Your story gives me a different feeling from what I have hitherto entertained toward you. You may not have understood my first letters to you. The poor and proud and sensitive are so often misunderstood. You have so truly appreciated me in drawing the heroine of your book that I feel as much attracted to you now as I was repelled from you formerly.
Respectfully yours,
CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.
CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
May 10, 1912.
MY DEAR MR. SANDS:
I wish to thank you for putting your name in my copy of your story. Your kindness encourages me to believe that you are all that your readers would naturally think you to be. And I feel that I can reach out to you for sympathy.
The longer I remain in this place, the more out of place I feel. But my main trouble is that I have never been able to meet the whole expense of my father's funeral, though no one knows this but the undertaker, unless he has told it. He is quite capable of doing such a thing. The other day he passed me, sitting on his hearse, and he gave me a look that was meant to remind me of my debt and that was most uncomplimentary.
And yet I was not extravagant. Any ignorant observer of the procession would never have supposed that my father was a thinker of any consequence. The faculty of the college attended, but they did not make as much of a show as at Commencement. They never do at funerals.
Far be it from me to place myself under obligation to anyone, least of all to a stranger, by receiving aid. I do not ask it. I now wish that I had never spoken to you of your having been instrumental in my father's death.
A proud daughter of the Southland,
CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN.