Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?
Shakespeare.
The following are excerpts from letters written to the author:
LOVED AND LOYALLY TRIED TO SERVE
In April, 1909, she writes as follows:
“Does ‘Mexico’ recall to your mind a request I once made of you that you should see me across the border line of that strange country? However much I needed it and whether well or ill I never knew. I only know I did not go. But my own country seemed to me so hard that I thought I could not live it through.
“The Government which I thought I loved and loyally tried to serve has shut every door in my face and stared at me insultingly through its windows. What wonder I want to leave?
“The locks have never turned, the doors are rusted in their hinges. The old warders go out and the new ones come in, sworn faithfully to their charge, with no knowledge of why they are charged to do it; ignorant of every fact, simply enemies by transmission; and yet I stay represented as of ‘doubtful integrity,’ ‘weak,’ ‘decrepit,’ ‘imbecile,’ but yet, very ‘dangerous.’”
She then draws a picture of a Sultan of Turkey who was made a prisoner.
“He was locked in and I locked out, but my whole country seemed my prison and I struggled to free myself of it. Pardon me, I never thought to recall the disagreeable subject again, but like the boy’s whistle it ‘blew itself.’”