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+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Letters of a Dakota Divorcee, by Jane Burr.
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Letters of a Dakota Divorcee, by Jane Burr
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Letters of a Dakota Divorcee
+
+Author: Jane Burr
+
+Release Date: August 18, 2008 [EBook #26344]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS OF A DAKOTA DIVORCEE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net. (This file was produced from images generously
+made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+<h1>Letters of</h1>
+
+<h1>A Dakota Divorcee</h1>
+
+<h3><i>By Jane Burr</i></h3>
+
+<p class="center">BOSTON<br />
+
+THE ROXBURGH PUBLISHING CO.<br />
+
+INCORPORATED</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+<span class="smcap">Copyrighted 1909</span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">By The Roxburgh Publishing Company</span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">All Rights Reserved</span><br />
+</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+<p class="center">
+<span class="smcap">Gratefully Dedicated to</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">My Sioux Falls Friends.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>AUTHOR'S NOTE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>This little volume will soon assume the proportions of an invaluable
+reference book as the Divorcee is gradually becoming extinct in South
+Dakota.</p>
+
+<p>Species may thrive in a given latitude and longitude for ages. Suddenly
+the atmospheric, climatic, or diatetic conditions become so altered as
+to preclude the further development of the species&mdash;yes even the further
+survival of the animal. The result may be either of two alternatives:</p>
+
+<p>1st. The animal finding the habitat no longer conducive to its well
+being may migrate singly or in bunches to another environment. In this
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>case scientists have noted that the animal undergoes a considerable
+morphological and physiological change.</p>
+
+<p>2nd. In an environment unfavorable to its existence an animal may become
+extinct.</p>
+
+<p>In the case of the South Dakota Divorcee the former alternative would
+seem to be the course followed, for up to date the animal has shown
+itself to be quite too resourceful to lapse into that most archaic
+condition&mdash;extinctness.</p>
+
+<p>Time was when it roamed the prairies and hills of the State in vast
+herds, but owing to the removal of the protective underbrush in the form
+of the Referendum (which decrees that one year is necessary for its
+complete development), it has gone in great droves to Nevada and
+Oklahoma, which promise to be a more suitable environment for it.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p><p>There are a few rare species left, but they are disconsolate and
+hang-jawed and by no means representative of the species. In former
+years the Divorcee reached maturity in three short months, and was so
+tame that it built its lair near the city limits and some even ventured
+quite into the hearts of the villages and attempted to live there. But
+these were half tamed individuals and by no means indicative of the
+genus as a whole. Then peculiar to relate, the environmental influences
+caused them to grow less rapidly and six whole months passed before a
+single specimen could call itself full fledged. The other Dakota animals
+sported around with the Divorcee and received it <i>a bras ouverts</i>, but
+the latter developed a slight <i>degage</i> mannerism and the other beasts
+grew alarmed and crawled within their dens.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p><p>Now they have almost died out entirely as the atmosphere grew not only
+unfriendly, but owing to the sudden cool change their development was
+intensely slow. The animal originally migrated from New York and thus
+anything slow would naturally unnerve its intuitively high strung
+temperament.</p>
+
+<p>And if in some future sociological period of the earth's history some
+antiquarian of the post-aviatorian age, prying into the <i>modus vivendi</i>
+of the men of pre-air-shippian times can learn "a thing or two" about
+that delicate gazelle-like mammal so as to show his contemporaries how
+"fierce" living was before the age of trial marriages and legitimate
+affinities, the dessicated author will rattle what is left of her teeth
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>in a contended mummified smile.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>Duckie Lorna:</p>
+
+<p>Sip a mint julip&mdash;slowly, gently, through a long dry straw, then before
+it dies in you, read my P. O. mark&mdash;Sioux Falls, South Dakota,&mdash;Yes,
+I've bolted!</p>
+
+<p>Don't dare to tell anyone where I am for if my husband should find out,
+he might make me go where I could get a divorce more quickly&mdash;You know
+I'm here for his health. I would splash round in orange blossoms, and
+this is the result.</p>
+
+<p>My boarding house is a love, furnished with prizes got with soap&mdash;"Buy
+ten bars of our Fluffy Ruffles soap, and we will mail you, prepaid, one
+of our large size solid mahogany library tables."</p>
+
+<p>Would you believe dear, that these Sioux<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> Fallians have already
+complained because I bathe my dear, shaggy Othello in the bath tub. And
+there isn't a human being here with a pedigree as long as his.</p>
+
+<p>If you hear any talk about my being seen in a Staten Island beer garden
+with Bern Cameron, don't believe one word of it&mdash;we didn't go in at all,
+the place was too smelly. And that fib about his giving me a diamond
+ring,&mdash;deny it please, as I have never shown it to a soul&mdash;So you can
+see how people manufacture gossip.</p>
+
+<p>I walk to the Penitentiary for recreation, as I may have to visit there
+some day and I never like to be surprised at anything. It isn't refined.</p>
+
+<p>My Attorney is thoroughly picturesque. He wears a coat in his office
+that his wife <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>must have made. His collar came from Noah's grab bag,
+and, if you remember, there was no washing machine on the ark. A heavy
+gold chain meanders down his shirt front to protect his watch from
+improbable theft. On Sunday he passes the contribution box and is
+considered a philanthropic pest. I asked how much the fee would be and
+he said, "One hundred if you furnish witnesses, two hundred if we do."
+You can hire a man for five dollars out here to swear that he killed
+you.</p>
+
+<p>When my attorney talks, he sits on his haunches, showing his teeth that
+would do credit to a shark, and fancies he's smiling when he permits his
+cracked purple lips to slide back. I wouldn't trust my case to him, only
+he could not lose if he tried.</p>
+
+<p>Every time I look at him I wonder if there could be a face behind that
+nose and those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> whiskers, which give his head the appearance of a fern
+dish. He wears an old silk hat whose nap is attacked with a skin
+disease. They say he belongs to one of the first families of this
+town&mdash;first on the way coming up from the station I suppose. He was
+married years ago, but isn't working at it now. I am so unstrung after
+our seances that I feel like crawling right out under a bush and eating
+sage. If I weren't afraid of him I'd raise my umbrella while he
+talks&mdash;his conversation is so showery. In my ingrown heart I hate him so
+there is no danger for me, tho' I've heard that he's a perfect fusser
+with the women.</p>
+
+<p>I telephoned the livery stable yesterday and asked if any of the hearse
+horses were idle, as I'd like to take a ride. The fellow said he'd send
+me a winner, so I togged up in my bloomers, boots and spurs and stood on
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> veranda waiting. A young boy galloped up with something dragging
+behind him. I said: "Do you call that insect a horse?" he answered; "No,
+but it used to be, m'am." The poor creature was all bones and only
+waiting for a nudge to push him into the grave. I mounted the broncho,
+which kept "bronking," but after an encouraging tclk-tclk, I made a
+detour of the block, then sent the nag to the stable.</p>
+
+<p>There were two children and a dog drowned here yesterday&mdash;it almost
+makes one afraid to go near the tub.</p>
+
+<p>The man who sits on my right at the table, says he's here for
+nervousness. First time I ever heard a divorce called that, but anyway
+we all know that he gets out of jail on December, and I will be glad,
+for the way he plays the anvil chorus with his soup makes me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> get out of
+my skin backwards. Hope some day that the Devil will play dominoes with
+his bones.</p>
+
+<p>The lady on the other end, chews with her lips and of course I'm always
+excited for fear her dinner will fall overboard. The way she juggles
+food would get her a job in the vaudeville game any day. She sits up as
+tho' she'd been impaled, and the shaft broken off in her body.</p>
+
+<p>Long ago&mdash;a being, desirous of unhitchment could come here, rent a room,
+hang her pajamas in the closet and fade away back to Broadway, but times
+are changed, and you must serve six months or the Judge's wife will not
+let you have a divorce. The Judge's house is next to mine and the way I
+look demure when I pass, is a heathenism hypocrisy. But he is under
+petticoat tyranny and I dread ruffling the petticoat.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Formerly the law was three months, but the Cataract Hotel had the
+Legislature change it as they could not make enough money.</p>
+
+<p>We had chicken last night and asparagus tips&mdash;did you ever notice what a
+lot of skin a boarding house chicken has? And the tips just missed by
+one, being tip. The meals are an unsatisfactory substitute for something
+to eat, and I find myself filling up on bread to keep my stomach and
+backbone apart.</p>
+
+<p>I am up against old timers that are always to be met at boarding
+houses&mdash;the dear old soldier and the lady "too heavy for light
+amusements, and not old enough to sit in the corner and knit," as George
+Ade puts it. She is simply ubiquitous; she is everywhere; she does not
+gossip! Oh no! Still she wonders if they really are married, you know,
+and if that strange man is her brother or not? Oh<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> you know the whole
+tribe! Dear old parasites on the body politic! I have also had sudden
+paralysis of the jaw from looking into a country mirror and was not
+again convinced, until consulting my own hand glass during the night
+that one of my eyes had not slipped down below my nose. I can get along
+very well if my hair is not parted at all, but I insist upon my features
+remaining in the same locations.</p>
+
+<p>I am copying down some of the stories that I hear as they are well worth
+it, and may come in handy some day. I have the advantage of coming upon
+them suddenly for the first time, with an absolute unbiased mind, which
+like the Bellman's chart in "The Hunting of the Snark" is "a perfect and
+absolute blank."</p>
+
+<p>I know I shall go mad before the six months are up, for after ten days,
+I am down-down<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> deep in a bog of melancholy, and so bored that I feel
+like the president of the gimlet club.</p>
+
+<p>My stomach like nature abhors a vacuum, so me to the strangled eggs and
+baked spuds which are our unfailing morning diet.</p>
+
+<p>In the name of Charity, send me messages from the world I love.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="closer">Devotedly,</span><br />
+<span class="name">MARIANNE.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>Dearest Lorna:</p>
+
+<p>There's an old maid here (Heaven knows she's out of place) who wears her
+hair in one of those "tied for life knots," and she comes tip-toeing to
+my room each night to ask me if I think she'll ever get a man. Because
+I've had one, and am making something that resembles a trousseau, she
+thinks that I have a recipe for cornering the male market. Her dental
+arch is like the porte-cochere of the new Belmont Hotel, and last night
+a precocious four-year-old said, "Miss Mandy, why don't you tuck your
+teeth in?"&mdash;Miss Mandy would if she could but she can't. She is the sort
+who would stop her own funeral to sew up a hole in her shroud.</p>
+
+<p>The moonlight nights here are a perfect<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> irritation, and I really think
+this moon isn't half as calloused to demonstration as our dear old New
+York moon. There are so few men here that the female congregation is
+getting terribly out of practice.</p>
+
+<p>I have found out lately that our attorneys out here rob us of everything
+and politely allow us to keep the balance.</p>
+
+<p>My abode of virtue is filled with furniture from the vintage of the
+early forties and I sit in it alone and am so pathetically good, that I
+am beginning to suspect myself.</p>
+
+<p>You know I was born when I was very young and have been desperately tidy
+about my morals ever since, but for fear of stumbling just because I'm
+so bored I have entrenched myself behind a maddening routine. Six months
+here ought to put ballast into the brain of the silliest.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I think that marriage has become a social atrophy, and I never want to
+be guilty of irrevocably skewering two hearts together.</p>
+
+<p>I fear myself only when I'm bored. Eve never would have flirted with the
+snake if Adam hadn't got on her nerves. I always could resist everything
+but temptation.</p>
+
+<p>Bern once told me that every married man ought to be made to run after
+his wife. And I told him he'd be out of breath most of the time if he
+tied up with me.</p>
+
+<p>I went to church Sunday and the funny man at the head of the table said
+he was going round to view the ruins in the afternoon. Father Time, who
+sits opposite me and mows down the food said, "Every stylish woman I
+see, I know she's getting a divorce and I can't understand it, as most
+of them are good looking."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> I answered "You didn't see the other half."</p>
+
+<p>I am not going to correspond with Bern as our mail might be intercepted.
+For although I'm passing through the mournful ceremony of losing my
+husband in South Dakota, I don't want to gather too much dust on my
+skirts on the way to the funeral. We send each other registered letters
+every day&mdash;but that's different&mdash;nobody could possibly get those.</p>
+
+<p>There is a woman here who does a queer, pretty sort of embroidery. And
+she said this morning with unquenchable urbanity, "I will learn you how
+to do shadow work." Now Bern and I have been busy on all sorts of shadow
+work for the past four years in New York, but this is a different
+pattern. Sioux Falls is plethoric of widows and when one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> is freed, the
+other convicts writhe under the burden of their stripes. Dearie, won't
+you drop in and try to quiet my dressmaker? She is beginning to show
+evidences of dissatisfaction&mdash;inscrutable sign-manual of finances at low
+tide. I'm not rich but I'm sweet and clean&mdash;did I hear two dollars and a
+dish of cherries?</p>
+
+<p>I have bought a calendar with the dates on a block of pages&mdash;one page
+for each day, just for the joy of tearing them off with a vim every
+twenty-four hours. Sometimes I allow two days to pass, then I do a war
+dance like a Sioux, wild at the opportunity of pulling off a couple at a
+time.</p>
+
+<p>There is a N. Y. Central time table on my desk and I am eternally
+looking up train connections until I feel like a bureau of information.
+I have enough money to get back on,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> tucked away in my stocking. And if
+I have to take in washing I won't touch it. Funds are getting very low
+so I've started writing short stories again but "like" usual, publishers
+don't seem to recognize a genius and my P. O. box is always filled with
+long yellow comebacks&mdash;slip enclosed "Sorry we find your valuable Mss.
+unavailable for our publication, etc." However, nothing beats trying but
+failure. And although everything on this mud ball looks inky, and I am
+once more Past Grand Master of Hoodoo Philosophy, I shall grit my teeth
+and push ahead as I have done a thousand times before. My debts are
+growing like a snow ball and although I am not entirely broke, I am so
+badly bent that it ceases to be funny. There isn't a blooded dog here
+except the ones we Easterners bring. The Sioux Falls dogs are like the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
+people&mdash;you can't tell exactly what breed they are, but as a few of the
+N. Y. lawyers and doctors and a few of the N. Y. dogs have remained
+here, we hope for a better blending in the next litter.</p>
+
+<p>There is an Englishman here who calls himself "Chappie" but "Baw Jove"
+he never saw the other side of the Atlantic if I am any judge. But you
+can hand these people any sort of pill and they'll swallow it without
+making a face. We have no indigestible pleasures here, but the food. I
+am suffering from gastric nostalgia. I was so hungry for something sharp
+and sour last night that I bought a bottle of horse-radish and ate it in
+cold blood. Today my digestive apparatus is slumped and I feel like the
+ragged edge of a misspent career.</p>
+
+<p>Every night the man in the next room,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> treats himself to a skin full and
+comes home so pleasantly lit up that he has to be put to bed. Last night
+he must have drunk like the sands of the desert, for he was a bit more
+tipsy than ever and flung apologies and hiccoughs over my transom.</p>
+
+<p>I look back upon my old life as an impression received in the dawn, and
+already it seems but a level highroad on a gray day. Marriage laws were
+made by old maids&mdash;any one can see that. And they have decreed that
+conjugal love, apart from passion, is elevating and a woman in yielding
+herself may evict the sanctum of love if the man may legally call her
+his own. It's all wrong dear&mdash;woman has been sacrificed to the family.
