"For I realize a great many things now that none of us realized at the start. The cost of producing a paper is very great, and there were many things that we did not know of at all. Perny knows all about it now, and has figured it out for me and Van, so that we see clearly at last that no matter how much money we had started with, or how capable we were, we should only have failed, for, unless we changed our plans and charged higher for the paper and gave less premiums, the more subscribers we got the more we should have lost. It is some consolation to know that, for we might have lost a hundred thousand dollars very easily in a year if we had had it, or had raised it by subscription, as we tried to do. Your little thousand would have been but a drop in the ocean, and would have lasted only a few days. So I send back the draft to you, now that everything is ended and you cannot refuse to take it. As for my part of the assessments, I managed to keep up and a little more, for I was still in favor of going on when the others had reached the limit of their means.
"And now comes the hardest part of all. For oh, Dorry dear, I am going to do what I once said I would do if anything happened to me, or if the paper failed and ruined us all. I am going to release you. I could not think, Dorry, after all that has passed, of letting you come here now to share my poverty. For that is what it is, dear—just poverty; and poverty in a big city is more humiliating and deadening to all the joys of life than it can possibly be elsewhere. I have nothing now but my hands, Dorry, and they are of little value, for times have changed and there is much less work than formerly. I have less even than that, because there are some debts that have accumulated and must be paid.
"I never realized what riches were until I had them,—I mean until I thought I had them, which was the same thing while it lasted,—nor what poverty meant. And Perny says so, too, and Van. Barry, of course, still has his salary. But I realize now, and I am not going to let you leave comfort and plenty, without care, to come here and share only privation and care, without comfort, with me. It breaks my heart to give you up, Dorry, but I know it is right, and while you might still be willing, if I asked it, to fulfil your promise to me, and do not realize all that it would mean, I cannot ask you—I cannot allow you—to do it.
"Some day, Dorry, things may be different again. Some day, if we both live and you are still free, and still care, I may come to you and ask you to give me back your promise. For you are free now, Dorry. I would be less than I am if I did not give you your freedom now, after holding out to you all the promises of wealth, and leading you to believe in all my vain dreams. How beautiful you were through it all! You only thought of others. Dear heart, what will the poor poets and artists do now without the beautiful place you were going to build for them? I suppose they must always be poor dreamers like me to the end, and it is that poverty and that end, darling, that I cannot ask you to share.
"Good-by, Dorry. We have been friends from childhood, and friends we must still, be, for, whatever comes, I am always
"Your faithful
"True."
"P.S. I believe I wrote you that your Christmas remembrance came. I thank you for it once more. It is very beautiful. I thought you might care for the book because it is an autograph copy. I must not forget to wish you a happy and beautiful New Year. It will be different from what we had planned—different from the year just passed, which, I suppose, has been happy, too, though I would not, for some reasons, wish to repeat it. I forgot to tell you about my picture. I am only waiting for a cold sleet to come, so I can finish it. I had intended it, you know, for Perny's Christmas, to hang over his desk in the new house; but there is no new house, and he would not let me give it to him now, so I shall try to sell it.