat lapidem non vi_ in
this business—it is a useful and honourable career in which no one should
be ashamed to embark. Always remember the fable of the sun, the storm,
and the traveller’s cloak. Forget wholly and for ever all small
pruderies, and remember that _you cannot change ancestral feelings of
right and wrong without what is practically soul-murder_. Barbarous as
the customs may seem, always hear them with patience, always judge them
with gentleness, always find in them some seed of good; see that you
always develop them; remember that all you can do is to civilise the man
in the line of his own civilisation, such as it is. And never expect,
never believe in, thaumaturgic conversions. They may do very well for
St. Paul; in the case of an Andaman islander they mean less than nothing.
In fact, what you have to do is to teach the parents in the interests of
their great-grandchildren.
Now, my dear Adelaide, dismiss from your mind the least idea of fault
upon your side; nothing is further from the fact. I cannot forgive you,
for I do not know your fault. My own is plain enough, and the name of it
is cold-hearted neglect; and you may busy yourself more usefully in
trying to forgive me. But ugly as my fault is, you must not suppose it
to mean more than it does; it does not mean that we have at all forgotten
you, that we have become at all indifferent to the thought of you. See,
in my life of Jenkin, a remark of his, very well expressed, on the
friendships of men who do not write to each other. I can honestly say
that I have not changed to you in any way; though I have behaved thus
ill, thus cruelly. Evil is done by want of—well, principally by want of
industry. You can imagine what I would say (in a novel) of any one who
had behaved as I have done. _Deteriora sequor_. And you must somehow
manage to forgive your old friend; and if you will be so very good,
continue to give us news of you, and let us share the knowledge of your
adventures, sure that it will be always followed with interest—even if it
is answered with the silence of ingratitude. For I am not a fool; I know
my faults, I know they are ineluctable, I know they are growing on me. I
know I may offend again, and I warn you of it. But the next time I
offend, tell me so plainly and frankly like a lady, and don’t lacerate my
heart and bludgeon my vanity with imaginary faults of your own and purely
gratuitous penitence. I might suspect you of irony!
We are all fairly well, though I have been off work and off—as you know
very well—letter-writing. Yet I have sometimes more than twenty letters,
and sometimes more than thirty, going out each mail. And Fanny has had a
most distressing bronchitis for some time, which she is only now
beginning to get over. I have just been to see her; she is lying—though
she had breakfast an hour ago, about seven—in her big cool,
mosquito-proof room, ingloriously asleep. As for me, you see that a doom
has come upon me: I cannot make marks with a pen—witness ‘ingloriously’
above; and my amanuensis not appearing so early in the day, for she is
then immersed in household affairs, and I can hear her ‘steering the
boys’ up and down the verandahs—you must decipher this unhappy letter for
yourself and, I fully admit, with everything against you. A letter
should be always well written; how much more a letter of apology!
Legibility is the politeness of men of letters, as punctuality of kings
and beggars. By the punctuality of my replies, and the beauty of my
hand-writing, judge what a fine conscience I must have!
Now, my dear gamekeeper, I must really draw to a close. For I have much
else to write before the mail goes out three days hence. Fanny being
asleep, it would not be conscientious to invent a message from her, so
you must just imagine her sentiments. I find I have not the heart to
speak of your recent loss. You remember perhaps, when my father died,
you told me those ugly images of sickness, decline, and impaired reason,
which then haunted me day and night, would pass away and be succeeded by
things more happily characteristic. I have found it so. He now haunts
me, strangely enough, in two guises; as a man of fifty, lying on a
hillside and carving mottoes on a stick, strong and well; and as a
younger man, running down the sands into the sea near North Berwick,
myself—_ætat_. 11—somewhat horrified at finding him so beautiful when
stripped! I hand on your own advice to you in case you have forgotten
it, as I know one is apt to do in seasons of bereavement.—Ever yours,
with much love and sympathy,