+And what a degrading imitation of Nature to propagate the species. How
+glorious never again to be shod in the slippers of matrimony&mdash;I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> seem to
+demand the advantages of marriage with none of the drawbacks.</p>
+
+<p>To return to things less serious, Othello hates something about my new
+combination lingerie and barks like fury when I put it on&mdash;maybe it is
+the blue ribbon&mdash;I'll try a dash of lavender tomorrow.</p>
+
+<p>You will agree that my <i>geistes ab vesend</i> has reached an alarming
+degree when I tell you that this A. M. after my tub, I liberally dashed
+tooth powder all over my body instead of talcum.</p>
+
+<p>My affection is all for you&mdash;for the opposite sex it seems to have grown
+as cold as a raked-out oven.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="closer">Goodnight,</span><br />
+<span class="name">MARIANNE.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>
+<span class="date">September 21.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Most Precious Lorna:</p>
+
+<p>I am excited&mdash;excited&mdash;from the bottom lift on my French heels to the
+top hair on my golden puffs.</p>
+
+<p>Now who would have thought that the "Fate Sisters" would discover me way
+out here and sit on the corner of Minnesota and 12th spinning their
+breakable yarn.</p>
+
+<p>Well&mdash;well&mdash;yesterday the one with the weary look and the crooked nose,
+got a knot in her twine and this is how it happened. I was crossing this
+Minnie-something street, when a shrill siren and the cannonade of a
+powerful exhaust warned me to stay my tootsies. I wasn't looking for a
+big white aseptic machine out here or any other kind, so the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> blooming
+thing crashed into us and rather than have Bunky hurt, I ran the risk
+(not quite, but nearly) of losing my life, but not until I had assured
+myself that the man at the wheel was exotic to this soil.</p>
+
+<p>Zip-bang-gasoline-smoke! and I was fished out, laid tenderly on the back
+seat and rushed to a druggery. I allowed the dramatic spirits of
+pneumonia to be forced down my throat by his manicured hands and somehow
+I couldn't find the courage to take my head away from his shoulder&mdash;it
+was such a comfy, tailored Fifth Avenue shoulder. You know my
+reputation&mdash;30 years in a circus and never lost a spangle.</p>
+
+<p>What is it that the Christian Scientists have on their souvenir spoons:
+"There is no life in matter?"&mdash;well old girl I can sign a testimonial to
+the opposite. Poor little Bunky<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> added one more knot to his tail during
+the mix-up, but as every knot is worth twenty-four dollars on a French
+bull pup's tail, I don't mind this acquisition.</p>
+
+<p>I was asked the other day if Bunk was a Pomeranian and I said, "No, a
+French bull pup." The woman answered, "That's the same thing, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>Finally with a little home-made sob I opened my eyes and asked the same
+question that Eve put to Adam the morning after God had presented him
+with that poisonous bon-bon. "Where am I?" and it's none of your
+inquisitive business what he answered. The white auto will call tonight
+to see of I'm still living and meantime I have ordered fifty yards of
+white dabby stuff from "Fantles" to keep busy on. No&mdash;not a trousseau&mdash;I
+shall never&mdash;never marry again&mdash;I'm too full of experience.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I told the white auto that I had been hemmed in so long that I did not
+know how to act in decent society any more and he said he's the best
+hem-ripper that ever lived, so I think I'll take a chance. Isn't there a
+great difference in men, dear? But, in husbands&mdash;they vary only in the
+color of their hair.</p>
+
+<p>I'm so glad motors stand without hitching. Now you'll say "Can't you
+leave men alone for six months?" Sometimes my conscience does get
+feverish and bothers me, but it's so seldom that I am grateful for the
+change as it acts as a stimulation to my gray matter&mdash;whatever that is.</p>
+
+<p>My honest intentions were to leave off my puffs and artificials while
+here, just to give Nature a chance, but now that I have been run over by
+an auto I consider the plan inadvisable.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There are dandy golf links here but they don't allow "Divorsays" on the
+ground. The Sioux Falls women, (cats for short) had it stopped three
+years ago, because they were all neglected when any number of my tribe
+appeared.</p>
+
+<p>Not a soul knows what I'm here for. One must never tell. That's the
+first divorce colony by-law. I have become a perfect diplomat and know
+how to keep still in three languages. I just casually told my troubles
+to the boarding house keeper and her daughters, but they don't count, as
+they are such dears, and it won't go any further.</p>
+
+<p>As long as I live, my attorney says, I must sign in hotel registers from
+Sioux Falls&mdash;If I do the clerks will stoop to pick cockle burrs and
+tumble weeds off my skirts and help me to loosen my Indian
+wampum&mdash;whatever that is.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Father Time, whom I mentioned in my last and who possesses as much
+energy for getting divorces (this being his third time on earth) as
+Roosevelt exhibits in the Baby market, has taken to peddling "The Ladies
+Home Journal," and the "Saturday Evening Post," and if you only knew how
+cunning he looks with his abbreviated coat and short, quick, little
+steps, you would give a dollar for a picture of him to paste in your
+book of curiosities of the world.</p>
+
+<p>Court was in session last week and all sorts of real Indians paraded the
+streets. They weren't like our dear old Irish Indians on Manhattan
+Island, who perambulate inside little houses placarded with one night
+corn cures; these were the real article and their wives walked behind,
+just like New York wives, carrying an orphan asylum on their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> backs and
+provisions for the week on their hips.</p>
+
+<p>Poor down trodden creatures. I feel like organizing a class to show them
+how to <i>marcelle</i> their mops and "straight front" their stomachs. A
+tommyhawk for me and no mop to <i>marcelle</i> if I try to revolutionize
+Indiandom.</p>
+
+<p>Last night at a wonderful performance of Fiske in "Rosmerholm," the
+house was packed with Indians and in the ghostly part where everybody
+throws himself into the mill-stream, Squaw Sloppy-Closey and Chief
+Many-Licey opened soda pop and passed it to each other for a drink out
+of the same bottle. Poor Fiske was horrified and threatened to stop the
+performance if the soda pop artillery didn't cease its bombarding.</p>
+
+<p>The wind tears around the corner of my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> room on the bias and the cats
+keep up a Thomas Concert beneath my windows all night long. No wonder I
+have nightmares. Last night I dreamed that I was a saint with an apple
+pie for a halo&mdash;this boarding house pie habit will eventually tell on
+the strongest nerves.</p>
+
+<p>Last night I cut my leg on a barbed wire&mdash;no dear I wasn't hurdling the
+fence&mdash;the wire was on the side walk, where everything except the
+kitchen stove usually lies. I hope I won't have lockjaw&mdash;it's harder on
+a woman than it is on a man anytime. I was just thinking how clever it
+would be, if a man who had a chattering wife, would keep a bunch of
+rusty pins on hand.</p>
+
+<p>I sat down to the piano this morning and ran through that pyrotechnical
+<i>Solfigetto</i> by the other Bach, and Father Time, who sat enchanted,
+said, "You and the piano has met<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> before." It's a shame to cheat the
+aged.</p>
+
+<p>Thank heaven that the sunshine is free and that the florist's window is
+gratis to look at, otherwise on my slender means I should have to take
+advantage of the bankrupt law.</p>
+
+<p>My old friend Insomnia again stands incessantly at the foot of my bed
+and bids me corner the sunrise market. A heavy heart is mine tonight and
+though I try to fancy beautiful pictures in the crystal ball of the
+future, I grow sick with anticipation as the visions fall away before
+they are half formed, leaving me melancholy and wondering if there is an
+angel somewhere who collects the sighs of such ever-repressed feeling.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="closer">Goodnight,</span><br />
+<span class="name">MARIANNE.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>
+<span class="date">October 5.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Lorna Dear:</p>
+
+<p>Well, Lorna, you and I were "all day suckers" to believe that Mrs.
+Phyllis Lathrop was touring California; I bumped plump into her
+yesterday in front of the poor-house. No, dear, I did not go there to
+stay, merely to visit. Phyllis is nice in her red-headed way and looked
+very fresh and sweet with the lower part of her face lost in a tulle
+abyss. She lives just a whisper away from me&mdash;so strange I haven't seen
+her before. She's trotting around with a Sioux Falls fellow who looks
+like a Dutch luncheon favor. Every time he lifts his hat I look for
+bon-bons to drop out. Says she must be loving someone all the time, even
+if she is considered in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> light of an accommodation train. She's the
+unfinished sort of a woman who carries her beauty around in little tubes
+and seems so used to audiences that I always feel that she must have
+sung between the acts.</p>
+
+<p><i>Town Topics</i> said something about "The soft breezes of California
+restoring the bloom to Phyllis' cheeks"&mdash;to think that <i>T. Ts</i> got
+fogged in the matter is consoling to such lesser lights as you and I.
+You can take it from me, "the soft breezes of California" are blowing
+into her room in a nearby Sioux Falls boarding house, but instead of
+being laden with the scent of flowers they are redolent of hash from the
+cookery. I'll take off my hat to her. She was a slick duck. Of course
+she denied nothing to me&mdash;her time is up soon; then she will lay her
+history before the Judge, who is always busy picking hairs from his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>
+coat and doing other things of vital import while you pour out your
+heart's woes.</p>
+
+<p>The fellow whose motor sent me to the brink of the Styx, is now
+preparing me by night light to take the 33d degree of happiness. You
+have heard of him I know, Carlton Somerville, the Wall Street broker. I
+forget what it was his wife did that got on his nerves, but anyway he
+too is hibernating in Sioux Falls clay. We have gotten "First-namey" and
+have frankly decided that in order to keep our cleverness from dying of
+inanition, we will practice on each other.</p>
+
+<p>How could you, my dearest friend, accuse me of being forgetful of Bern?
+He wouldn't appreciate me at all if I forgot how. And really six months
+of non-practice would be ruination.</p>
+
+<p>Carlton has fallen in love over his depth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> with that beefy Mrs. Claymore
+and takes me motoring to pour his love (of her) into my aural
+labyrinths. I don't object to playing second fiddle, but when it comes
+to holding the triangle for the drummer, I pass blind. Never mind, while
+he isn't watching some day he'll get stung, for I'm really fond of him.
+You say that you are so much stronger willed than I am&mdash;did you ever
+look at yourself in the mirror? Carlton has eyes that I adore&mdash;they are
+the deeply sad sort that would make one think that love had passed that
+way. If it really hasn't, he might as well begin to put up the grand
+stand and have the tickets printed. My dear, I'd never marry another man
+with a memory&mdash;most inconvenient asset that a husband can possess.</p>
+
+<p>"Chappie," the Englishman, has started a society paper&mdash;sort of six
+months gestation of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> <i>Town Topics</i>, so Carlton and I are batting around
+after midnight, so "we won't become saw." There are all sorts of ways to
+make a bee buzz. Do keep Bern from wearing red ties while I'm gone and
+give him a shove along the straight and narrow, once and so often.</p>
+
+<p>After a month and a half of drinking Sioux Falls water, I would bring a
+higher price as a lime kiln than I would in the woman market. One's pelt
+gets wind tanned and such a thing as a daintily flushed face is as
+unlooked for out here as consideration from the natives.</p>
+
+<p>My head ached so yesterday that I called on a doctor, "Visit including
+all medicine, one dollar." Isn't it "patetic?" He raved about the
+climate and said he brought his wife here with T. B., and she improved
+so much. Naturally I asked, "How is she now?" He said,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> "O, she's dead."
+Don't blame him for raving about the climate, do you?</p>
+
+<p>My dear it is worth a trip out here to see a whist party "let out." No,
+not "bridge,"&mdash;they haven't heard of it yet&mdash;just plain whist; but as I
+was saying, to see one turn out with its white alpaca skirt and blue
+satin ribbon belt. I've paid two dollars at Hammerstein's to see things
+not half so funny. O, for a sip of Fleischman's coffee&mdash;there are
+grounds for divorce in every cup out here. The butter we eat, walks in
+from the country alone, and at every meal we get smashed potatoes piled
+as high as the snow on the Alps. I can't look a potato in the eye any
+more.</p>
+
+<p>There is a couple here on business from Michigan,&mdash;a Mr. and Mrs. Jones,
+odd name that. Isn't it sad that they are so happily married, they might
+both be getting divorces,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> but as it is they are simply wasting a year
+out here for nothing. I passed the Judge on the street this morning and
+I was so nervous that I walked bow-legged. But thanks to <i>skirts et
+cetera-et cetera</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I have sampled all the churches and have finally landed at the Christian
+Science house of worship, as I would rather any day hear a pianola grind
+out its <i>papier mache</i> music than listen to a poor performer.</p>
+
+<p>If I had Carnegie's millions, I'd go straight to Chicago, buy a big,
+fat, thick, beef steak, step into the middle of it and eat my way out.
+I'm hungry, hungry. I worry down the "dope" that they deal out in the
+dining room, then go back to my sanctum and finish on limey water and
+crack-nells&mdash;you know what they are, a powdery sort of counterfeit cake
+that chokes you to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> death if you happen to breathe while you're chewing
+it.</p>
+
+<p>Last night while trying to cut some stringy roast beef and still retain
+my dignity, the man with the red tie said: "Put your other foot on it."
+I'm afraid if I don't eat potatoes again, my stomach will shrivel so
+that I will never be able to sit through a course dinner when I get
+back. Potatoes distend it all right&mdash;I feel like I have swallowed one
+wing of Fleischman's yeast factory whenever I eat them. You have to come
+down on the meat with such force to make any impression on it, that more
+gets pushed up between your teeth than goes down your alimentary canal;
+then you spend the balance of the night squandering Japanese dental
+floss. I unconsciously finish my prayers with "Lord preserve us from
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> holy trinity of roast beef, roast mutton and roast pork."</p>
+
+<p>You can recognise one of the clan in a moment by what is known as the
+"Divorsay jaw." No feek and weeble expression on our faces but "Do or
+die" is the look we have in our optics.</p>
+
+<p>Every time I go to church I vow I'll never go again. The organ is
+asthmatic and the wheezing gets on my gray matter.</p>
+
+<p>The Judge has begun to wear a fur coat&mdash;Dakota cow fur, I think, and he
+looks for all the world like a turkey gobbler in distress.</p>
+
+<p>I sleep on what they call here a "sanitary couch." Can't fathom the
+mystery of the name, for mine is so chucked with dust that I dream I'm
+in a sand storm crossing the Sahara, and when I awaken my sympathies are
+keen with the camel.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There's a new boarder here whose face looks like a chapel and every time
+she opens her mouth you're afraid it's going to be the Lord's Prayer.
+She wears a wide ruching which makes her look excited; distributes
+tracts, and can't see a joke. She says she's Miss and leaves envelopes
+around with "Mrs." written on them in red ink&mdash;modest writing fluid I've
+always considered it.</p>
+
+<p>Will you buy me some new puffs? Mine are all ratty and I feel
+bare-footed without them. Enclosed is a clipping from my hair. Read it
+carefully. False hair is no crime as long as it matches&mdash;like that
+German song that says "Kissing is no sin with a pretty woman."</p>
+
+<p>Have you caught "Three Weeks" yet? I had a violent attack a few days
+ago. Cured it with a small dose of Christian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> Science before meals and
+some of Bunyan's <i>Pilgrim's Progress</i>, which I shook well after using.</p>
+
+<p>You can imagine what disastrous effect Eleanor Glynn's book had on the
+"Divorce Colony." We all bunched together and said "What's the use," and
+if it hadn't been for the old man who eats his soup out loud, we would
+have bolted in a mass to suggest "Free Love" to our respective
+"Fiascos"&mdash;Dakota's past tense for "Fiance."</p>
+
+<p>I long so to flash my calciums on a Fifth Ave. stroller that I'd flirt
+with God if I met him.</p>
+
+<p>I close dear with a sigh over my chin, which is getting triple (an
+invention of the devil).</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="closer"><i>Auf wiedersehen</i>,</span><br />
+<span class="name">MARIANNE.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span></p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p>
+<span class="date">October 25.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>My Dear:</p>
+
+<p>I've changed lodgings and before I took the new chambers, I inquired of
+the landlady if there was any electricity in the house and she answered
+"Yes," so today I asked here where it was, and she pointed to the
+telephone. O, me! O, my! this life is wearing me to a fraz!</p>
+
+<p>Last week the autumn leaves fell and in order to show Mrs. Judge how
+simple and near to nature I live, I raked their lawn, and ours, clean,
+and stood long after dark making huge bonfires on a line with the
+sidewalk. But lo! the fleas that were of the earth became the fleas of
+me and I have occupied most of my time since scratching.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> But anything
+to pass the hours away.</p>
+
+<p>Our hedges are cut for the last time this fall, and look as though they
+are fresh from the barber. Isn't that phrase "for the last time" the
+most desolate utterance that a human voice can make? It goes thundering
+down the aisles of time only to be lost in the arcana of treacherous
+memory. To dream for the last time&mdash;to love for the last time&mdash;bitter
+contemplation&mdash;funereal introspection.</p>
+
+<p>I am suffering from acute nostalgia&mdash;by this time you are standing in
+the gun-room at Keith Lodge, drinking your first. I can hear Duncan ask:
+"Scotch or Irish," and see you tip it off with Blake and the rest. No
+bridge for you tonight&mdash;early to bed and tomorrow morning you'll all
+start out in your natty knickers and short kilts to murder<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> things that
+will fall in bloody feathery heaps at your feet. Native woodcock, jack
+snipe, black mallard, grouse, etc., the restless eager setters doing
+their own retrieving; the soft dank ground daintily overspread with the
+frond of marvelous fern like my window pane this morning with its
+delicate tracery in frost; the tall-stemmed alders echoing your shots to
+skyward; the big dense timber with its springy ground all saturated with
+the fragrance of the mounting sea: I seem like something dead whispering
+to you from the tomb. Nothing lasts longer than twenty-four hours in New
+York&mdash;not even a memory, so no one misses me. It's another of God's
+jollies and I know I'm ungrateful dear, for you are thinking of me I
+know, with my dear old "Sport" ready to point for you tomorrow, just to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>
+receive your pats of recognition and thanks. My feelings are worn into
+meaningless smoothness like the head on an old coin, and because I have
+added my quota of absurdity to the morning papers I am no longer
+interesting. But, pshaw! one can't buy cocaine for a nickel, and as I
+could live extravagantly on the interest of my debts, I haven't more
+than five cents to invest.</p>
+
+<p>Don't mind this slump in grit&mdash;it will return to par and slang tomorrow.
+Keep a record of all you do to send to me, and above all&mdash;win the cup.
+With whom are you shooting?</p>
+
+<p>I will now stuff the cracks of my door with medicated cotton, open the
+portholes and smoke my cigarette alone&mdash;Lord preserve me, if anybody
+knew! See if you can't get the Humane Society to form a branch<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> out here
+to feed and water the widows.</p>
+
+<p>I have just returned from a little walk with Carlton&mdash;I suppose my eyes
+prattled, for he smiled at me through his wrinkles and was rather more
+thoughtful of my comforts than usual. His <i>Insouciance</i> is charming and
+always turns the tide of my melancholy. He is the only man who ever
+ventured to stand on my tack and take me broadsides. We have framed up a
+little Bacchic plot to be enacted on our way back from the Post where I
+shall soon meander to mail this on the late Rock Island.</p>
+
+<p>I am certainly in love, because I know the symptoms, but I can't tell
+with whom. Some temperature, high pulse and strange flutterings&mdash;but who
+is the victim? Bern or Howard in New York or Carlton here? The thought
+of all of them stirs me, so how<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> am I to know which is in the lead? Hope
+the period of incubation will soon be over and the blooming thing assert
+itself. I have often been vaccinated and the thing always takes, but
+still I am not immune and never will be until I am six feet under, even
+if I live to be an hundred years old! Did you catch the an? But it's
+disgusting not to know whether it is the measles or something worse,
+however I am taking all precautions and awaiting developments.</p>
+
+<p>I often wonder what I'll do with my decree when I get it&mdash;I can't wear
+it on my finger, and it certainly isn't the thing for gold leaf and a
+shadow box&mdash;Oh! I shan't waste time placing it; perhaps Carlton will
+find a pigeon-hole for it somewhere.</p>
+
+<p>I haven't written to Bern in days, but I don't care; I never considered
+a banker as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> one of the human race, anyway. Poor Bern; he's thrown out
+like a bill in Parliament! Beaten by a blackball called Carlton&mdash;I'd
+hate to see him now. Roland the Furious is charming in a poem, but in a
+drawing room, prosaic and expensive.</p>
+
+<p>Carlton and I went to church Sunday and were refused communion&mdash;the dear
+good Bishop has but one eye, so he sees things half way. I said: "If
+this is God's table, I want communion, if it's the Episcopal, I don't."
