W. J.
To H. G. Wells.
CHOCORUA, Sept. 11, 1906.
Dear Mr. Wells,—I've read your "Two Studies in Disappointment" in "Harper's Weekly," and must thank you from the bottom of my heart. Rem acu tetegisti! Exactly that callousness to abstract justice is the sinister feature and, to me as well as to you, the incomprehensible feature, of our U. S. civilization. How you hit upon it so neatly and singled it out so truly (and talked of it so tactfully!) God only knows: He evidently created you to do such things! I never heard of the MacQueen case before, but I've known of plenty of others. When the ordinary American hears of them, instead of the idealist within him beginning to "see red" with the higher indignation, instead of the spirit of English history growing alive in his breast, he begins to pooh-pooh and minimize and tone down the thing, and breed excuses from his general fund of optimism and respect for expediency. "It's probably right enough"; "Scoundrelly, as you say," but understandable, "from the point of view of parties interested"—but understandable in onlooking citizens only as a symptom of the moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess Success. That—with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word success—is our national disease. Hit it hard! Your book must have a great effect. Do you remember the glorious remarks about success in Chesterton's "Heretics"? You will undoubtedly have written the medicinal book about America. And what good humor! and what tact! Sincerely yours,
WM. JAMES.
To Miss Theodora Sedgwick.
CHOCORUA, Sept. 13, 1906.
Dear Theodora,—Here we are in this sweet delicate little place, after a pretty agitated summer, and the quiet seems very nice. Likewise the stillness. I have thought often of you, and almost written; but there never seemed exactly to be time or place for it, so I let the sally of the heart to-you-ward suffice. A week ago, I spent a night with H. L. Higginson, whom I found all alone at his house by the Lake, and he told me your improvement had been continuous and great, which I heartily hope has really been the case. I don't see why it should not have been the case, under such delightful conditions. What good things friends are! And what better thing than lend it, can one do with one's house? I was struck by Henry Higginson's high level of mental tension, so to call it, which made him talk, incessantly and passionately about one subject after another, never running dry, and reminding me more of myself when I was twenty years old. It isn't so much a man's eminence of elementary faculties that pulls him through. They may be rare, and he do nothing. It is the steam pressure to the square inch behind that moves the machine. The amount of that is what makes the great difference between us. Henry has it high. Previous to seeing him I had spent ten days in beautiful Keene Valley, dividing them between the two ends. The St. Hubert's end is, I verily believe, one of the most beautiful things in this beautiful world—too dissimilar to anything in Europe to be compared therewith, and consequently able to stand on its merits all alone. But the great [forest] fire of four years ago came to the very edge of wiping it out! And any year it may go.
I also had a delightful week all alone on the Maine Coast, among the islands.
Back here, one is oppressed by sadness at the amount of work waiting to be done on the place and no one to be hired to do it. The entire meaning and essence of "land" is something to be worked over—even if it be only a wood-lot, it must be kept trimmed and cleaned. And for one who can work and who likes work with his arms and hands, there is nothing so delightful as a piece of land to work over—it responds to every hour you give it, and smiles with the "improvement" year by year. I neither can work now, nor do I like it, so an irremediable bad conscience afflicts my ownership of this place. With Cambridge as headquarters for August, and a little lot of land there, I think I could almost be ready to give up this place, and trust to the luck of hotels, and other opportunities of rustication without responsibility. But perhaps we can get this place [taken care of?] some day!