L. G. C.
Munich, January 2, 1883.
MUNICH.
ERE is your first letter in the new year. I have been giving you a rest. I did a little sum in arithmetic myself, and that addition of letters looked so formidable it drove me into sandwiching this interval. Has the experiment been satisfactory, do you ask? Only in proving to myself that I can be unselfish. I had a friend in Philadelphia once who had the scathingest tongue. He used to say: “All women like and seek more or less martyrdom.” Maybe and maybe. I know I said to myself: “He has to answer all those. Think of such a tax! Because you are away from home and yearn so for news, you have been thoughtless. He has many correspondents; he has much to do. Think of how you may be interfering! Perhaps he sits up o’ nights, or heralds the dawn to get you in. If—but never mind how. Your conscience has been stirred; you’ll be good; you are penitent; you’ll bring forth works meet for repentance; you’ll give him a rest!”
I have been good. I’ve done my penance beautifully. I know I have, for I feel like—an archangel. But—look out for the next three weeks! It will be anomalous perfection of conduct if I do not, like the most exemplary, “reformed drunkard,” give this self-imposed restraint a treat a day! Best be looking around for a bookkeeper—graduate of Bryant Commercial College—to help foot up the columns then! And what a quick transit you will make into the beauties of multiplication—how the twenties will multiply! Oh! I can tell you, if you are going “to keep count” on me, I’ll see to it you’ll have enough to do. Now, aren’t you scared? Your letter is beautiful—a prose poem! I know one when I come across it. Did you ever read “Prue and I?” One passage, that about your Spanish castle, recalls “My Chateaux.” I kept that for years where I could turn to it and read it over and over again. A little less, and your letter might have slipped alongside. If you had only not been as poetical over that Thanksgiving turkey and pudding! How could you substitute them for “nectar and ambrosia?” Yes, I may submit gracefully to the “durance vile” of your Spanish castle; may lean from its windows, meeting more than half-way the smell of the poppies—to be steeped in blissful forgetfulness by it! but not shackles of adamant; not
“The wind-blown breath of the tossing flower;”
or,