And yet my mother is a Christian. You see what I believe she has and is. Well, all of this she takes in her two hands and offers daily. Of course, she believes in immortality, but she never talks about the future life, and I have told you of her vigorous interest in this one. Of course, too, she has known many sorrows—who has not at seventy?—but she has consistently concealed pain and suffering instead of enthroning them. Her Christianity is compounded of Love. As it streams out from her it is the creative, regenerating passion for humanity which transcended the reasoned good-will of the pagan philosophers and transcends the materialistic serviceableness of the modern humanitarians. In the noblest pagan literature there is no emotion at all resembling that which suffuses the New Testament. In this emotion my mother lives and moves and has her being.
I snap my fingers at Nietzscheism when I realize that she is the strongest personality in my little world. She dies daily for us, but we live her way! No superman could impose his will more effectively than this Christian in whom power and sacrifice are one. God is love. If all history tried to make me a skeptic my mother's nature would keep me a believer.
| Whoso hath felt the spirit of the Highest |
| Cannot confound nor doubt him nor deny; |
| Yea with one voice, O world, tho' thou deniest, |
| Stand thou on that side, for on this am I. |
I have spoken of my mother's health and energy. Just lately these have flagged a little, and I came away this time with some misgivings, and only for my husband's sake. But her letters have quite reassured me. Lately she wrote, 'I am daily thankful that nothing prevented you from spending this winter on the Acropolis. In thinking of you I can't manage to dislodge you from the hill long enough to eat and sleep.'
She knows me! We have traveled all over the country this year, but always come back to Athens and the Attic plain as to the heart of Greece. We went to Egypt in midwinter, and on our return hurried almost from the ship to the Parthenon. It had snowed lightly and the whitened summits of Pentelicon and Hymettus and Parnes lay in sharp relief under the brilliant sky. A Greek friend of mine, looking at these fleshless mountains, said proudly, 'It is not every one who dares show her bones.' Attica needs no softening mist, no glamorous moonlight, no romantic obscuration. Her beauty is born of light and her teaching is light. In Egypt man was mocked by the desert. Small wonder the Christian saints hid themselves there to punish their poor bodies! Here man seeks the sun and stands erect in his dignity. Mediævalism, I grant you, must make way for this immortal humanism. The 'mystery of suffering' is an invention of distorted minds. Stripped of disguise, suffering is merely an evil to be done away with by Love. This, I take it, is the message of the Acropolis to the Christian.
We are leaving next week for a month in London, and then home. May Fortune multiply your royalties and Athena inspire another book!
Faithfully yours.
P.S. The American mail is just in. A letter from a neighbor in my native town says that no one in my mother's house will disobey her order that I am not to be sent for, but that I am greatly needed. It is possible that she will not live until I can reach her. We shall sail for New York day after to-morrow. My world begins to crumble.
PINELANDS, MAINE, April 20, 1915.
MY DEAR FRIEND:—