We and Our Neighbors; or, The Records of an Unfashionable Street

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

My Dear Friend: How can I thank you for the confidence you have shown me in your letter? You were not mistaken in thinking that this long silence has been cruel to me. It is more cruel to a woman than it can possibly be to a man, because if to him silence be a pain, he yet is conscious all the time that he has the power to break it; he has the right to speak at any time, but a woman must die silent. Every fiber of her being says this. She cannot speak, she must suffer as the dumb animals suffer.

I have, I confess, at times, been bitterly impatient of this long reserve, knowing, as I did, that you had not ceased to feel what you once felt. I saw, in our brief interviews in New York, that you loved me still. A woman is never blind to that fact, with whatever care it is sought to be hidden. I saw that you felt all you once professed, and yet were determined to conceal it, and treat with me on the calm basis of ordinary friendship, and sometimes I was indignant: forgive me the injustice.

You see that such a course is of no use, as a means of making one forget. To know one's self passionately beloved by another who never avows it, is something dangerous to the imagination. It gives rise to a thousand restless conjectures, and is fatal to peace. We can reconcile ourselves in time to any certainty; it is only when we are called upon to accommodate ourselves to possibilities, uncertain as vaporous clouds, that we weary ourselves in fruitless efforts.

Your letter avows what I knew before; what you often told me in our happy days: and I now say in return that I, like you, have never forgotten; that your image and presence have been to me as mine to you, ever a part of my consciousness through all these years of separation. And now you ask me to change all this into a cool and prudent friendship, after the manner of the world; that is to say, to take all from you, to accept the entire devotion of your heart and life, but be careful to risk nothing in return, to keep at a safe distance from your possible troubles, lest I be involved.

Do you think me capable of this? Is it like me? and what would you think and say to a friend who should make the same proposition to you? Put it to yourself: what would you think of yourself, if you could be so coldly wary and prudent with regard to a friend who was giving to you the whole devotion of heart and life?

No, dear friend, this is all idle talk. Away with it! I feel that I am capable of as entire devotion to you as I know you are to me; never doubt it. The sad fatality which clouds your life makes this feeling only the more intense; as we feel for those who are a part of our own hearts, when in suffering and danger. In one respect, my medical studies are an advantage to me. They have placed me at a stand-point where my judgment on these questions and subjects is different from those of ordinary women. An understanding of the laws of physical being, of the conditions of brain and nerve forces, may possibly at some future day bring a remedy for such sufferings as yours. I look for this among the possible triumphs of science,—it adds interest to the studies and lectures I am pursuing. I shall not be to you what many women are to the men whom they love, an added weight to fall upon you if you fall, to crush you under the burden of my disappointments and anxieties and distresses. Knowing that your heart is resolute and your nature noble, a failure, supposing such a possibility, would be to me only like a fever or a paralysis,—a subject for new care and watchfulness and devotion, not one for tears or reproaches or exhortations.

There are lesions of the will that are no more to be considered subject to moral condemnation than a strain of the spinal column or a sudden fall, from paralysis. It is a misfortune; and to real true affection, a misfortune only renders the sufferer more dear and redoubles devotion.

Your letter gives me courage to live—courage to pursue the course set before me here. I will make the most of myself that I can for your sake, since all I am or can be is yours. Already I hope that I am of use to you in opening the doors of confidence. Believe me, dear, nothing is so bad for the health of the mind or the body as to have a constant source of anxiety and apprehension that cannot be spoken of to anybody. The mind thus shut within itself becomes a cave of morbid horrors. I believe these unshared fears, these broodings, and dreads unspoken, often fulfill their own prediction by the unhealthy states of mind that they bring.

The chambers of the soul ought to be daily opened and aired; the sunshine of a friend's presence ought to shine through them, to dispel sickly damps and the malaria of fears and horrors. If I could be with you and see you daily, my presence should cheer you, my faith in you should strengthen your faith in yourself.

For my part, I can see how the very sensitiveness of your moral temperament which makes you so dread a failure, exposes you to fail. I think the near friends of persons who have your danger often hinder instead of helping them by the manifestation of their fears and anxieties. They think there is no way but to "pile up the agony," to intensify the sense of danger and responsibility, when the fact is, the subject of it is feeling now all the strain that human nerves can feel without cracking.