+In his sermon he called divorcees "social lepers, social filthiness,"
+and said: "After the new law goes into effect, we'll have no more
+dumping here." He's an old pop-gun that shoots spit-balls, so the wounds
+he makes are not fatal. Carlton refuses to go to church here or anywhere
+else again, and will once more trudge<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> along his Sunday field of Bacchus
+cultivated by Venus.</p>
+
+<p>By the way, after June 1st, all divorcees will be required to stay one
+year, then they won't come at all. Oklahoma had a hunch and changed her
+law back to three months. Now the colony will transplant itself, then
+watch the death agony of Sioux Falls. She's foolish&mdash;foolish! The
+Easterners have made this burg what it is. Take away our influence and
+she'll sink into nothingness again. Some of us are bad, but all of us
+are not; however, the Sioux Falls gossips make no distinction. They lift
+their $2.98 skirts when they pass us, for fear of inoculation by the
+<i>bacillus</i> divorce. I often wonder if they realize that the prejudice is
+returned with compound interest.</p>
+
+<p>When any new gossip is born, they fly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> around the streets like the beads
+of a rosary when the string is snapped. Perhaps you haven't noticed how
+serious this letter is. I'm frowning as I write&mdash;a habit most bad on the
+eyebrows&mdash;surest of signs that I am sinking again into the quagmire of
+love.</p>
+
+<p>I have felt my pulse so often and know all the symptoms&mdash;which I more
+than enjoy scrutinizing&mdash;not even the finest emotion escapes me. I
+believe that I play the game well for I am still unjaded, which is
+unusual with so much over-feeding.</p>
+
+<p>Is your new fur coat unborn lamb, or did it happen? Speaking of
+possessions&mdash;my appendix still gives me ample proof of its constancy.
+The blue devils are chasing me today and I am wearing the expression
+that sits on the lips of every portrait in every exhibition. I smile to
+keep from crying,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> because if I cry&mdash;I'm lost!</p>
+
+<p>As I am of the experienced elite of society that sups, I must bid you
+adieu&mdash;I promise more jocosity in my next.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="closer">Affy,</span><br />
+<span class="name">MARIANNE.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>
+<span class="date">December 1.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Since writing you I have heard the turkey gobbler say his last prayer
+and have had a coming out party for "Penny," short for appendix. The
+receiving party was comprised of two eminent surgeons, two trained
+nurses, who served adhesive plaster and instruments, and an "etherist"
+who poured. Costumes were uniformly white with great profusion of gauze
+trimmings, with which I also eventually became somewhat decorated. One
+of the internes wasn't half bad, so I kept the nurse busy combing my
+adopted hair and pinning it on becomingly. It is a much quicker and
+easier process to have your appendix cut out than your husband.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I was away four weeks and am now back in Sioux and well taken care of by
+my landlady, whose hair and face disagree as to age. My walls are hung
+with ten-cent store art, and if I were not awfully strong-minded I could
+not overcome the effect.</p>
+
+<p>The white auto called last night, and as my head rested on his shoulder
+our conversation was the rambling sort that may be ticketed "all rights
+reserved," so I won't repeat it as the postmaster-general would refuse
+me stamps in the future if I sent it through the mail. In Chicago they'd
+take out my phone if I squeaked it over the wires. Carlton is deeply
+interested in some mines out here&mdash;spinach mines I think. I made up my
+mind to something last night&mdash;I am determined to get him away from that
+carrotty giraffe whom he used to believe he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> loved. If in my
+convalescent state I am unable to arouse his sympathy, I'll relapse into
+white muslin emotions and thereby gain my end. I am made from dust and
+the slightest rustle from the right man's coat can blow me whithersoever
+it willeth. You know I am a spoiled child who has had everything it
+wanted, so bon-bons no longer excite me. Carlton is so thin that you can
+see daylight through his lattice work, and cold as paving stone in
+winter. He's a real "millionery," but his cash is 40 degrees below, so I
+am determined to warm up his eagles and teach them to fly. I am going to
+touch that cash box under his left breast and show him that the devil
+has a sister. The man wants bleeding&mdash;he has too many bank notes in his
+veins. He seems to be toppling so I might as well register him in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> my
+"Book of Mistakes."</p>
+
+<p>Do you know that I still keep a record of these undying passions of mine
+with a picture of each culprit attached, and Carlton is 999. I thought,
+when I was sixteen, I would record the one divine fire that was
+like to consume me, and now I have eighteen volumes of this
+105-degrees-in-the-shade literature, all bound alike in a perfect
+<i>edition de luxe</i>. I'd rather regret what I have done than what I have
+not done. You dear old ostrich, I can hear you sigh over me, but don't
+you waste your gasoline. You, too, should have callouses on your
+emotions by this time.</p>
+
+<p>Bunky and Othello have both decided to bark at my chemiselets and
+skirtlets in one,&mdash;maybe they think they are too flossy to be concealed.
+I agree there.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Phyllis Lathop's lawyer, Mr. Maryan Soe Early, got her decree for her
+last week and she flew back on the 3.30 train to Manhattan and Gordon
+Booth. Of course everyone knows that he is booked.</p>
+
+<p>Her plea was extreme cruelty; said her husband struck her. The dear old
+judge asked her to explain in detail some of the circumstances of her
+husband's brutality. She said: "While crossing Lake Michigan there was a
+terrible storm on, and as my husband was descending from the upper
+berth, the boat lurched and he struck me with his elbow." Phyllis said
+the judge smiled very broadly and gave her her decree on "Extreme
+Nerve," instead of "Extreme Cruelty."</p>
+
+<p>She writes that she and Gordon are having such times together&mdash;batting
+around<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> their old stamping ground, Bronx Park&mdash;strange how hard it is to
+overcome habits. They slink off to the New York woman's trysting place
+when there is no longer any reason for secrecy. One bitter cold day last
+winter Bern and I met Phyllis and Gordon in the very spot that we always
+frequented, and poor individuals were stamping their feet to keep them
+from freezing. The monkey house was full of people and they dared not
+remain there any longer. We all smiled as much as to say: "You don't
+tell, and I certainly won't." Not a word ever came out, so the treaty
+was well kept. Bern and I were more or less engaged at the time.</p>
+
+<p>We laughed over it when she was out here, and I asked her why she never
+repeated it, as she never keeps anything to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> her gossipy self. She
+answered: "If I had said that I had seen you there, I would have had to
+explain my own presence in the park, and I never incriminate myself."
+She says that "there are two new kinds of monkeys out there and one
+looks like Elbert Hubbard&mdash;sits all day surrounded by his hair."</p>
+
+<p>She's running a bar in connection with her tea table now, which is
+equivalent to putting salt on the tail of the social male bird. She can
+hardly believe that she's free, and says that it will take some time for
+her to realize "that there aint no beast." Isn't it strange that the
+most fascinating lover in the world can turn into the veriest beast
+within six months after he has hit you on the head and dragged you
+senseless into his Fifth Avenue home? Of course you're senseless or you
+would not have tied up.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Phyllis says that she has gotten out of the habit of decent food, that
+every time she really dines, she gets strange pains in her underneath. I
+wish I could fly back home, but I must grit my teeth and get rid of my
+beast too. I wonder which breed I'll try next time. Boston Bull, I
+suppose, I think that's where Carlton was first kenneled.</p>
+
+<p>I have a large stove in my sitting-room and keep it going myself.
+Othello looks as though he'd laugh himself to death every time I put
+coal on&mdash;darn his pelt! He's crazy over Sioux Falls&mdash;possibly because
+there are seven dogs to the city block. He goes away on bridal tours
+every few days and then I have to get out a search warrant. I could live
+quite decently if I did not have to invest in so many rewards for him.</p>
+
+<p>It is so terribly cold here that my very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> thoughts are frozen and my
+hot-water bag does nightly service. The thing sprung a leak last week
+and I took it to a garage to ask if they would mend it, and the fellow
+answered: "Certainly, madam, we have quite a trade in hot-water bottles
+and "nature's rivals."" I have also found out that the only place to buy
+burnt wood is at Mr. Trepaning's the undertaker and embalmer.</p>
+
+<p>All the stiff and crackling branches of the trees are weighted down with
+a three-inch ruching of snow. It is all silently fascinating, especially
+so because since starting this letter two short raps at my window
+announce Carlton who comes each night to accompany me to the late post
+after the landlady is snoozing. His arms are around me as I scrawl, and
+the thousand tiny little thrills that answer so eagerly to his
+nearness,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> assure me that it is not deplorable to be thirty-nine.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="closer">Good night,</span><br />
+<span class="name">MARIANNE.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>
+<span class="date">December 20.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>So near Xmas, dear, yet none of the Yule-tide joys float out to this
+frozen wilderness. Snow, snow everywhere. The tall alders, whose vivid
+coloring so inspired me when I arrived, are now black and gaunt, and the
+pitiless desert wind comes tearing and howling from the north to bend
+and crack their stiffened joints. I often wonder&mdash;am I any more the
+arbiter of my fate than these lifeless snow-draped spectres around me.</p>
+
+<p>Carlton left the hotel almost a week ago and took the room next to mine.
+We are hopelessly in love with each other, and he wonders how he ever
+could have thought of accepting happiness from Mrs. Claymore,
+accompanied by so many freckles and a half million dollars.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>As for Bern, dear, he will survive. I am much older than he is, so that
+some day he would be forty with all his emotions and I would be fifty
+with the rheumatism&mdash;it would never do. Henceforth I shall be prodigal
+of negatives, except where Carlton is concerned.</p>
+
+<p>We have attained the intimacy which thinks aloud, and instead of hating
+Sioux Falls and longing for my sentence to expire, I am beginning to
+worship every inch of the ground, and only pray that such an exile
+should last forever.</p>
+
+<p>None of the fulminating fires that I have heretofore known are
+mine&mdash;only calm and peace and the joys born of a perfect understanding.
+We have not let the moment slip when souls meet in comprehension. I
+almost decided not to confide all this to you,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> but it slipped off my
+pen and I'm not sorry, for no woman living was ever before blessed with
+a friend like you. You and I have visited the lowest Dantesque circles
+of despair together, and no confidence between us could amount to an
+indiscretion.</p>
+
+<p>Our landlady thinks that we are merely speaking acquaintances, and it is
+best, as this new-found sympathy must not be distilled by Sioux Falls
+scandal-mongers, though I should like to shout it from the house tops
+through a megaphone, I am so happy and proud of it.</p>
+
+<p>So you shot with Aldrich and he tried to get you to buy "Steel
+Preferred." I am glad you did not invest and sorry you did not win the
+cup. I shall never again shoot for pleasure. I am ashamed of my
+trophies. Perhaps love has made me mushy but I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> don't regret it as hate
+made me flinty. Have you noticed how our bonds have slumped&mdash;the whole
+thing was a Golden Fleece. Commercialism bores me to extinction. I
+suppose the world began with trade, since Adam sold Paradise for a
+pippin.</p>
+
+<p>Are you still of the opinion that tradespeople should be branded on the
+forehead down to the third generation?&mdash;you dear snobbish treasure.</p>
+
+<p>Henceforth I shall only deal in sentimental tramways and have shares in
+the moral funds&mdash;maybe not moral according to the threadbare ideal of
+the genus <i>homo sapiens</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Surprising that a girl as young as Alice Noah&mdash;no relation to the fellow
+who built the ark&mdash;should just take out legal separation papers in New
+York. How can the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> <i>modus vivendi</i> suit her better than divorce? Perhaps
+she wants to cinch her alimony until she finds another affinity. Then
+Alice for Dakota. It is foolish to cut your financial string when you
+might just as well dangle, especially until you find something worth
+dropping for.</p>
+
+<p>Dear, will you please send me a reel of Sirdars? I can't smoke anything
+else and no one sells them out here. Our landlady has one eye that looks
+up the chimney and another that goes cellar wards and Carlton says that
+she always regards him obliquely&mdash;never mind, she is a good stupid soul
+and I can forgive a landlady anything but perspicacity. I don't see how
+our intimacy has escaped her,&mdash;to me it looks like the first foreign
+sticker on an American five dollar dress suit case.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Why do you write such short letters? Is it because you have but a
+limited number of ideas and must dispense them carefully?</p>
+
+<p>What did Philip Leighton die of? His wife, I suppose. They never had
+anything in common but the kiddies. That means no more hunts at
+Blackburn Heath unless someone careless like Philip absorbs the estate.
+Mrs. Philip was a Pennsylvania girl. <i>N'est ce pas?</i> That accounts for
+her effulgent spontaneity. Isn't it a shame for me to wax bombastic over
+a girl who, if she were just a little brighter, might be called half
+witted. She's the girl with the massive mother, who suffers from
+dislocated adjectives. They say when she was married her prayer book was
+missing, so she carried a cake of ivory soap instead&mdash;The mother was
+divorced and could have had alimony if she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> had wanted it, but she had
+better sense than to want it. She has venomous optics&mdash;the fellows used
+to say they flew when she flashed her calciums; ugly as the seven deadly
+sins and so mannish that I was always afraid her trousers would show
+beneath her petticoats. The giddy old cat! If she had been hanging since
+her sixtieth birthday, she would certainly be breathless now.</p>
+
+<p>All day, dear, I go about my duties with a most ladylike absence of
+passion, but when night comes I cross the sandy waste of the past and
+stretch out my hands to fondle the idea of perfect companionship. Our
+thoughts seem to be a reverberation of the same thunderous roll, and
+while they are not identical, they are of the same breadth and
+elevation. The conditions of propinquity are responsible; and as love
+did not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> come to me, I had to do as Mahomet did with the mountain.</p>
+
+<p>When he goes from me, Joy vanishes, but leaves a bright track of light
+behind, which bursts upon me through the clouds of cigarette smoke that
+he has left.</p>
+
+<p>Each day I awaken more warmed and thrilled, like the sun which finds the
+mountain tops that he touched with his departing rays still warm when he
+sends his shaft of light in the morn.</p>
+
+<p>No maelstrom of distrust do we feel, only a mighty, overpowering passion
+that no undress of intimacy can ever destroy.</p>
+
+<p>Good-night, friend of my babyhood, my girlhood, my womanhood. My
+greetings for your birthday.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="closer">Affy,</span><br />
+<span class="name">MARIANNE.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>
+<span class="date">February 10.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Don't be cross with me, dear, I am in no danger. Your repeated letters
+came&mdash;I read them, then straightway forgot that they should be answered.
+It is no evidence of a lessening of my love for you, but because life
+has become so mysteriously perfect for me that I dream away my hours.</p>
+
+<p>One night, seemingly a million years ago, but really only within the
+present week, I felt cold as I stood by my stove and plaited my hair&mdash;I
+have nice hair, Lorna, haven't I? But I didn't seem to notice it. I was
+in my nightie and I shivered. My white chiffon bedspread with the pink
+roses strewn over it was near, so I drew it close about me and felt that
+I had protected myself from the chill. It wasn't an external<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> chill that
+made me quake, but something old and deep-rooted and lonely that came
+from the depths of the soul in me and begged and pleaded for
+recognition.</p>
+
+<p>The big stove with its dozens of mica eyes threw out comforting little
+rays of coziness, but the real me still shivered. I walked to the window
+and opened it. Strange, disquieting, but gracious thoughts that I had
+lost somewhere in the twilight of the night before, came riding back to
+me on a snow flurry&mdash;it was so still that I feared to breathe, lest I
+disturb the solitude&mdash;the sky wasn't heavy and gray, but clear and blue
+and seemed like a soft silken canopy that the gaunt maples upheld to
+protect me and my love, and the virgin snow that fell on my outstretched
+arms in soft little rosettes that disappeared as our loves sometimes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> do
+when they have but let us feel the deliciousness of their possession.</p>
+
+<p>The heavy old door between my room and his creaked with rustiness and
+age, as for the first time in years it turned upon its hinges. Carlton
+had watched for my last good-night signal and grew alarmed at its
+absence and my quietude.</p>
+
+<p>I wonder why I didn't feel embarrassed&mdash;all I know is that after he
+discovered a comfortable angle in my Morris, I crawled into his arms and
+lay there quietly without a word until dawn the next morning. Our sleep
+was rhythmic, just like our love. What a strange beautiful night we
+passed and how difficult it would be to make the world believe!</p>
+
+<p>Awakening, I felt something cold around my neck, and there, dear girl,
+he had fastened<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> pearls while I slept in his arms. I cannot even imagine
+their value, as I know nothing of jewels but how to accept and wear
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Such a gift is wonderful at any time, but how much more subtly charming
+to have it fastened on you as you lay, comfy and subconscious in his
+strong and doubtless aching arms. Such peace, peace, dear, would have
+benumbed Napoleon; but I need few other interests&mdash;my universe begins at
+his head and ends at his feet.</p>
+
+<p>This is the purest jag of joy that I have ever been on in my life, and I
+wonder that one small blonde woman is able to allow herself so much
+spark and not have her engines explode.</p>
+
+<p>I always fancied that I should die if such an ideal existence even
+attempted to show<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> its face to me; and instead, I take my soup before
+it's cold, put my shoes on my feet, my hat on my head, retire and arise
+at the usual hours.</p>
+
+<p>He embroiders his talk with bungalows, steam yachts and motor cars for
+the future, while I fear to buy a pair of boots before a consultation
+with my trousers pocket. I find myself imprisoned in a banker's
+portfolio, floundering in statements covered with red ink. He doesn't
+dream that such is the case, or all his funds would be at my disposal.
+Somehow, if I had my decree, I should tell him; but while I am still
+someone's else wife I cannot take his money&mdash;it would soil my emotions.</p>
+
+<p>Yesterday, while opening a crate for me, he cut his finger very badly,
+and as I bound it up he said, "Forgive me," and concealing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> his hurt, he
+sought pardon for the pain he had caused me.</p>
+
+<p>His feelings are intuitively charming, and though he hasn't a university
+education, he has a universal one, which counts for far more in this
+world where a stab is given in return for a pin prick.</p>
+
+<p>Good-night, precious girl-woman, whose friendship has never failed me,
+whose love has been the most uplifting emotion that I have ever known.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="name">MARIANNE.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>
+<span class="date">March 3.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Lorna Mine:</p>
+
+<p>My six months were up on March first, but as the judge hates undue haste
+about serving papers, I waited one whole hour before I shot mine off to
+New York. I am no longer doing time, but am a full-fledged citizen of
+South Dakota. Isn't it nice that my case won't have a jury&mdash;it always
+gets hung and it sounds unpleasant even if it really isn't.</p>
+
+<p>Oh! these dazzlingly cool, fresh, spring days. If there is anything more
+beautiful in the West than their gaudy Indian summer, it is the half
+scared spring. The wind is a bit blustery and pretentious, but otherwise
+Nature seems doubtful as to whether she will paint her landscape or not.
