Not Pretty, but Precious | Page 6

you to think of and care for you, you would have invested in the
article before; and so on. I am glad of this: I am pleased that my society
has not proved repugnant to you; for since it has been no annoyance in
its first trial, I think we can manage that it shall not be so in the future. I
would ask, as an especial piece of mercy to "your handmaiden," that
you will grant her some favors at the outset of our somewhat tangled
fate. Please let me be your sister. It is for your well-being the world
should know me as your wife, and, the Lord helping me, I will be a
willing, faithful helpmeet to you, caring most for your comfort and
happiness, spending and being spent in your service; never demanding
or desiring your attention, except so much as is due me in outward
seeming; interfering with none of your pleasures or pursuits, or
thrusting my needs or feelings never before you. I have no expectation
of winning your love: it has been an understood thing from the

first--that is something neither expects from the other--therefore any
show of caressing fondness upon your part would be quite out of
keeping with our position. I have watched with some amusement, and a
little pain that you should imagine it requisite, your attempts at petting
me during these last two weeks. Poor, helpless man! it was a little hard
to have to pretend an interest and tenderness you did not feel. Will you
let this cease, with every other demonstration of affection, in our
private relations?
For the rest, claiming nothing from you, giving you nothing but the
services for which you render me a full equivalent, I grant you, as far as
I have a right to do so, the largest liberty of action. We are only jealous
of those we love: therefore all women will be as free to you as they
have hitherto been or their will accords, save that you have debarred
yourself for a time from offering any one of them marriage. I hope to
be so little trouble to you, and so serviceable to you in many ways, that
you shall realize to the full that if an unloving union could be so much
more comfortable than a bachelor's life, a life passed with a loving and
beloved wife would be bliss indeed, and so when my life has ended you
will not be sorry that I stopped in your path a few years. For I shall not
trouble you very long. I am a poor little perfumeless flower, having no
sweetness or beauty with which to charm the eye or senses, only fit to
grow among the kitchen herbs--rue and thyme, and such old-fashioned
things. But I need a great deal of sunshine, spite of my plainness, to
keep life in me. And now that all the heat and passion of love, all the
sunny hopes and glow of friendship, have left me, I shall just fade and
fade until some day you will find the poor little weed has dropped to
earth for ever.
I am but two years younger than yourself, and women, especially
women with a great sorrow, age cruelly fast. I look and feel older than I
am--you wear your years like a crown, and appear younger than you are.
I have made my little venture on life's ocean--made and failed: my
barque, freighted with a few cherished hopes, has been wrecked, and
though I have reached a rock to which I can cling for a time, yet I am
terribly hurt, the waves have buffeted me cruelly, and in a little while I
shall let go my hold and float out--out into the ocean of eternity. Ah!

there is comfort after all: life is hard, but afterward there is peace and
rest!
I am nearly through this long tirade. Pardon its length: it is my first, and
shall be my last, heart-outpouring to you; and if it make you
comprehend me, I shall not have written or you have read in vain.
Your income will not support the establishment your position in society
would require if we went to housekeeping; besides, you would feel as if
you must then be more stationary, more in your own home, than is at
present your custom, therefore in a degree in bondage. And a hotel-life
is very expensive and very cheerless. You have kindly said you
intended dividing your income with me, giving me half. At first I was
indignant at the idea, but now I think I see that it will be in every way
the best. One of my cousins has been occupying a very
elegantly-appointed suite of rooms on Twenty-fourth street. Harry
writes me he is