Sisters, this union between Sprucehill and Russia is a great national question, which ought to have agitated this country from the shores of the two oceans, the Mississippi and Rocky Mountains inclusive.
There has been considerable of an internal rumbling sort of a convulsion, earthquaky and threatening, in various sections, which ought to have given timely warning of what the true national feeling was; but somehow Russia don't seem to understand it, and I'm beginning to think that there is secret treason here at home—deep, double-dyed treason—of which your missionary is the object.
It is a shameful fact that the Government has taken no sort of interest in an engagement which would have linked the two great social centres of Russia and Sprucehill in a close and loving union.
From the day my Alexis had an interview with President Grant my heart-history has been allowed to drag like a lazy funeral train. Before, all was bright and luminous, with beautiful aspirations; but from that time suspense has coiled around me, hope has flared up, blinked, and almost died out. I did not understand it then. It seemed to me that fickleness was in the heart of the great Grand Duke.
But I did him a cruel injustice. If our two hearts and destinies are severed, it has been by the underground machinations of this Administration. General Grant saw what was going on, and has cruelly circumvented two young and unsophisticated hearts that were knitting together, like ivy round an oak sapling.
I am determined on it. The country shall hear of my wrongs. Sprucehill shall have redress for the insult put upon her favorite daughter. In all that General Grant has done in the way of omission, nothing approaches the inactivity which has wrung my heart, as wet blankets are twisted in the strong hands of a washerwoman.
He has not written me a line. His letters must have been interrupted. Evil machinations have been at work. The Government detectives are everywhere scattering slanders and distrust. I shouldn't wonder a bit if they have been to our old homestead on Sprucehill, mousing among church registers, and interviewing family physicians. Well, let them. Since I learned to write, some figures have been changed in the old Family Bible, and, thank goodness! old Doctor Perry is dead. The keenest detective won't find much difference between 1830 and 1850. It only requires that the curve of the three should be rubbed out, and a dash sharpened to a point added. If they look for eighteen hundred and thirty there, I can tell them it isn't to be found. Let them search—that's all!
This was my state of mind three days ago. Now I am revivified with extra animation. Hope has perched on my white hat and sits there waving its feather like a pennant.
I am glad from the bottom of my heart that I didn't follow the duke across the ocean. After all a duke is only a man, hard to catch and expensive to cage. Why should we trouble ourselves about princes and dukes and lords, when we have the most genuine of all manly articles right under our feet. Dukes are scarce and hard to scare up, but there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it. That's my motto to-day.