+Each<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> night a grand sunset crowns the close of a cloudless day.</p>
+
+<p>Weeks ago Carlton's decree was granted him, but he stays to hold me in
+his arms while I wait for mine. You ask if we are engaged? Yes&mdash;awfully
+engaged all the time.</p>
+
+<p>I have never before been able to understand why people put such vast
+sums in churches. Now I know. It isn't on account of the worship, nor of
+the interior, but for the steps. When you take into consideration what
+assistance they have rendered lovers, it only seems just that they
+should be taxed. We worship at Christian Science Church, because it's
+darker, every night except Wednesday; but they have some sort of a
+shin-dig then, so we switch to the Episcopal and take communion with
+each other.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> Nice clean, comfy, red granite steps that so many pious,
+divorce-hating feet have passed over. My sympathies go out to all women,
+even if they are fallen and so did Christ's; but the good Sioux Fallians
+are above it. They pull all the hay to their side of the manger and
+forget that we, having never used such food, don't miss it now. It is a
+pity that we can't infuse more of the "God-honor-and-the-ladies" spirit
+into this depth of silliness out here.</p>
+
+<p>The West is so big and glorious and free, it seems strange that the corn
+crop should be so superior to the people. I suppose it is because each
+perfect stalk of corn turns its face to God and Heaven, and the people
+are so busy gossiping they haven't the time to worship. When we pass
+them on the street we feel like saying: "Our reputations are in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> your
+hands. In God's name be merciful!"</p>
+
+<p>I am keeping house now in my room&mdash;light housekeeping, you know. It's
+positively airy sometimes. My landlady&mdash;bless her ignorant soul!&mdash;allows
+my little ice-box to remain in her butler's pantry, which I have
+christened "cockroach alley." They&mdash;the cockroaches&mdash;are so large and
+educated that I have named them, and each one comes when it's called and
+feeds from the hand.</p>
+
+<p>She wears the most artistic skirts&mdash;always ball-room back and ballet
+front. Her grandchild was sitting on the floor yesterday, reading the
+Bible, when suddenly she looked up and said: "Grandma, there's a
+grammatical error in this Bible," and my landlady said: "Well, kill it,
+child, kill it!" She spends whole hours each day talking to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> her birds,
+which, she claims, save the expense of a piano. I told the grandchild to
+go out into the sunshine this morning and it would do her cold good. She
+said, very saucily: "I won't go into the sunshine, my grandma told me to
+go into the air." My grandma didn't tell me to go there, Lorna, but
+someone must have ordered it, for in the "air" I am, and so high that I
+no longer feel the earth beneath my feet.</p>
+
+<p>Thank you so much for Mr. Fitch's article. So you think that Sioux Falls
+is like his description of it. He came in one night and left the next
+morning, then wrote an article which is a gross exaggeration in every
+particular. In the first place there was never but one French maid here
+and she was Irish. It is true that some scandalous people come here, but
+there are also scandalous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> residents; however, there are many more
+divorcees, quiet, charming and unseen, who do not fret away their six
+months, but spend them profitably, writing, sewing, taking care of their
+beloved children, <i>et cetera</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The very idea of mentioning anything as incongruous as Sioux Falls and
+luxury in the same breath&mdash;it's a slam on luxury! Big and luxurious
+hotels&mdash;Mr. Fitch ought to be mobbed. Wonder if he got a whiff of the
+lobby of the only thing that can be called an hotel here, or if he had a
+cold during his prolonged stay of twelve hours, nine of which he slept
+through. At the hotel yesterday I mentioned to the elevator boy that
+many children were stopping there. He answered: "Yes, there is more
+children than there is guests."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>That grill room that he speaks of is a dim memory; I think it lasted two
+months; and as it depended on divorce custom entirely, and as the main
+part of the colony sups in its own home, the thing fell through. And the
+theatres, dear, we have had two good shows since I came, otherwise "ten,
+twenty and thirty."</p>
+
+<p>The women and preachers may be against the quick lunch method of
+divorce, but you can gamble on it that the business men heartily
+approve; and these same women and preachers will find their larders and
+contribution boxes but scantily filled if the odorous money of the
+dissolute "Divorsay" is barred.</p>
+
+<p>I am all excited over the article as there is neither truth nor ruth in
+it, and Carlton is intensely amused, so I suppose I will not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> try to
+fight the battles of the colony so long as I am lazy and comfortable in
+the arms of my love.</p>
+
+<p>Had a long letter from Gretchen yesterday in which she says she enjoyed
+her bridal tour thoroughly, particularly at the Falls. I wrote back and
+asked: "Which?&mdash;Niagara or Sioux?"</p>
+
+<p>Good-night, dearest, I close my eyes and sleep in a moment, as there are
+no longer any thorns to stuff my pillow.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="name">MARIANNE.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>
+<span class="date">May 2nd.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Lorna Dear:</p>
+
+<p>It wasn't a bit hard to live through. The papers all came back by return
+mail, and all day Sunday I was in my attorney's office practising. It
+wasn't any more difficult than a Sunday-school lesson, and Monday
+morning at eight o'clock I was waiting at Liberty Hall for the hoped-for
+arrival of "The Greatest Common Divisor." At last he came, but with a
+sour expression, and not knowing what trouble he might have had before
+he left home, I tried to be patient.</p>
+
+<p>We were ushered through the big court room into the judge's
+sanctum&mdash;asked how long I'd been here, and so forth and so fifth&mdash;then
+the comical question: "Do you expect<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> to make Sioux Falls your home?"
+and the threadbare reply: "I have made no plans for the future," when
+all the time I had my I. C. tickets for the 3.30 train in my pocket. Do
+you know that was the first time I ever really perjured myself&mdash;like a
+lady&mdash;before, and somehow I wished awfully that I had let Carlton hold
+the tickets until after the trial. I couldn't even get my kerchief out
+of my pocketbook for fear the blooming time tables and tickets would
+show. Oh! the judge was terribly saccharine after he warmed up, and I
+adore him. Wish I had to get another divorce tomorrow&mdash;he's just like a
+dear old Universal Dad, and everyone loves him.</p>
+
+<p>Well! dear, just to think of it. I've lost my hobbies! Isn't it great,
+and yet isn't it really sad! It means a failure in the greatest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>
+undertaking of a woman's life, and it also means that I issue
+forth&mdash;branded. I refuse to hold post mortems and am practising loss of
+memory. Now for the possibilities of the future. Possibility is the
+biggest word in the dictionary. Isn't it strange that a woman may live
+apart from her husband and do atrocious things, without wearing the
+tell-tale letter on her bosom, yet let a virtuous woman take the step
+for freedom, and, alas! she carries the scar as long as she breathes.
+But its worth it, dear. I have thought it all over and I repeat it a
+thousand times, its worth it. "I have written it upon the doorposts of
+my house and upon my gates, and I wear it as frontlets between mine
+eyes"&mdash;it's worth it!</p>
+
+<p>I have worn crepe for my departed virtues<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> for six years, but I throw it
+aside now and feel a new being whose glad unrestraint may carry her
+farther than she intended, just as prudery often lends a woman greater
+cruelty than she feels.</p>
+
+<p>How clever of Don Willard to buy in Northern Pacific during the slump.
+He gets on with his sense of smell&mdash;he's a jackal who scents a carcass
+and gets there in time for a good bone.</p>
+
+<p>While unpacking my trunk today I came across my wedding veil and it was
+all gray and dingy like the end of my honeymoon. How many sweet and
+tremulous illusions I folded into it on that first night and how soon
+afterwards did three-fourths of the world look like ashes to me. Dreams
+are harder to give up than realities, because they come back and gibe us
+even after they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> are dead and buried, while tangible realities stay
+fairly well hidden when we screw down the lid. I suppose you think that
+I talk like Old Man Solomon, but you know that the only serious thoughts
+I have are mushrooms of one minute's gestation.</p>
+
+<p>My landlady does her own washing, so I asked her if she would do mine
+for ample pay. She suffers so from modesty that she was hardly able to
+answer me, but finally said: "I would be willing to, but my husband
+don't improve on it." Poor creature, she has lived here all her days and
+is still unable to direct me to a single place&mdash;her bump of location is
+surely a dent.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Judge knows the name of each member of the colony; when they came
+and how often they have gone away, and the Lord help you if your
+residence isn't right!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> That's the one thing that the Judge is squeamish
+about, and as Mrs. Judge keeps tab for him, there is no use trying to
+fudge. If you don't come up before the Judge in six months and one week,
+she inquires of your landlady the reason for your delay. And of course
+the landlady knows the reason, even if you don't yourself. Every Monday
+afternoon Mrs. Judge drives by the I. C. station at exactly 3.25 to see
+which one of the widows, whose case was tried that morning, is leaving
+the same day. Of course they all leave unless they are prostrated with
+excitement. We always pack all baggage on Saturday, the dress-suit cases
+on Sunday, and engage the drayman on the way down to the trial Monday
+morning. There has never been any hitch in the arrangements, so I
+suppose they will remain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> the same until the end of time.</p>
+
+<p>You don't know what a comfort my phonograph has been to me&mdash;I would
+never attempt another divorce without one. The long, lonely
+evenings&mdash;the endless days, when time never moves off the spot, my dogs
+and I have sat on the floor fascinated with the greatest music in the
+world. I like my machine because it may be depended upon, never is
+nervous, and always willing to perform. Talent is so spasmodic and
+dependent upon moods, while the little hard rubber discs tirelessly and
+graciously amuse you.</p>
+
+<p>You say that you will write more anon. I have looked in Webster and the
+Brittanica, as I was a bit anxious to find out just what length of time
+anon signifies, but I have been unsuccessful. In other words, if after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>
+breakfast someone said to me, "You shall have more food anon," I should
+probably starve to death if I sat down and waited for it. Now don't be
+mean to me because I am in love and have neglected you. I send you
+thousands of messages and ask you thousands of questions each day, and
+simply because I don't waste time and paper in setting them down is no
+sign that you aren't constantly in my thoughts. Love knows no distance,
+and I go to you every evening for a good-night kiss just as I close my
+eyes to sleep, and always do I feel that you know it. There is no
+barrier of antagonism around you so my spirit enters where you are
+whenever it so desires.</p>
+
+<p>You are melancholy again&mdash;how can you live in stays set with nails and
+maintain the grace of a dancer? It must be because of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> your child. I
+could not do it, I'm sure&mdash;not even for my child if I had one. You are
+wiser than most of us fools who have choked our lives in the mud of New
+York. To men, dear, you are a cold Alp. Snow bound and near to heaven,
+impenetrable and frowning with flanks of granite, and yet beneficent.
+How do you accomplish it when your heart is wrung from year's end to
+year's end?</p>
+
+<p>It must be Machiavellian foresight, precious&mdash;foresight that you alone,
+out of the whole set, possess. The world never forgives a failure and
+never forgives you for telling it the truth, and my standard is truth,
+as near as possible, and yours is sacrifice complete. Which is right? We
+shall go on begging the question until the end of time. In human
+transactions the law of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> optics seems to be reversed&mdash;we always see
+indistinctly the things that are nearest to us. You have never judged,
+so judge me not.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="name">MARIANNE.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>
+<span class="date">The Black Hills,</span><br />
+<span class="place">September 20.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Dearest Lorna:</p>
+
+<p>A thousand years ago&mdash;or maybe it wasn't so long, I can't clearly
+remember things any more, time isn't of any consequence, but it was the
+day I received my decree, and I returned my railroad tickets to the I.
+C. office&mdash;Carlton and I packed up some rugs, pillows and luncheon, and
+floated down the river to breathe confidences. Far away on the horizon
+was a misty hedge of cypress trees darkly traced on a canvas of
+lavenders and blues, overhung by extravagant yards of cloudy chiffon.
+Nearby the tall alders were all bent to the southward, from the bitter
+winds, and looked like huge giants on the march<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> with heavy burdens on
+their shoulders. They swayed at times and seemed likely to fall with
+their loads. On and on we floated, and on and on they marched.</p>
+
+<p>The country was as tremulous as a bride, and to us nothing seemed
+impossible. In such magic moments when enjoyment sheds its reflection on
+the future the soul foresees nothing but happiness.</p>
+
+<p>Toward sunset we moored our boat to a tree in a little backwater where
+the current was barely felt and mutely watched the changes in the great
+turquoise satin tent above us that seemed held aloft by the hills to
+shelter the landscape of barley and corn and wheat that swished and
+swished like feminine music of taffeta petticoats.</p>
+
+<p>We felt reasons all around us why we should be happy&mdash;the trees were
+greens and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> browns&mdash;no one like the other, blended in the harmonious
+colorings of an old French tapestry stolen from a deserted chateau.</p>
+
+<p>All the earth seemed so sweet and so pure, and we were enjoying the
+world as a clean open-air playground. A few fluffy clouds began to
+appear, but old Boreas blew them away as soon as the west wind brought
+them up.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly his gaze betrayed remembrance and he drew me into his arms and
+our lips met. Thus we remained, languidly content, until long after the
+sky man had studded the heavens with millions of silver nails. And
+there, near a field of cattle, like Paul Potter painted, under a sky
+worthy of Raphael, in a cove overhung with trees like a picture by
+Hobbema, he asked me to be his wife. And then the sweetest ceremony<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>
+that ever was solemnized under God's loving eyes was fulfilled there in
+the stillness of the night. He said: "I love you," and for answer I
+said: "I love you too," and on my finger was placed a cool new band,
+which reads within: "For all eternity." As old and worldly as I am, I
+felt all the instinct of chastity and delicacy which is the very
+material of a first love. Our wedding feast was spread out in the bottom
+of the craft, with no effulgence of light save the reflection of God's
+own lanterns.</p>
+
+<p>All sorts of night things chirped and sang of our joy, and trout leaped
+from the water in answer to the bread that I crumbled for them.</p>
+
+<p>Our boat rocked and swayed as the current reached us more directly, and
+leaves and sticks and weeds went floating by with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> turgid little
+whirlpools swirling aft. We were lazy lurdans, nestling there in the
+moonlight, but time is the precious gift of the Almighty and man may
+gamble it away if he chooses. Finally dawn found us floating homeward in
+the mists of awakening morn.</p>
+
+<p>Months and months have passed since then&mdash;strange new mother instincts
+have arisen in my soul, and he still presses me to his heart and
+whispers: "For all eternity."</p>
+
+<p>You could not discover my whereabouts, as I left no address in Sioux
+Falls. I did not want the world nor society, not even you, but just
+solitude&mdash;and my husband. Now we want you to know that in this beautiful
+wilderness we have a home&mdash;a mountain home with placid Indian servants,
+who glide in and out and serve noiselessly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> and speechlessly: I must
+confess that I am only one-half brave, as the world, all but you, thinks
+that a minister has mumbled over us for a second time.</p>
+
+<p>You are great enough to appreciate the joy we feel in cheating all
+humanity. Carlton has willed all of his possessions to me and to our
+precious little future reproduction of our love, who can but be perfect,
+as he is a creature of perfect conditions. We are also but half great,
+as it pleased us that the New York papers reported our marriage; but in
+our lives we are all-great and all-sufficient for each other.</p>
+
+<p>Our bungalow is built in rugged, primeval "Spearfish Canon," but you may
+address all mail to Custer, where Carlton goes in his motor every day
+for things that please me.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I am so happy, so proud, so grateful that my mate is as far-seeing as I
+am, and we feel a mutual dread for the time when we must forsake our
+Black Hills for the fuller and less satisfying life in New York&mdash;but we
+can't play always, out here in the sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>Write to me soon and forgive me for doubting that you would understand.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="name">MARIANNE.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>
+<span class="date">Black Hills,</span><br />
+<span class="date">November 25.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Dearest:</p>
+
+<p>How happy your letter has made me and how slow you were in making up
+your mind, but I'd rather have you love me after thinking than to love
+me just because I'm I. Had you not understood, I should have loved you
+but because you understand I bow down and idolize you as I have done all
+my days.</p>
+
+<p>Every girl deserves a mother&mdash;it is her natural heritage and Nature
+risks a great deal in cheating her out of her original right. I have
+been defrauded, but a friend like you compensates for much and is a
+straight gift from God and Heaven.</p>
+
+<p>Carlton and I have motored over to Custer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> every day for your letter but
+not until yesterday were we recompensed for all the anxiety and doubt
+that I might have suffered. We read it together and I am not ashamed
+that our eyes were moist with joy as we drove slowly away from the
+little village and out into our free and glorious primevalism again. The
+twilight fell like a silver dust on the crests of two double rows of
+ancient elms in a long and lordly country road, and lighted up the sand
+and the drying wild grass that had waved like so many spears of gold in
+the sunset of a few moments before. On and on we flew&mdash;he with a
+trembling hand on the wheel and I with my arm around him and my lips
+pressing his cheek.</p>
+
+<p>The rays of our acetylene lamps began to cast lurid lights before us as
+the darkness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> thickened, just as my soul's fire is luminous now in an
+atmosphere ordained to bring forth all its normal glory&mdash;and all the
+while the back seats were empty; empty dear. Do you know the luxury of
+it?</p>
+
+<p>We were both dreaming and praying&mdash;dreaming of a thousand more such
+perfect nights, praying in all our fervor and gratitude for more and yet
+more of our boundless and mutual passion. And then we lost our way as
+the machine rushed into a mystic cross-road that led due north, for the
+Dipper was before us. I crawled closer and closer to him until I could
+hear his heart pounding mercilessly as his breath came quicker and my
+lips pressed closer. The lamps were brilliant then and the woods and
+fields as silent and endless as eternity. A long snake stretched its
+lazy length<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> across our path and frogs held mute high carnival on all
+the little hills and bumps on the high road.</p>
+
+<p>We both felt the inspiration of the moment and neither profaned it with
+words. As far as our lights fell three waving, nodding bands of seered
+grass, beckoned us on and heedless of the danger we might be rushing
+toward&mdash;our empassioned lips met. And like eternity the mystic course
+lay hidden in darkness before us, but also like the things that look
+most forbidding in the future, as we rushed by, the yellow hedge turned
+golden by our lamps, the grassy plumage rose and fell in sallow waves of
+approbation.</p>
+
+<p>The good little people were with us (you know I believe in fairies) and
+the faithful engine puffed and struggled and tried its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> best on the
+incline that we were ascending, but we were too jealous of our
+sensations to pay much heed to its unaided success. I would work in the
+fields for ten days were I sure that the eleventh night would be such
+another as this.</p>
+
+<p>So lofty are the regions where I soar, that a fall would shiver me to
+atoms, but just to breathe the same air with my love lifts me to the
+vault of paradise. Whole hours each evening I lie on an Indian blanket
+in front of the open grate and dream of the legacy of love that we shall
+hand down to our children and our children's children until the end of
+time.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="closer">Ecstatically yours,</span><br />
+<span class="name">MARIANNE.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>
+<span class="date">December 25.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Dearest Friend:</p>
+
+<p>We are snowed in and our two bronze boys are trying to make a path to
+the road. We are all so abnormally well and with the nurse and Carlton's
+friend Dr. Harmen, constitute a lively household though I liked the
+sweetness of our oneness better. These are happy times and they watch
+and guard me as though I were another Wilhelmina.</p>
+
+<p>Was ever Christmas day so wonderful! Our tree is a real cedar of
+Lebanon, uprooted by our beloved Indians and decorated with their
+handiwork. Last eve we romped and sang and played tricks upon each other
+until midnight, when we saucily hung up the biggest stockings and
+sneaked off to bed to leave our Santa Claus with his labors.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> It must
+have taken him hours for I slept for ages when I finally heard him
+getting ready for bed. I slipped into my kimono and tried to crawl down
+stairs and take a peep, but he heard me and would not countenance any
+cheating so I snuggled up again and went to sleep, but like children, we
+were all up at daybreak. For days and days Carlton has been going on
+clandestine shopping tours to the meccas around us and has kept all
+purchases locked and guarded. He can't bear the thought of grown-ups not
+loving and believing in Santa.</p>
+
+<p>Aside from all the valuable and exquisite things that each received, the
+gift that proved Carlton's feeling toward me,&mdash;if I may insult that
+feeling by even suggesting the necessity of a proof&mdash;was a tiny silk<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>
+stocking, hung quite at the end of the mantel shelf, all alone as though
+it needed no protection, and filled with&mdash;you would never guess in a
+thousand years, so I shan't keep you suspended in mid air&mdash;fifty
+thousand dollars in U. S. bonds to start a bank account for the little
+visitor that is to come. Every night before we sleep, we talk to our
+baby, we pray to our baby, we worship our baby. Only beautiful thoughts
+come to our minds; only beautiful things come to our hands,&mdash;surely God
+sends babies for other reasons than to propagate the species&mdash;we are
+grown entirely unselfish; we are filled with kindly sympathies and
+affection, and our energies and aims reach to Heaven.</p>
+
+<p>A beautiful pink satin baby basket came direct from Printemps, filled
+with the most delicate little garments that a human hand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> could create.
