A sweet letter from Aunt Louise inclosing one of dear Mr. Stedman's poems, "The Undiscovered Country." I have tucked it into my mirror, where I can look at it while having my hair done. It begins:
Could we but know
The land that ends our dark, uncertain travel,
Where lie those happier hills and meadows low—
Ah, if beyond the spirit's inmost cavil,
Aught of that country could we surely know,
Who would not go?
Aunt Louise was just back from church, and the text made a sacrilegious smile overspread my face, "Look to the hills whence thy help cometh."
Trouble is what comes from the hills here. However, I will blight no illusions when I answer. She had picked a single, beautiful Carl Bruschi rose in its perfection from her rose-corner, to put upon the Sunday dinner-table, with a bit of feathery green. I can see her doing it and "rescuing seedlings from the clutch of weeds," and dusting the peach-tree, and straightening the hollyhocks, and "feeding much upon her thoughts."