Yes, that at last is the truth at the bottom of my heart! I have searched it to the bottom, and I have found the truth. I glory in the truth that you have not come back to me. There—have I not said all that a woman could say to a man, living or dead?
Just as strongly as I have urged you to return, just as strongly I have hoped that you would not return! In my soul I wanted to see you go on in your own fashion, following your own dreams and caring not for mine. That was the Meriwether Lewis I had pictured to myself. I shall glory in my own undoing, if it has meant your success.
Holding to your own ambition, keeping your own loyalty, holding your own counsel and your own speech to the end—pushing on through everything to what you have set out to do—that is the man I could have loved! Deeds, deeds, high accomplishments—these in truth are the things which are to prevail. The selfish love of success as success—the love of ease, of money, of power—these are the things women covet from a man—yes, but they are not the things a woman loves in a man. No; it is the stiff-necked man, bound in his own ambition, whom women love, even as they swear they do not.
Therefore, do not come back to me, Meriwether Lewis! Do not come—forget all that I have said to you before—do not return until you have done your work! Do not come back to me until you can come content. Do not come to me with your splendid will broken. Let it triumph even over the will of a Burr, not used to yielding, not easily giving up anything desired.
This is almost the last letter I shall ever write to any man in all my life. I wonder who will read it—you, or all the world, perhaps! I wish it might rest with you at the last. Oh, let this thought lie with you as you sleep—you did not come back to me, and I rejoiced that you did not!
Tell me, why is it that I think of you lying where the wind is sweet in the trees? Why is it that I think of myself, too, lying at last, with all my doubts composed, all my restless ambitions ended, all my foolish dreams answered—in some place where the sound of the unceasing waters shall wash out from the memory of the world all my secrets and all my sins? Always I hear myself crying:
“I hope I shall not be unhappy, for I do not feel that I have been bad.”
Adieu, Meriwether Lewis, adieu! I am glad you can never read this. I am glad that you have not come back. I am glad that I have failed!