+Do you remember the day when we were at school in Paris, that we passed
+Printemp's baby shop and planned our progenys' outfits&mdash;twenty years
+ago? I am now fuller of the joy of living than I was then&mdash;but on the
+threshold of womanly emotions.</p>
+
+<p>From my window I can see far down the icy canon. The mountain stream is
+a fluted ribbon of snow and ice, and where the spray tumbled before it
+froze, there are thousands of filmy rosettes iridescent in the sun's
+rays. The path is finished and Dr. Harmen is building a snow man. We are
+civilized aborigines gone mad with youth out here in the frigid zone,
+and anything as grown up as bridge has failed to interest us. From our
+home on the summit of "Kewanas Crag," Silver Lake looks like a stray
+turquoise<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> below and the mysterious Black Hills around us catch glimpses
+of gold in the sunset hour, then dye themselves purple, take a tint of
+glowing rose-water, then turn dull and gray; a drama of color goes on
+ceaselessly; a play of ever shifting hues like those on a pigeon's
+breast.</p>
+
+<p>Do you know of anyone who has ever died in childbirth? If you do, don't
+tell me, as I am beginning to be frightened. Not afraid of the agony,
+for I rather enjoy pondering over the sacrifice, but so fearful of
+leaving all of this barely tasted sweet behind me. It seems as though my
+impatience would consume me&mdash;I want so to know whether I may be spared
+for more and more days of our endless joy.</p>
+
+<p>Your Christmas box came one day too soon and, like the child that I am
+transformed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> into, I resorted to tears in order to wheedle Carlton into
+permitting me to open it. The little things are wonderful and the
+discretion of your love is more so. Each little article is an expression
+of your faultless friendship, for losing which, not even Carlton's love
+could compensate me.</p>
+
+<p>The new decorations in my bed room are all in bloom like our love, and I
+lie awake during my specified hours of rest, gathering mental roses from
+my wall garden. My revival is as natural as the effect of May on the
+meadows; of a shower on a dry plant. I awaken with the breath of my
+Spring, which is heavy with Oriental sweetness like a rose of
+Frangistan. I should not in such moments as these, feel a death blow.</p>
+
+<p>All of the old mental bruises caused by knocking myself against corners,
+some that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> I myself created at times, and others that I saw but could
+not escape, are healed and quite forgotten in this new world of mine.</p>
+
+<p>I press a goodnight kiss on your dear understanding lips.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="name">MARIANNE.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>
+<span class="date">The Black Hills.</span><br />
+<span class="date">February 1.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Dearest of all Friends:</p>
+
+<p>Today for the first time I am permitted to write one letter, while Dr.
+Harmen and Carlton are trying to discover traces of rare genius on the
+head of Carlton Church Somerville Junior, who resembles one of those
+cherubs circling about the Eternal Father in an old Italian picture.</p>
+
+<p>Dizzy with the wonder of it all, I lie for hours trying to convince
+myself that the world is real. When my child awakens and craves his
+nourishment, I cry for very ecstacy of giving him life. What woman on
+earth who has nursed her child once, can refrain from doing so again?
+His velvet lips kiss me; his precious hand, dimpled and immature,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>
+fondles me in gratitude. How can any mother ever be unhappy while her
+infant breathes upon her breast.</p>
+
+<p>My wasted years squandered in society seem hideous fancies of a
+perverted mind, while my one glorious year out here is a deep-breathing,
+pure record of clean thoughts and a perfect life. No one save God
+Almighty to wish us well on our wedding day; no purring women and
+overfed men to throw rice and old shoes along with the "wedding
+formula"&mdash;"Isn't she a perfect bride,"&mdash;"did ever couple seem so well
+suited,"&mdash;"they are real affinities <i>et cetera</i>," all of which started
+me out on my bridal trip sixteen years ago. I shall never witness
+another wedding as long as I live&mdash;it is too insufferably sad a
+contemplation.</p>
+
+<p>It seems strange and pitiful that your<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> sweet daughter is now old enough
+to make her formal bow into an atmosphere of hatred and vice. If she
+could but seek rapturous peace out here in my wilderness with some man
+that she really loves&mdash;but no woman is born into mature society with a
+knowledge of its utter worthlessness. And even were you able to convince
+her of it now, it would be a sin to rob her sweet mentality of its
+blushes. No, the precious child must first suffer and find out alone.</p>
+
+<p>Almost childlessly greedy do I feel, to live so perfectly while you are
+still sacrificing your years on the altar of motherhood. At least I am
+thankful that Walter has decided to parade his affairs less, now that
+Evelyn is coming out. You proud, queenly, beautiful woman, how can you
+be so brave? In your place I should have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> died of hopelessness and grief
+years ago. But you go on with your precious head high in the air,
+smiling, though crushed by your agony. Day in and day out your nerves
+are taut&mdash;you never rest. Why hasn't something snapped years ago?
+Perhaps God gives an abundance of strength to those who are ordained to
+suffer most.</p>
+
+<p>You ask if I have any regrets. No&mdash;no&mdash;a million times no. I have torn
+the word from my dictionary and have forgotten the meaning. I repeat a
+thousand times a day my honest prayer:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Spare me O Lord the crowded way,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Life's busy mart where men contend,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For me the home the tranquil day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A little sock to mend."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>I try never to think of an end to my happiness, but somehow the crushing
+thought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> comes and stifles me into abject fear. Then my husband brings
+me my little child and the evil thoughts are kissed away.</p>
+
+<p>Yesterday Carlton's eyes filled with tears of gratitude as I sat nursing
+our baby before the open grate and running my hand through his thick
+brown hair as he sat on the floor beside us. We remain long hours in
+silence watching the pictures in the blazing back logs, then suddenly we
+embrace to prove mutually that we still have each other.</p>
+
+<p>The river is still a frozen jagged band all down the canon, and the
+roads are knee deep with snow and ice. I scarcely breathe while Carlton
+is away in his motor, for fear the wheels will skid and hurl him into
+endless depths down the mountain side. It is impossible to procure food
+without his going<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> to the railroad, but each day I try to believe that I
+don't need nourishment just to see if I can't prevent these precarious
+errands. We live so naturally and so happily that we are staying on
+indefinitely in our frozen love bower.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Harmen leaves tomorrow after weeks of rejuvenating pleasures out
+here. The nurse will remain to render me such assistance as I need,
+though I am so jealous of her care of my son that I shall claim my
+mother rights as soon as I am strong enough. Junior has his father's
+eyes with all the softness of the blue periwinkle flower in their
+splendid depths, and I feel when I hold him in my arms and am held in
+turn in Carlton's that I can never give either of them up&mdash;even to the
+Almighty. I will never give<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> them up. They are mine and I am theirs&mdash;for
+all eternity.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="closer">Adieu sweet friend,</span><br />
+<span class="name">MARIANNE.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>
+<span class="date">February 25.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>It has come. The bright fire in the grate is a heap of smouldering ashes
+and all the pictures and dreams are dead. I cannot breathe&mdash;I cannot
+live&mdash;I am insane with grief. And the ignorant world teaches of an all
+merciful God&mdash;an all seeing Father! The irony of it! I cannot live&mdash;I
+must go too. It will be impossible to go on, and on, alone&mdash;forever and
+for all eternity&mdash;alone&mdash;I cannot&mdash;I will not!</p>
+
+<p>They are lying down there in their shrouds&mdash;my husband and his faithful
+Monkaushka with their poor bodies crushed and mangled&mdash;O! I cannot tell
+you more! The machine is an unsightly heap at the bottom of the ravine.
+I cannot write&mdash;I cannot think and yet I must do both. What<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> have I done
+but love with all my womanhood and all my motherhood!</p>
+
+<p>After all it was beautiful for him to die and go to heaven while flowers
+filled his hands. A loud cry has gone up in my soul; an echo as it were
+of the funereal <i>Consummatum est</i>, which is pronounced in church on Good
+Friday at the hour when the <i>Saviour</i> died. And all day I wring my hands
+helplessly and can do nought but build dungeons and dungeons in the air.
+I speak in an altered voice as though my instrument had lost several
+strings and those that remained were loosened.</p>
+
+<p>Dearest&mdash;can you tell me&mdash;am I responsible for his death? All during
+last night I seemed to hear God's voice asking: "Cain, where is Abel?"
+and I wail and beseech: "Am I my brother's keeper?" My soul is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>
+guilty&mdash;guilty of loving him&mdash;guilty of his death, for had I not loved
+him he would never have known the Black Hills. Oh! if I could but be
+resigned&mdash;if I could but bind up my bleeding wounds and lose myself in
+immeasurable lassitude!</p>
+
+<p>I have pressed his lips for the last time, my precious son is at my
+breast&mdash;his long lashes are pressed tightly against his cheeks as if to
+secure his eyes from too strong a light, or to aid an effort of his
+young soul to recollect and hold fast a bliss that had been perfect but
+fleeting. His tiny pink and white ear framed by a stray lock of his hair
+and outlined by a wrapping of lace from you, would make an artist, a
+painter, even an old man wildly in love with his perfect little being,
+and will, please God, restore me, a mad woman to her senses!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Come to my Black Hills, I am crushed, desolate, heart-broken&mdash;come to</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="name">MARIANNE.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>
+<span class="place">The Black Hills.</span><br />
+<span class="date">July 2.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>One week has passed Dear, since you left us&mdash;a strange week of
+readjustment and thought. All of those precious months that you have
+given me are but another expression of your divine friendship. The
+poignant grief is gone with you and my gratitude to you can but be shown
+by the degree of bravery that I now manifest.</p>
+
+<p>Every day this week, my son and I have sat in the sunshine near the two
+mounds, which my remaining bronze boy has decorated with crocuses from
+the neighboring ravine. He spends long hours after dark, gathering wild
+flowers in the moonlight. His devotion to me and my dead love, is the
+saddest, most boundless tribute that an uncivilized<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> mind could offer.
+Silently he goes about his duties; silently he grieves, and more
+silently he gathers flowers as a tangible evidence of his devotion.</p>
+
+<p>Your letters have come each day and will come each day until I lie too,
+beside my love on the desolate mountain side. Such is your unfailing
+love and sympathy for me, all unworthy of your months of sacrifice and
+isolation out here in my new home. My son, bless his precious heart,
+tried to crawl today but the newly developed feat frightened his baby
+mind and he cried. Closely almost roughly, I crush him to me a thousand
+times a day, so fearful am I that he too may go to join infinitude.</p>
+
+<p>You ask me to come back to New York. I must refuse your request. I
+cannot&mdash;I cannot leave my home&mdash;the only place worthy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> of the name that
+I have ever possessed! Some day, maybe, but not now&mdash;it is all too dear
+and consoling to breathe the same air that sustained me in my perfect
+happiness.</p>
+
+<p>How can you say: "Don't regret." What do you mean? Regret the only joy
+that my poor starved soul has ever known? No atom of regret enters my
+grief&mdash;only a great unbounded gratitude to God, to the world, to Nature,
+that one perfect year has been saved from out the wreck of time!</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="closer">Gratefully,</span><br />
+<span class="name">MARIANNE.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>
+<span class="place">The Black Hills,</span><br />
+<span class="date">September 20.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Two marvelous things have come to me today dear; my son took his first
+trembling steps alone, and a letter came to me from the man who was my
+husband. I am trembling with joy over the first and still dazed with
+lack of understanding of the second. I enclose the letter as I have long
+since given up trying to think clearly, and must depend upon you, to
+decide for me any matters of grave import. I am plunged in perplexity;
+advise me after reading the enclosed letter.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="closer">Lovingly,</span><br />
+<span class="name">MARIANNE.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>
+<span class="place">New York,</span><br />
+<span class="date">Sept. 16.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Dear Marianne:</p>
+
+<p>Six years ago, I found myself, though fond of you, glad when business
+took me away. We spent that summer in different places, but about
+October lived together again. I was still fond of you, but at that time
+found Vera, whose company was very pleasing to me. You and I seemed to
+be drawn away from each other and we decided to separate at the end of
+December, when I started on my long cruise.</p>
+
+<p>I felt very, very sorry to leave you, but something told me that it was
+better to do so. I remember you seemed to feel the same, and we kissed
+each other goodbye as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> though we were both sorry for something that had
+to be.</p>
+
+<p>Leaving the question of dual or multiple personality aside, and putting
+the matter very simply, I believe that my soul made a right choice in
+you my wife. I believe that alcohol was necessary for a while to put my
+body, even at its expense, into a state of conductivity, so that my
+soul, when I was somewhat alcoholized, could gain some expression; give
+some glimpses of itself and suggest the trend of my powers. For this
+reason I believe that some men are made to drink and drug&mdash;but that is
+another subject which I hope to take up with you more fully at some
+future time.</p>
+
+<p>My soul self has always wanted my wife's soul self, and I believe that
+if I could have you back, my conquered body self would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> never need to
+wander from home. A little more pliability&mdash;all you ever lacked, and
+which your trouble should have brought you, could make it so that we
+could live together in very perfect harmony. Then I could release a lot
+of good plays and good writings, much of which I know already has been
+completed by my subliminal self. I get frequent glimpses of parts of
+plays, plots and ideas.</p>
+
+<p>You cannot but feel proud of the success of my last book, which ought to
+show you that I'm getting a grip of myself. My mother and I were <i>en
+rapport</i> and under the dual personality theory, it is reasonable to
+suppose that I have been guided by her since her death. I certainly have
+been guided by God or by her, and it is reason<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>able to believe that she
+is God's instrument of my guidance.</p>
+
+<p>A young man makes whole ranges of mountains out of tiny mole hills
+which, when he has learned sense, he will spread under his foot without
+noticing them. Most of our differences were mere mole hills, dear, which
+couldn't thwart us now. For we are too big now, to be so easily
+thwarted. Can't we give each other the chance to prove this to each
+other?</p>
+
+<p>If you will permit me I will love your child as my own&mdash;as every real
+man ought to love every child, dear little unfinished human beings.
+Formerly I thought I knew a good deal; but God knew better and took me
+away from you to teach me a few lessons. For they were lessons that I
+alone needed and God did not want you to undergo<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> them as well as me.
