With Christianity at my heart, and gambling money in my pocket, I feel demoralized as a church member; yet I must confess it exhilated me as if I had been on the top of a high mountain, and was looking down with delicious dizziness. I a gambler, I a diver into pools no larger than a man's hat, but dangerous as the bottomless pit! I cannot realize it; and when realized, it seems to me as if I couldn't be properly penitent. That sort of thing doesn't seem so awful to me as it did before I got into it, in this pleasant, innocent, and sweetly promiscuous manner.
Is this "rolling sin like a sweet morsel under the tongue"? Am I getting faithless to the trust with which I set forth on this city mission?
This much I will say in my own behalf: horse-racing, if pernicious, is awfully pleasant, and horse-betting (gloves and neckties I mean) is—well—ditto.
Such a ride home as we had! Trees and grass, cool and green—no dust. The sun going down, and throwing red shadows across the fields. Carriages crowded full of smiling people, horses wild to pass each other and get home; yourself deliciously tired, with half a dozen swift horses chasing each other through your brain, and trampling down your conscience.
Well, sisters, I may have been wrong, but frankness is my peculiarity, and I should like to try it all over again, just once. Don't think hard of it, but I should.
LXX.
PREPARING FOR SEA.
DEAR SISTERS:—With an aching head and bitter taste in my mouth, I take up my pen to write. Myself, and not myself, I sit here as if I had just come out of the upheaving of an earthquake. If I write anything of what happened yesterday, it must be sensational; for, of all sensations that ever riled up a human constitution, that I felt while out to sea beat all that I ever knew or heard of.
I have been out to a yacht race.