This is a night I have long waited for and worked for.
You have understood why during these years I have never asked you to set a day for our marriage. It has been a long, hard struggle, for me coming here poor, to make a living and a practice and a name. You know I have had as my goal not a living for one but a living for two—and for more than two—for our little ones. When I married you, I meant to rescue you from the Franklin Flats, all flats.
But with these two hands of mine I have laid hold of the affairs of this world and shaken them until they have heeded me and my strength. I have won, I am independent, I am my own man and my own master, and I am ready to be your husband as through it all I have been your lover.
Name the day when I can be both.
Yet the day must be distant: I am to leave this firm and establish my own and I want that done first. Some months must yet pass. Any day of next Spring, then—so far away but nearer than any other Spring during these impatient years.
Polly, constant one, I am your constant lover,
BEN DOOLITTLE.
Roses to you.
POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE
June 24.