+They were lessons calling for chastisement and you didn't need
+chastising.</p>
+
+<p>I've taken God's punishment dear, and thanked Him for it. And I believe
+I'm fit company for you now.</p>
+
+<p>I am coming next Monday to Custer, four miles from where you are, and on
+Tuesday morning, starting at eight, I shall walk toward your bungalow by
+way of the path by the river. I am familiar with every inch of the road,
+as you know I wrote "Treasure-trove" at the Wilson ranch near your
+canon.</p>
+
+<p>Will you and your little son meet me if only a few yards from your home
+so that you may judge for yourself if I am fit company for you now.</p>
+
+<p>If you do not meet me&mdash;then the will of Allah be done, for I shall turn
+back.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="name">DONALD.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>
+<span class="date">October 10.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Your message came too late, dear; already at eight o'clock Tokacon, with
+my son in his arms, and I were far along on the river path that leads
+out to the world. Our progress was slow with only the croonings and
+gurglings of my beautiful child to interrupt the silences of nature, as
+he clung affectionately to the neck of our red man protector, whose
+solemnity, though he knew not my mission was superb.</p>
+
+<p>Half way, where Tokacon has built an exquisite rustic bower, we stopped
+and waited while the Indian returned to the bungalow.</p>
+
+<p>What a strange hour I spent waiting with my baby, who had fallen asleep
+in my arms. Thousands of rebellious thoughts burned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> themselves upon the
+retina of my brain, as I sat planning and wondering. I want to be just
+before I'm generous, or I'm afraid I'll never have the chance to be
+generous. I sat staring like one at strife with a memory&mdash;and then he
+came, slowly, resignedly. His hair is quite white and there are strange,
+deep lines on his forehead, and marked parentheses round his mouth which
+can be but the foot-prints of pain and thought. He could not see us in
+our secluded shelter and I could not make my mouth utter his name&mdash;he
+who had wrung my heart as a peasant twists an osier withe.</p>
+
+<p>On he walked with his head hung low and a lost look in his eyes&mdash;then I
+called "Don," as I used to do when I loved him, and he stopped suddenly
+and listened with his hand to his ear. Again I called "Don."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> He turned
+and saw us. Slowly and with the dignity that he cannot lose, he came
+back to where we sat. He could not speak, but knelt beside us and kissed
+the baby's lips; my infant opened his innocent eyes and put his arms
+around Donald's neck, as much at ease as though he had known him all of
+his dear little life. Awake and rested, he must needs be tumbled about
+and played with, which our visitor seemed pleased to do. The strain
+would have been more than terrible, had it not been for the sweet
+influence of the child who occupied us both constantly on our long walk,
+home.</p>
+
+<p>Meeting one's husband again after so many years, is something akin to
+the sensations of drowning&mdash;every ugly scene of our married life flashed
+across my brain, also every kindness that he had done me became equally
+prominent in my memory,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> that faculty one cannot cast away as one throws
+down a <i>serviette</i> at table.</p>
+
+<p>Twilight found us still without words for each other, but when the back
+logs were lighted (these October nights are cold in the Black Hills) our
+thoughts came more freely. I find that I care for him as I would for
+something long dead and half forgotten, but I am grateful for that, as I
+was half afraid that I couldn't be even patient with him. However the
+tolerance that we learn through suffering is the most beautiful
+offspring of real grief.</p>
+
+<p>It was very difficult for me to speak of Carlton and our wonderful life
+that is buried out there on the mountain side, but he is indeed
+sympathetic and never interrupted the long and frequent silences that my
+inmost memory created. The logs burnt in halves and fell with myriad
+sparks and display<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> to the sides of the fireplace, but we touched them
+not. He seemed to realize that Carlton and I were not married in the
+eyes of the law. How he divined it I do not know, unless it is that he
+has an uncanny way of reading one's thoughts. He said that he knew and
+that he understood, and further, that I am a stronger and better woman
+for all that I have suffered and done. He wants me to leave my West and
+live again in New York, where he hopes to recreate in me the old feeling
+for him which he so ruthlessly squandered, when it was his own.</p>
+
+<p>He is earnest and sad and I wish that I might care again, for he needs
+help and so do I, and at least, with our past experiences we might
+escape some of the ways of wounding each other that married people<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> seem
+to possess in such unlimited quantities.</p>
+
+<p>Toward midnight the last candles that Tokacon had placed in the sconces,
+flickered and went out. The helpless embers flared up for the last time,
+then sank down resigned. Donald knelt beside me sobbing bitterly, with
+his head upon my knee. All seems to be grief here on this earth&mdash;nothing
+but grief! For answer I raised his head and kissed his eyes, then
+fetched a candle and lighted him to his room. I showed him my Indian,
+sleeping outside my door,&mdash;which he never forsakes except to allow me to
+pass.</p>
+
+<p>Long into the still night I heard sobs, and opening my door I found
+Tokacon swaying to and fro near Donald's room. He seems to understand
+grief more keenly than any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> cultivated mind that I have ever known, and
+he never intrudes, though it takes a mighty effort for him to suppress
+his own sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>At last it grew quiet and we all rested though we did not sleep. The
+next morning baby and I walked with Donald to the bower where we had met
+him, and there we parted. Tokacon came and carried the baby back to the
+bungalow and I followed later on when I felt sufficiently calm to go
+about my simple duties again. I am not a connoisseur in consciences,
+therefore I want days and still more days in which to think and weigh,
+then maybe a decision will come to me as an inspiration.</p>
+
+<p>Donald will see you as soon as he returns to New York&mdash;be honest with
+him and yet beneficent.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A thousand kisses from my son and me.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="closer">Goodnight,</span><br />
+<span class="name">MARIANNE.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>
+<span class="date">December 1.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Dearest Lorna:</p>
+
+<p>For the last time I am writing to you from the place which is dearest to
+me in all the universe. My personal things are packed and on the way to
+Custer. Tokacon is waiting with his torch to set fire to my palace of
+dreams.</p>
+
+<p>I could not return to your world&mdash;to my old world if I thought that
+other souls than ours were living in my home. The land, I have given to
+my Indian with sufficient money to build a home for himself, but not one
+corner of my own shall remain to be profaned by other human emotions.</p>
+
+<p>Now I am sitting in the machine at a safe distance from the flames,
+which amuse my son, who is wild with joy and excitement<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> over it.
+Tokacon groans and I weep, for it is a tomb in flames before us.
+Ashes&mdash;ashes&mdash;everywhere&mdash;in my home and in my heart, and every where
+except in the smiles of my child.</p>
+
+<p>Donald has given me back my home and he has taken rooms at the
+club&mdash;what people think and what people say, mean nothing to me. I shall
+try bravely to construct something out of the ashes of three lives that
+will be worthy of the respect of God's elect. I cannot teach myself to
+forget; I can only await with patience the reawakening which for the
+sake of Donald and my son, pray God, will not delay too long its coming.
+I suppose the family cannot be built on a foundation of passion, because
+something on earth always becomes revengeful when human beings are too
+happy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> I shall never try to be too happy again.</p>
+
+<p>Now my memories must lie entombed in the arcana of memory. But some day
+when my son is old enough to understand, I shall come back with him to
+my Black Hills of Dakota, and breathe to him every sigh of my sorrow.
+Then if he takes me in his arms and whispers "Precious Mother," I shall
+not have loved and cherished in vain.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="name">MARIANNE.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Letters of a Dakota Divorcee, by Jane Burr
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@@ -0,0 +1,2412 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Letters of a Dakota Divorcee, by Jane Burr
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Letters of a Dakota Divorcee
+
+Author: Jane Burr
+
+Release Date: August 18, 2008 [EBook #26344]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS OF A DAKOTA DIVORCEE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net. (This file was produced from images generously
+made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Letters of
+
+A Dakota Divorcee
+
+_By Jane Burr_
+
+BOSTON
+
+THE ROXBURGH PUBLISHING CO.
+
+INCORPORATED
+
+COPYRIGHTED 1909
+
+BY THE ROXBURGH PUBLISHING COMPANY
+
+ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
+
+GRATEFULLY DEDICATED TO
+MY SIOUX FALLS FRIENDS.
+
+
+
+
+AUTHOR'S NOTE.
+
+
+This little volume will soon assume the proportions of an invaluable
+reference book as the Divorcee is gradually becoming extinct in South
+Dakota.
+
+Species may thrive in a given latitude and longitude for ages. Suddenly
+the atmospheric, climatic, or diatetic conditions become so altered as
+to preclude the further development of the species--yes even the further
+survival of the animal. The result may be either of two alternatives:
+
+1st. The animal finding the habitat no longer conducive to its well
+being may migrate singly or in bunches to another environment. In this
+case scientists have noted that the animal undergoes a considerable
+morphological and physiological change.
+
+2nd. In an environment unfavorable to its existence an animal may become
+extinct.
+
+In the case of the South Dakota Divorcee the former alternative would
+seem to be the course followed, for up to date the animal has shown
+itself to be quite too resourceful to lapse into that most archaic
+condition--extinctness.
+
+Time was when it roamed the prairies and hills of the State in vast
+herds, but owing to the removal of the protective underbrush in the form
+of the Referendum (which decrees that one year is necessary for its
+complete development), it has gone in great droves to Nevada and
+Oklahoma, which promise to be a more suitable environment for it.
+
+There are a few rare species left, but they are disconsolate and
+hang-jawed and by no means representative of the species. In former
+years the Divorcee reached maturity in three short months, and was so
+tame that it built its lair near the city limits and some even ventured
+quite into the hearts of the villages and attempted to live there. But
+these were half tamed individuals and by no means indicative of the
+genus as a whole. Then peculiar to relate, the environmental influences
+caused them to grow less rapidly and six whole months passed before a
+single specimen could call itself full fledged. The other Dakota animals
+sported around with the Divorcee and received it _a bras ouverts_, but
+the latter developed a slight _degage_ mannerism and the other beasts
+grew alarmed and crawled within their dens.
+
+Now they have almost died out entirely as the atmosphere grew not only
+unfriendly, but owing to the sudden cool change their development was
+intensely slow. The animal originally migrated from New York and thus
+anything slow would naturally unnerve its intuitively high strung
+temperament.
+
+And if in some future sociological period of the earth's history some
+antiquarian of the post-aviatorian age, prying into the _modus vivendi_
+of the men of pre-air-shippian times can learn "a thing or two" about
+that delicate gazelle-like mammal so as to show his contemporaries how
+"fierce" living was before the age of trial marriages and legitimate
+affinities, the dessicated author will rattle what is left of her teeth
+in a contended mummified smile.
+
+
+
+
+Duckie Lorna:
+
+Sip a mint julip--slowly, gently, through a long dry straw, then before
+it dies in you, read my P. O. mark--Sioux Falls, South Dakota,--Yes,
+I've bolted!
+
+Don't dare to tell anyone where I am for if my husband should find out,
+he might make me go where I could get a divorce more quickly--You know
+I'm here for his health. I would splash round in orange blossoms, and
+this is the result.
+
+My boarding house is a love, furnished with prizes got with soap--"Buy
+ten bars of our Fluffy Ruffles soap, and we will mail you, prepaid, one
+of our large size solid mahogany library tables."
+
+Would you believe dear, that these Sioux Fallians have already
+complained because I bathe my dear, shaggy Othello in the bath tub. And
+there isn't a human being here with a pedigree as long as his.
+
+If you hear any talk about my being seen in a Staten Island beer garden
+with Bern Cameron, don't believe one word of it--we didn't go in at all,
+the place was too smelly. And that fib about his giving me a diamond
+ring,--deny it please, as I have never shown it to a soul--So you can
+see how people manufacture gossip.
+
+I walk to the Penitentiary for recreation, as I may have to visit there
+some day and I never like to be surprised at anything. It isn't refined.
+
+My Attorney is thoroughly picturesque. He wears a coat in his office
+that his wife must have made. His collar came from Noah's grab bag,
+and, if you remember, there was no washing machine on the ark. A heavy
+gold chain meanders down his shirt front to protect his watch from
+improbable theft. On Sunday he passes the contribution box and is
+considered a philanthropic pest. I asked how much the fee would be and
+he said, "One hundred if you furnish witnesses, two hundred if we do."
+You can hire a man for five dollars out here to swear that he killed
+you.
+
+When my attorney talks, he sits on his haunches, showing his teeth that
+would do credit to a shark, and fancies he's smiling when he permits his
+cracked purple lips to slide back. I wouldn't trust my case to him, only
+he could not lose if he tried.
+
+Every time I look at him I wonder if there could be a face behind that
+nose and those whiskers, which give his head the appearance of a fern
+dish. He wears an old silk hat whose nap is attacked with a skin
+disease. They say he belongs to one of the first families of this
+town--first on the way coming up from the station I suppose. He was
+married years ago, but isn't working at it now. I am so unstrung after
+our seances that I feel like crawling right out under a bush and eating
+sage. If I weren't afraid of him I'd raise my umbrella while he
+talks--his conversation is so showery. In my ingrown heart I hate him so
+there is no danger for me, tho' I've heard that he's a perfect fusser
+with the women.
+
+I telephoned the livery stable yesterday and asked if any of the hearse
+horses were idle, as I'd like to take a ride. The fellow said he'd send
+me a winner, so I togged up in my bloomers, boots and spurs and stood on
+the veranda waiting. A young boy galloped up with something dragging
+behind him. I said: "Do you call that insect a horse?" he answered; "No,
+but it used to be, m'am." The poor creature was all bones and only
+waiting for a nudge to push him into the grave. I mounted the broncho,
+which kept "bronking," but after an encouraging tclk-tclk, I made a
+detour of the block, then sent the nag to the stable.
+
+There were two children and a dog drowned here yesterday--it almost
+makes one afraid to go near the tub.
+
+The man who sits on my right at the table, says he's here for
+nervousness. First time I ever heard a divorce called that, but anyway
+we all know that he gets out of jail on December, and I will be glad,
+for the way he plays the anvil chorus with his soup makes me get out of
+my skin backwards. Hope some day that the Devil will play dominoes with
+his bones.
+
+The lady on the other end, chews with her lips and of course I'm always
+excited for fear her dinner will fall overboard. The way she juggles
+food would get her a job in the vaudeville game any day. She sits up as
+tho' she'd been impaled, and the shaft broken off in her body.
+
+Long ago--a being, desirous of unhitchment could come here, rent a room,
+hang her pajamas in the closet and fade away back to Broadway, but times
+are changed, and you must serve six months or the Judge's wife will not
+let you have a divorce. The Judge's house is next to mine and the way I
+look demure when I pass, is a heathenism hypocrisy. But he is under
+petticoat tyranny and I dread ruffling the petticoat.
+
+Formerly the law was three months, but the Cataract Hotel had the
+Legislature change it as they could not make enough money.
+
+We had chicken last night and asparagus tips--did you ever notice what a
+lot of skin a boarding house chicken has? And the tips just missed by
+one, being tip. The meals are an unsatisfactory substitute for something
+to eat, and I find myself filling up on bread to keep my stomach and
+backbone apart.
+
+I am up against old timers that are always to be met at boarding
+houses--the dear old soldier and the lady "too heavy for light
+amusements, and not old enough to sit in the corner and knit," as George
+Ade puts it. She is simply ubiquitous; she is everywhere; she does not
+gossip! Oh no! Still she wonders if they really are married, you know,
+and if that strange man is her brother or not? Oh you know the whole
+tribe! Dear old parasites on the body politic! I have also had sudden
+paralysis of the jaw from looking into a country mirror and was not
+again convinced, until consulting my own hand glass during the night
+that one of my eyes had not slipped down below my nose. I can get along
+very well if my hair is not parted at all, but I insist upon my features
+remaining in the same locations.
+
+I am copying down some of the stories that I hear as they are well worth
+it, and may come in handy some day. I have the advantage of coming upon
+them suddenly for the first time, with an absolute unbiased mind, which
+like the Bellman's chart in "The Hunting of the Snark" is "a perfect and
+absolute blank."
+
+I know I shall go mad before the six months are up, for after ten days,
+I am down-down deep in a bog of melancholy, and so bored that I feel
+like the president of the gimlet club.
+
+My stomach like nature abhors a vacuum, so me to the strangled eggs and
+baked spuds which are our unfailing morning diet.
+
+In the name of Charity, send me messages from the world I love.
+
+                                Devotedly,
+                                    MARIANNE.
+
+
+
+
+Dearest Lorna:
+
+There's an old maid here (Heaven knows she's out of place) who wears her
+hair in one of those "tied for life knots," and she comes tip-toeing to
+my room each night to ask me if I think she'll ever get a man. Because
+I've had one, and am making something that resembles a trousseau, she
+thinks that I have a recipe for cornering the male market. Her dental
+arch is like the porte-cochere of the new Belmont Hotel, and last night
+a precocious four-year-old said, "Miss Mandy, why don't you tuck your
+teeth in?"--Miss Mandy would if she could but she can't. She is the sort
+who would stop her own funeral to sew up a hole in her shroud.
+
+The moonlight nights here are a perfect irritation, and I really think
+this moon isn't half as calloused to demonstration as our dear old New
+York moon. There are so few men here that the female congregation is
+getting terribly out of practice.
+
+I have found out lately that our attorneys out here rob us of everything
+and politely allow us to keep the balance.
+
+My abode of virtue is filled with furniture from the vintage of the
+early forties and I sit in it alone and am so pathetically good, that I
+am beginning to suspect myself.
+
+You know I was born when I was very young and have been desperately tidy
+about my morals ever since, but for fear of stumbling just because I'm
+so bored I have entrenched myself behind a maddening routine. Six months
+here ought to put ballast into the brain of the silliest.
+
+I think that marriage has become a social atrophy, and I never want to
+be guilty of irrevocably skewering two hearts together.
+
+I fear myself only when I'm bored. Eve never would have flirted with the
+snake if Adam hadn't got on her nerves. I always could resist everything
+but temptation.
+
+Bern once told me that every married man ought to be made to run after
+his wife. And I told him he'd be out of breath most of the time if he
+tied up with me.
+
+I went to church Sunday and the funny man at the head of the table said
+he was going round to view the ruins in the afternoon. Father Time, who
+sits opposite me and mows down the food said, "Every stylish woman I
+see, I know she's getting a divorce and I can't understand it, as most
+of them are good looking." I answered "You didn't see the other half."
+
+I am not going to correspond with Bern as our mail might be intercepted.
+For although I'm passing through the mournful ceremony of losing my
+husband in South Dakota, I don't want to gather too much dust on my
+skirts on the way to the funeral. We send each other registered letters
+every day--but that's different--nobody could possibly get those.
+
+There is a woman here who does a queer, pretty sort of embroidery. And
+she said this morning with unquenchable urbanity, "I will learn you how
+to do shadow work." Now Bern and I have been busy on all sorts of shadow
+work for the past four years in New York, but this is a different
+pattern. Sioux Falls is plethoric of widows and when one is freed, the
+other convicts writhe under the burden of their stripes. Dearie, won't
+you drop in and try to quiet my dressmaker? She is beginning to show
+evidences of dissatisfaction--inscrutable sign-manual of finances at low
+tide. I'm not rich but I'm sweet and clean--did I hear two dollars and a
+dish of cherries?
+
+I have bought a calendar with the dates on a block of pages--one page
+for each day, just for the joy of tearing them off with a vim every
+twenty-four hours. Sometimes I allow two days to pass, then I do a war
+dance like a Sioux, wild at the opportunity of pulling off a couple at a
+time.
+
+There is a N. Y. Central time table on my desk and I am eternally
+looking up train connections until I feel like a bureau of information.
+I have enough money to get back on, tucked away in my stocking. And if
+I have to take in washing I won't touch it. Funds are getting very low
+so I've started writing short stories again but "like" usual, publishers
+don't seem to recognize a genius and my P. O. box is always filled with
+long yellow comebacks--slip enclosed "Sorry we find your valuable Mss.
+unavailable for our publication, etc." However, nothing beats trying but
+failure. And although everything on this mud ball looks inky, and I am
+once more Past Grand Master of Hoodoo Philosophy, I shall grit my teeth
+and push ahead as I have done a thousand times before. My debts are
+growing like a snow ball and although I am not entirely broke, I am so
+badly bent that it ceases to be funny. There isn't a blooded dog here
+except the ones we Easterners bring. The Sioux Falls dogs are like the
+people--you can't tell exactly what breed they are, but as a few of the
+N. Y. lawyers and doctors and a few of the N. Y. dogs have remained
+here, we hope for a better blending in the next litter.
+
+There is an Englishman here who calls himself "Chappie" but "Baw Jove"
+he never saw the other side of the Atlantic if I am any judge. But you
+can hand these people any sort of pill and they'll swallow it without
+making a face. We have no indigestible pleasures here, but the food. I
+am suffering from gastric nostalgia. I was so hungry for something sharp
+and sour last night that I bought a bottle of horse-radish and ate it in
+cold blood. Today my digestive apparatus is slumped and I feel like the
+ragged edge of a misspent career.
+
+Every night the man in the next room, treats himself to a skin full and
+comes home so pleasantly lit up that he has to be put to bed. Last night
+he must have drunk like the sands of the desert, for he was a bit more
+tipsy than ever and flung apologies and hiccoughs over my transom.
+
+I look back upon my old life as an impression received in the dawn, and
+already it seems but a level highroad on a gray day. Marriage laws were
+made by old maids--any one can see that. And they have decreed that
+conjugal love, apart from passion, is elevating and a woman in yielding
+herself may evict the sanctum of love if the man may legally call her
+his own. It's all wrong dear--woman has been sacrificed to the family.
+And what a degrading imitation of Nature to propagate the species. How
+glorious never again to be shod in the slippers of matrimony--I seem to
+demand the advantages of marriage with none of the drawbacks.
+
+To return to things less serious, Othello hates something about my new
+combination lingerie and barks like fury when I put it on--maybe it is
+the blue ribbon--I'll try a dash of lavender tomorrow.
+
+You will agree that my _geistes ab vesend_ has reached an alarming
+degree when I tell you that this A. M. after my tub, I liberally dashed
+tooth powder all over my body instead of talcum.
+
+My affection is all for you--for the opposite sex it seems to have grown
+as cold as a raked-out oven.
+
+                                Goodnight,
+                                    MARIANNE.
+
+
+
+
+                                September 21.
+
+Most Precious Lorna:
+
+I am excited--excited--from the bottom lift on my French heels to the
+top hair on my golden puffs.
+
+Now who would have thought that the "Fate Sisters" would discover me way
+out here and sit on the corner of Minnesota and 12th spinning their
+breakable yarn.
+
+Well--well--yesterday the one with the weary look and the crooked nose,
+got a knot in her twine and this is how it happened. I was crossing this
+Minnie-something street, when a shrill siren and the cannonade of a
+powerful exhaust warned me to stay my tootsies. I wasn't looking for a
+big white aseptic machine out here or any other kind, so the blooming
+thing crashed into us and rather than have Bunky hurt, I ran the risk
+(not quite, but nearly) of losing my life, but not until I had assured
+myself that the man at the wheel was exotic to this soil.
+
+Zip-bang-gasoline-smoke! and I was fished out, laid tenderly on the back
+seat and rushed to a druggery. I allowed the dramatic spirits of
+pneumonia to be forced down my throat by his manicured hands and somehow
+I couldn't find the courage to take my head away from his shoulder--it
+was such a comfy, tailored Fifth Avenue shoulder. You know my
+reputation--30 years in a circus and never lost a spangle.
+
+What is it that the Christian Scientists have on their souvenir spoons:
+"There is no life in matter?"--well old girl I can sign a testimonial to
+the opposite. Poor little Bunky added one more knot to his tail during
+the mix-up, but as every knot is worth twenty-four dollars on a French
+bull pup's tail, I don't mind this acquisition.
+
+I was asked the other day if Bunk was a Pomeranian and I said, "No, a
+French bull pup." The woman answered, "That's the same thing, isn't it?"
+
+Finally with a little home-made sob I opened my eyes and asked the same
+question that Eve put to Adam the morning after God had presented him
+with that poisonous bon-bon. "Where am I?" and it's none of your
+inquisitive business what he answered. The white auto will call tonight
+to see of I'm still living and meantime I have ordered fifty yards of
+white dabby stuff from "Fantles" to keep busy on. No--not a trousseau--I
+shall never--never marry again--I'm too full of experience.
+
+I told the white auto that I had been hemmed in so long that I did not
+know how to act in decent society any more and he said he's the best
+hem-ripper that ever lived, so I think I'll take a chance. Isn't there a
+great difference in men, dear? But, in husbands--they vary only in the
+color of their hair.
+
+I'm so glad motors stand without hitching. Now you'll say "Can't you
+leave men alone for six months?" Sometimes my conscience does get
+feverish and bothers me, but it's so seldom that I am grateful for the
+change as it acts as a stimulation to my gray matter--whatever that is.
+
+My honest intentions were to leave off my puffs and artificials while
+here, just to give Nature a chance, but now that I have been run over by
+an auto I consider the plan inadvisable.
+
+There are dandy golf links here but they don't allow "Divorsays" on the
+ground. The Sioux Falls women, (cats for short) had it stopped three
+years ago, because they were all neglected when any number of my tribe
+appeared.
+
+Not a soul knows what I'm here for. One must never tell. That's the
+first divorce colony by-law. I have become a perfect diplomat and know
+how to keep still in three languages. I just casually told my troubles
+to the boarding house keeper and her daughters, but they don't count, as
+they are such dears, and it won't go any further.
+
+As long as I live, my attorney says, I must sign in hotel registers from
+Sioux Falls--If I do the clerks will stoop to pick cockle burrs and
+tumble weeds off my skirts and help me to loosen my Indian
+wampum--whatever that is.
+
+Father Time, whom I mentioned in my last and who possesses as much
+energy for getting divorces (this being his third time on earth) as
+Roosevelt exhibits in the Baby market, has taken to peddling "The Ladies
+Home Journal," and the "Saturday Evening Post," and if you only knew how
+cunning he looks with his abbreviated coat and short, quick, little
+steps, you would give a dollar for a picture of him to paste in your
+book of curiosities of the world.
+
+Court was in session last week and all sorts of real Indians paraded the
+streets. They weren't like our dear old Irish Indians on Manhattan
+Island, who perambulate inside little houses placarded with one night
+corn cures; these were the real article and their wives walked behind,
+just like New York wives, carrying an orphan asylum on their backs and
+provisions for the week on their hips.
+
+Poor down trodden creatures. I feel like organizing a class to show them
+how to _marcelle_ their mops and "straight front" their stomachs. A
+tommyhawk for me and no mop to _marcelle_ if I try to revolutionize
+Indiandom.
+
+Last night at a wonderful performance of Fiske in "Rosmerholm," the
+house was packed with Indians and in the ghostly part where everybody
+throws himself into the mill-stream, Squaw Sloppy-Closey and Chief
+Many-Licey opened soda pop and passed it to each other for a drink out
+of the same bottle. Poor Fiske was horrified and threatened to stop the
+performance if the soda pop artillery didn't cease its bombarding.
+
+The wind tears around the corner of my room on the bias and the cats
+keep up a Thomas Concert beneath my windows all night long. No wonder I
+have nightmares. Last night I dreamed that I was a saint with an apple
+pie for a halo--this boarding house pie habit will eventually tell on
+the strongest nerves.
+
+Last night I cut my leg on a barbed wire--no dear I wasn't hurdling the
+fence--the wire was on the side walk, where everything except the
+kitchen stove usually lies. I hope I won't have lockjaw--it's harder on
+a woman than it is on a man anytime. I was just thinking how clever it
+would be, if a man who had a chattering wife, would keep a bunch of
+rusty pins on hand.
+
+I sat down to the piano this morning and ran through that pyrotechnical
+_Solfigetto_ by the other Bach, and Father Time, who sat enchanted,
+said, "You and the piano has met before." It's a shame to cheat the
+aged.
+
+Thank heaven that the sunshine is free and that the florist's window is
+gratis to look at, otherwise on my slender means I should have to take
+advantage of the bankrupt law.
+
+My old friend Insomnia again stands incessantly at the foot of my bed
+and bids me corner the sunrise market. A heavy heart is mine tonight and
+though I try to fancy beautiful pictures in the crystal ball of the
+future, I grow sick with anticipation as the visions fall away before
+they are half formed, leaving me melancholy and wondering if there is an
+angel somewhere who collects the sighs of such ever-repressed feeling.
+
+                                Goodnight,
+                                    MARIANNE.
+
+
+
+
+                                October 5.
+
+Lorna Dear:
+
+Well, Lorna, you and I were "all day suckers" to believe that Mrs.
+Phyllis Lathrop was touring California; I bumped plump into her
+yesterday in front of the poor-house. No, dear, I did not go there to
+stay, merely to visit. Phyllis is nice in her red-headed way and looked
+very fresh and sweet with the lower part of her face lost in a tulle
+abyss. She lives just a whisper away from me--so strange I haven't seen
+her before. She's trotting around with a Sioux Falls fellow who looks
+like a Dutch luncheon favor. Every time he lifts his hat I look for
+bon-bons to drop out. Says she must be loving someone all the time, even
+if she is considered in the light of an accommodation train. She's the
+unfinished sort of a woman who carries her beauty around in little tubes
+and seems so used to audiences that I always feel that she must have
+sung between the acts.
+
+_Town Topics_ said something about "The soft breezes of California
+restoring the bloom to Phyllis' cheeks"--to think that _T. Ts_ got
+fogged in the matter is consoling to such lesser lights as you and I.
+You can take it from me, "the soft breezes of California" are blowing
+into her room in a nearby Sioux Falls boarding house, but instead of
+being laden with the scent of flowers they are redolent of hash from the
+cookery. I'll take off my hat to her. She was a slick duck. Of course
+she denied nothing to me--her time is up soon; then she will lay her
+history before the Judge, who is always busy picking hairs from his
+coat and doing other things of vital import while you pour out your
+heart's woes.
+
+The fellow whose motor sent me to the brink of the Styx, is now
+preparing me by night light to take the 33d degree of happiness. You
+have heard of him I know, Carlton Somerville, the Wall Street broker. I
+forget what it was his wife did that got on his nerves, but anyway he
+too is hibernating in Sioux Falls clay. We have gotten "First-namey" and
+have frankly decided that in order to keep our cleverness from dying of
+inanition, we will practice on each other.
+
+How could you, my dearest friend, accuse me of being forgetful of Bern?
+He wouldn't appreciate me at all if I forgot how. And really six months
+of non-practice would be ruination.
+
+Carlton has fallen in love over his depth with that beefy Mrs. Claymore
+and takes me motoring to pour his love (of her) into my aural
+labyrinths. I don't object to playing second fiddle, but when it comes
+to holding the triangle for the drummer, I pass blind. Never mind, while
+he isn't watching some day he'll get stung, for I'm really fond of him.
+You say that you are so much stronger willed than I am--did you ever
+look at yourself in the mirror? Carlton has eyes that I adore--they are
+the deeply sad sort that would make one think that love had passed that
+way. If it really hasn't, he might as well begin to put up the grand
+stand and have the tickets printed. My dear, I'd never marry another man
+with a memory--most inconvenient asset that a husband can possess.
+
+"Chappie," the Englishman, has started a society paper--sort of six
+months gestation of _Town Topics_, so Carlton and I are batting around
+after midnight, so "we won't become saw." There are all sorts of ways to
+make a bee buzz. Do keep Bern from wearing red ties while I'm gone and
+give him a shove along the straight and narrow, once and so often.
+
+After a month and a half of drinking Sioux Falls water, I would bring a
+higher price as a lime kiln than I would in the woman market. One's pelt
+gets wind tanned and such a thing as a daintily flushed face is as
+unlooked for out here as consideration from the natives.
+
+My head ached so yesterday that I called on a doctor, "Visit including
+all medicine, one dollar." Isn't it "patetic?" He raved about the
+climate and said he brought his wife here with T. B., and she improved
+so much. Naturally I asked, "How is she now?" He said, "O, she's dead."
+Don't blame him for raving about the climate, do you?
+
+My dear it is worth a trip out here to see a whist party "let out." No,
+not "bridge,"--they haven't heard of it yet--just plain whist; but as I
+was saying, to see one turn out with its white alpaca skirt and blue
+satin ribbon belt. I've paid two dollars at Hammerstein's to see things
+not half so funny. O, for a sip of Fleischman's coffee--there are
+grounds for divorce in every cup out here. The butter we eat, walks in
+from the country alone, and at every meal we get smashed potatoes piled
+as high as the snow on the Alps. I can't look a potato in the eye any
+more.
+
+There is a couple here on business from Michigan,--a Mr. and Mrs. Jones,
+odd name that. Isn't it sad that they are so happily married, they might
+both be getting divorces, but as it is they are simply wasting a year
+out here for nothing. I passed the Judge on the street this morning and
+I was so nervous that I walked bow-legged. But thanks to _skirts et
+cetera-et cetera_.
+
+I have sampled all the churches and have finally landed at the Christian
+Science house of worship, as I would rather any day hear a pianola grind
+out its _papier mache_ music than listen to a poor performer.
+
+If I had Carnegie's millions, I'd go straight to Chicago, buy a big,
+fat, thick, beef steak, step into the middle of it and eat my way out.
+I'm hungry, hungry. I worry down the "dope" that they deal out in the
+dining room, then go back to my sanctum and finish on limey water and
+crack-nells--you know what they are, a powdery sort of counterfeit cake
+that chokes you to death if you happen to breathe while you're chewing
+it.
+
+Last night while trying to cut some stringy roast beef and still retain
+my dignity, the man with the red tie said: "Put your other foot on it."
+I'm afraid if I don't eat potatoes again, my stomach will shrivel so
+that I will never be able to sit through a course dinner when I get
+back. Potatoes distend it all right--I feel like I have swallowed one
+wing of Fleischman's yeast factory whenever I eat them. You have to come
+down on the meat with such force to make any impression on it, that more
+gets pushed up between your teeth than goes down your alimentary canal;
+then you spend the balance of the night squandering Japanese dental
+floss. I unconsciously finish my prayers with "Lord preserve us from
+the holy trinity of roast beef, roast mutton and roast pork."
+
+You can recognise one of the clan in a moment by what is known as the
+"Divorsay jaw." No feek and weeble expression on our faces but "Do or
+die" is the look we have in our optics.
+
+Every time I go to church I vow I'll never go again. The organ is
+asthmatic and the wheezing gets on my gray matter.
+
+The Judge has begun to wear a fur coat--Dakota cow fur, I think, and he
+looks for all the world like a turkey gobbler in distress.
+
+I sleep on what they call here a "sanitary couch." Can't fathom the
+mystery of the name, for mine is so chucked with dust that I dream I'm
+in a sand storm crossing the Sahara, and when I awaken my sympathies are
+keen with the camel.
+
+There's a new boarder here whose face looks like a chapel and every time
+she opens her mouth you're afraid it's going to be the Lord's Prayer.
+She wears a wide ruching which makes her look excited; distributes
+tracts, and can't see a joke. She says she's Miss and leaves envelopes
+around with "Mrs." written on them in red ink--modest writing fluid I've
+always considered it.
+
+Will you buy me some new puffs? Mine are all ratty and I feel
+bare-footed without them. Enclosed is a clipping from my hair. Read it
+carefully. False hair is no crime as long as it matches--like that
+German song that says "Kissing is no sin with a pretty woman."
+
+Have you caught "Three Weeks" yet? I had a violent attack a few days
+ago. Cured it with a small dose of Christian Science before meals and
+some of Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_, which I shook well after using.
+
+You can imagine what disastrous effect Eleanor Glynn's book had on the
+"Divorce Colony." We all bunched together and said "What's the use," and
+if it hadn't been for the old man who eats his soup out loud, we would
+have bolted in a mass to suggest "Free Love" to our respective
+"Fiascos"--Dakota's past tense for "Fiance."
+
+I long so to flash my calciums on a Fifth Ave. stroller that I'd flirt
+with God if I met him.
+
+I close dear with a sigh over my chin, which is getting triple (an
+invention of the devil).
+
+                                _Auf wiedersehen_,
+                                    MARIANNE.
+
+
+
+
+                                October 25.
+
+My Dear:
+
+I've changed lodgings and before I took the new chambers, I inquired of
+the landlady if there was any electricity in the house and she answered
+"Yes," so today I asked here where it was, and she pointed to the
+telephone. O, me! O, my! this life is wearing me to a fraz!
+
+Last week the autumn leaves fell and in order to show Mrs. Judge how
+simple and near to nature I live, I raked their lawn, and ours, clean,
+and stood long after dark making huge bonfires on a line with the
+sidewalk. But lo! the fleas that were of the earth became the fleas of
+me and I have occupied most of my time since scratching. But anything
+to pass the hours away.
+
+Our hedges are cut for the last time this fall, and look as though they
+are fresh from the barber. Isn't that phrase "for the last time" the
+most desolate utterance that a human voice can make? It goes thundering
+down the aisles of time only to be lost in the arcana of treacherous
+memory. To dream for the last time--to love for the last time--bitter
+contemplation--funereal introspection.
+
+I am suffering from acute nostalgia--by this time you are standing in
+the gun-room at Keith Lodge, drinking your first. I can hear Duncan ask:
+"Scotch or Irish," and see you tip it off with Blake and the rest. No
+bridge for you tonight--early to bed and tomorrow morning you'll all
+start out in your natty knickers and short kilts to murder things that
+will fall in bloody feathery heaps at your feet. Native woodcock, jack
+snipe, black mallard, grouse, etc., the restless eager setters doing
+their own retrieving; the soft dank ground daintily overspread with the
+frond of marvelous fern like my window pane this morning with its
+delicate tracery in frost; the tall-stemmed alders echoing your shots to
+skyward; the big dense timber with its springy ground all saturated with
+the fragrance of the mounting sea: I seem like something dead whispering
+to you from the tomb. Nothing lasts longer than twenty-four hours in New
+York--not even a memory, so no one misses me. It's another of God's
+jollies and I know I'm ungrateful dear, for you are thinking of me I
+know, with my dear old "Sport" ready to point for you tomorrow, just to
+receive your pats of recognition and thanks. My feelings are worn into
+meaningless smoothness like the head on an old coin, and because I have
+added my quota of absurdity to the morning papers I am no longer
+interesting. But, pshaw! one can't buy cocaine for a nickel, and as I
+could live extravagantly on the interest of my debts, I haven't more
+than five cents to invest.
+
+Don't mind this slump in grit--it will return to par and slang tomorrow.
+Keep a record of all you do to send to me, and above all--win the cup.
+With whom are you shooting?
+
+I will now stuff the cracks of my door with medicated cotton, open the
+portholes and smoke my cigarette alone--Lord preserve me, if anybody
+knew! See if you can't get the Humane Society to form a branch out here
+to feed and water the widows.
+
+I have just returned from a little walk with Carlton--I suppose my eyes
+prattled, for he smiled at me through his wrinkles and was rather more
+thoughtful of my comforts than usual. His _Insouciance_ is charming and
+always turns the tide of my melancholy. He is the only man who ever
+ventured to stand on my tack and take me broadsides. We have framed up a
+little Bacchic plot to be enacted on our way back from the Post where I
+shall soon meander to mail this on the late Rock Island.
+
+I am certainly in love, because I know the symptoms, but I can't tell
+with whom. Some temperature, high pulse and strange flutterings--but who
+is the victim? Bern or Howard in New York or Carlton here? The thought
+of all of them stirs me, so how am I to know which is in the lead? Hope
+the period of incubation will soon be over and the blooming thing assert
+itself. I have often been vaccinated and the thing always takes, but
+still I am not immune and never will be until I am six feet under, even
+if I live to be an hundred years old! Did you catch the an? But it's
+disgusting not to know whether it is the measles or something worse,
+however I am taking all precautions and awaiting developments.
+
+I often wonder what I'll do with my decree when I get it--I can't wear
+it on my finger, and it certainly isn't the thing for gold leaf and a
+shadow box--Oh! I shan't waste time placing it; perhaps Carlton will
+find a pigeon-hole for it somewhere.
+
+I haven't written to Bern in days, but I don't care; I never considered
+a banker as one of the human race, anyway. Poor Bern; he's thrown out
+like a bill in Parliament! Beaten by a blackball called Carlton--I'd
+hate to see him now. Roland the Furious is charming in a poem, but in a
+drawing room, prosaic and expensive.
+
+Carlton and I went to church Sunday and were refused communion--the dear
+good Bishop has but one eye, so he sees things half way. I said: "If
+this is God's table, I want communion, if it's the Episcopal, I don't."
+In his sermon he called divorcees "social lepers, social filthiness,"
+and said: "After the new law goes into effect, we'll have no more
+dumping here." He's an old pop-gun that shoots spit-balls, so the wounds
+he makes are not fatal. Carlton refuses to go to church here or anywhere
+else again, and will once more trudge along his Sunday field of Bacchus
+cultivated by Venus.
+
+By the way, after June 1st, all divorcees will be required to stay one
+year, then they won't come at all. Oklahoma had a hunch and changed her
+law back to three months. Now the colony will transplant itself, then
+watch the death agony of Sioux Falls. She's foolish--foolish! The
+Easterners have made this burg what it is. Take away our influence and
+she'll sink into nothingness again. Some of us are bad, but all of us
+are not; however, the Sioux Falls gossips make no distinction. They lift
+their $2.98 skirts when they pass us, for fear of inoculation by the
+_bacillus_ divorce. I often wonder if they realize that the prejudice is
+returned with compound interest.
+
+When any new gossip is born, they fly around the streets like the beads
+of a rosary when the string is snapped. Perhaps you haven't noticed how
+serious this letter is. I'm frowning as I write--a habit most bad on the
+eyebrows--surest of signs that I am sinking again into the quagmire of
+love.
+
+I have felt my pulse so often and know all the symptoms--which I more
+than enjoy scrutinizing--not even the finest emotion escapes me. I
+believe that I play the game well for I am still unjaded, which is
+unusual with so much over-feeding.
+
+Is your new fur coat unborn lamb, or did it happen? Speaking of
+possessions--my appendix still gives me ample proof of its constancy.
+The blue devils are chasing me today and I am wearing the expression
+that sits on the lips of every portrait in every exhibition. I smile to
+keep from crying, because if I cry--I'm lost!
+
+As I am of the experienced elite of society that sups, I must bid you
+adieu--I promise more jocosity in my next.
+
+                                Affy,
+                                    MARIANNE.
+
+
+
+
+                                December 1.
+
+Since writing you I have heard the turkey gobbler say his last prayer
+and have had a coming out party for "Penny," short for appendix. The
+receiving party was comprised of two eminent surgeons, two trained
+nurses, who served adhesive plaster and instruments, and an "etherist"
+who poured. Costumes were uniformly white with great profusion of gauze
+trimmings, with which I also eventually became somewhat decorated. One
+of the internes wasn't half bad, so I kept the nurse busy combing my
+adopted hair and pinning it on becomingly. It is a much quicker and
+easier process to have your appendix cut out than your husband.
+
+I was away four weeks and am now back in Sioux and well taken care of by
+my landlady, whose hair and face disagree as to age. My walls are hung
+with ten-cent store art, and if I were not awfully strong-minded I could
+not overcome the effect.
+
+The white auto called last night, and as my head rested on his shoulder
+our conversation was the rambling sort that may be ticketed "all rights
+reserved," so I won't repeat it as the postmaster-general would refuse
+me stamps in the future if I sent it through the mail. In Chicago they'd
+take out my phone if I squeaked it over the wires. Carlton is deeply
+interested in some mines out here--spinach mines I think. I made up my
+mind to something last night--I am determined to get him away from that
+carrotty giraffe whom he used to believe he loved. If in my
+convalescent state I am unable to arouse his sympathy, I'll relapse into
+white muslin emotions and thereby gain my end. I am made from dust and
+the slightest rustle from the right man's coat can blow me whithersoever
+it willeth. You know I am a spoiled child who has had everything it
+wanted, so bon-bons no longer excite me. Carlton is so thin that you can
+see daylight through his lattice work, and cold as paving stone in
+winter. He's a real "millionery," but his cash is 40 degrees below, so I
+am determined to warm up his eagles and teach them to fly. I am going to
+touch that cash box under his left breast and show him that the devil
+has a sister. The man wants bleeding--he has too many bank notes in his
+veins. He seems to be toppling so I might as well register him in my
+"Book of Mistakes."
+
+Do you know that I still keep a record of these undying passions of mine
+with a picture of each culprit attached, and Carlton is 999. I thought,
+when I was sixteen, I would record the one divine fire that was
+like to consume me, and now I have eighteen volumes of this
+105-degrees-in-the-shade literature, all bound alike in a perfect
+_edition de luxe_. I'd rather regret what I have done than what I have
+not done. You dear old ostrich, I can hear you sigh over me, but don't
+you waste your gasoline. You, too, should have callouses on your
+emotions by this time.
+
+Bunky and Othello have both decided to bark at my chemiselets and
+skirtlets in one,--maybe they think they are too flossy to be concealed.
+I agree there.
+
+Phyllis Lathop's lawyer, Mr. Maryan Soe Early, got her decree for her
+last week and she flew back on the 3.30 train to Manhattan and Gordon
+Booth. Of course everyone knows that he is booked.
+
+Her plea was extreme cruelty; said her husband struck her. The dear old
+judge asked her to explain in detail some of the circumstances of her
+husband's brutality. She said: "While crossing Lake Michigan there was a
+terrible storm on, and as my husband was descending from the upper
+berth, the boat lurched and he struck me with his elbow." Phyllis said
+the judge smiled very broadly and gave her her decree on "Extreme
+Nerve," instead of "Extreme Cruelty."
+
+She writes that she and Gordon are having such times together--batting
+around their old stamping ground, Bronx Park--strange how hard it is to
+overcome habits. They slink off to the New York woman's trysting place
+when there is no longer any reason for secrecy. One bitter cold day last
+winter Bern and I met Phyllis and Gordon in the very spot that we always
+frequented, and poor individuals were stamping their feet to keep them
+from freezing. The monkey house was full of people and they dared not
+remain there any longer. We all smiled as much as to say: "You don't
+tell, and I certainly won't." Not a word ever came out, so the treaty
+was well kept. Bern and I were more or less engaged at the time.
+
+We laughed over it when she was out here, and I asked her why she never
+repeated it, as she never keeps anything to her gossipy self. She
+answered: "If I had said that I had seen you there, I would have had to
+explain my own presence in the park, and I never incriminate myself."
+She says that "there are two new kinds of monkeys out there and one
+looks like Elbert Hubbard--sits all day surrounded by his hair."
+
+She's running a bar in connection with her tea table now, which is
+equivalent to putting salt on the tail of the social male bird. She can
+hardly believe that she's free, and says that it will take some time for
+her to realize "that there aint no beast." Isn't it strange that the
+most fascinating lover in the world can turn into the veriest beast
+within six months after he has hit you on the head and dragged you
+senseless into his Fifth Avenue home? Of course you're senseless or you
+would not have tied up.
+
+Phyllis says that she has gotten out of the habit of decent food, that
+every time she really dines, she gets strange pains in her underneath. I
+wish I could fly back home, but I must grit my teeth and get rid of my
+beast too. I wonder which breed I'll try next time. Boston Bull, I
+suppose, I think that's where Carlton was first kenneled.
+
+I have a large stove in my sitting-room and keep it going myself.
+Othello looks as though he'd laugh himself to death every time I put
+coal on--darn his pelt! He's crazy over Sioux Falls--possibly because
+there are seven dogs to the city block. He goes away on bridal tours
+every few days and then I have to get out a search warrant. I could live
+quite decently if I did not have to invest in so many rewards for him.
+
+It is so terribly cold here that my very thoughts are frozen and my
+hot-water bag does nightly service. The thing sprung a leak last week
+and I took it to a garage to ask if they would mend it, and the fellow
+answered: "Certainly, madam, we have quite a trade in hot-water bottles
+and "nature's rivals."" I have also found out that the only place to buy
+burnt wood is at Mr. Trepaning's the undertaker and embalmer.
+
+All the stiff and crackling branches of the trees are weighted down with
+a three-inch ruching of snow. It is all silently fascinating, especially
+so because since starting this letter two short raps at my window
+announce Carlton who comes each night to accompany me to the late post
+after the landlady is snoozing. His arms are around me as I scrawl, and
+the thousand tiny little thrills that answer so eagerly to his
+nearness, assure me that it is not deplorable to be thirty-nine.
+
+                                Good night,
+                                    MARIANNE.
+
+
+
+
+                                December 20.
+
+So near Xmas, dear, yet none of the Yule-tide joys float out to this
+frozen wilderness. Snow, snow everywhere. The tall alders, whose vivid
+coloring so inspired me when I arrived, are now black and gaunt, and the
+pitiless desert wind comes tearing and howling from the north to bend
+and crack their stiffened joints. I often wonder--am I any more the
+arbiter of my fate than these lifeless snow-draped spectres around me.
+
+Carlton left the hotel almost a week ago and took the room next to mine.
+We are hopelessly in love with each other, and he wonders how he ever
+could have thought of accepting happiness from Mrs. Claymore,
+accompanied by so many freckles and a half million dollars.
+
+As for Bern, dear, he will survive. I am much older than he is, so that
+some day he would be forty with all his emotions and I would be fifty
+with the rheumatism--it would never do. Henceforth I shall be prodigal
+of negatives, except where Carlton is concerned.
+
+We have attained the intimacy which thinks aloud, and instead of hating
+Sioux Falls and longing for my sentence to expire, I am beginning to
+worship every inch of the ground, and only pray that such an exile
+should last forever.
+
+None of the fulminating fires that I have heretofore known are
+mine--only calm and peace and the joys born of a perfect understanding.
+We have not let the moment slip when souls meet in comprehension. I
+almost decided not to confide all this to you, but it slipped off my
+pen and I'm not sorry, for no woman living was ever before blessed with
+a friend like you. You and I have visited the lowest Dantesque circles
+of despair together, and no confidence between us could amount to an
+indiscretion.
+
+Our landlady thinks that we are merely speaking acquaintances, and it is
+best, as this new-found sympathy must not be distilled by Sioux Falls
+scandal-mongers, though I should like to shout it from the house tops
+through a megaphone, I am so happy and proud of it.
+
+So you shot with Aldrich and he tried to get you to buy "Steel
+Preferred." I am glad you did not invest and sorry you did not win the
+cup. I shall never again shoot for pleasure. I am ashamed of my
+trophies. Perhaps love has made me mushy but I don't regret it as hate
+made me flinty. Have you noticed how our bonds have slumped--the whole
+thing was a Golden Fleece. Commercialism bores me to extinction. I
+suppose the world began with trade, since Adam sold Paradise for a
+pippin.
+
+Are you still of the opinion that tradespeople should be branded on the
+forehead down to the third generation?--you dear snobbish treasure.
+
+Henceforth I shall only deal in sentimental tramways and have shares in
+the moral funds--maybe not moral according to the threadbare ideal of
+the genus _homo sapiens_.
+
+Surprising that a girl as young as Alice Noah--no relation to the fellow
+who built the ark--should just take out legal separation papers in New
+York. How can the _modus vivendi_ suit her better than divorce? Perhaps
+she wants to cinch her alimony until she finds another affinity. Then
+Alice for Dakota. It is foolish to cut your financial string when you
+might just as well dangle, especially until you find something worth
+dropping for.
+
+Dear, will you please send me a reel of Sirdars? I can't smoke anything
+else and no one sells them out here. Our landlady has one eye that looks
+up the chimney and another that goes cellar wards and Carlton says that
+she always regards him obliquely--never mind, she is a good stupid soul
+and I can forgive a landlady anything but perspicacity. I don't see how
+our intimacy has escaped her,--to me it looks like the first foreign
+sticker on an American five dollar dress suit case.
+
+Why do you write such short letters? Is it because you have but a
+limited number of ideas and must dispense them carefully?
+
+What did Philip Leighton die of? His wife, I suppose. They never had
+anything in common but the kiddies. That means no more hunts at
+Blackburn Heath unless someone careless like Philip absorbs the estate.
+Mrs. Philip was a Pennsylvania girl. _N'est ce pas?_ That accounts for
+her effulgent spontaneity. Isn't it a shame for me to wax bombastic over
+a girl who, if she were just a little brighter, might be called half
+witted. She's the girl with the massive mother, who suffers from
+dislocated adjectives. They say when she was married her prayer book was
+missing, so she carried a cake of ivory soap instead--The mother was
+divorced and could have had alimony if she had wanted it, but she had
+better sense than to want it. She has venomous optics--the fellows used
+to say they flew when she flashed her calciums; ugly as the seven deadly
+sins and so mannish that I was always afraid her trousers would show
+beneath her petticoats. The giddy old cat! If she had been hanging since
+her sixtieth birthday, she would certainly be breathless now.
+
+All day, dear, I go about my duties with a most ladylike absence of
+passion, but when night comes I cross the sandy waste of the past and
+stretch out my hands to fondle the idea of perfect companionship. Our
+thoughts seem to be a reverberation of the same thunderous roll, and
+while they are not identical, they are of the same breadth and
+elevation. The conditions of propinquity are responsible; and as love
+did not come to me, I had to do as Mahomet did with the mountain.
+
+When he goes from me, Joy vanishes, but leaves a bright track of light
+behind, which bursts upon me through the clouds of cigarette smoke that
+he has left.
+
+Each day I awaken more warmed and thrilled, like the sun which finds the
+mountain tops that he touched with his departing rays still warm when he
+sends his shaft of light in the morn.
+
+No maelstrom of distrust do we feel, only a mighty, overpowering passion
+that no undress of intimacy can ever destroy.
+
+Good-night, friend of my babyhood, my girlhood, my womanhood. My
+greetings for your birthday.
+
+                                Affy,
+                                    MARIANNE.
+
+
+
+
+                                February 10.
+
+Don't be cross with me, dear, I am in no danger. Your repeated letters
+came--I read them, then straightway forgot that they should be answered.
+It is no evidence of a lessening of my love for you, but because life
+has become so mysteriously perfect for me that I dream away my hours.
+
+One night, seemingly a million years ago, but really only within the
+present week, I felt cold as I stood by my stove and plaited my hair--I
+have nice hair, Lorna, haven't I? But I didn't seem to notice it. I was
+in my nightie and I shivered. My white chiffon bedspread with the pink
+roses strewn over it was near, so I drew it close about me and felt that
+I had protected myself from the chill. It wasn't an external chill that
+made me quake, but something old and deep-rooted and lonely that came
+from the depths of the soul in me and begged and pleaded for
+recognition.
+
+The big stove with its dozens of mica eyes threw out comforting little
+rays of coziness, but the real me still shivered. I walked to the window
+and opened it. Strange, disquieting, but gracious thoughts that I had
+lost somewhere in the twilight of the night before, came riding back to
+me on a snow flurry--it was so still that I feared to breathe, lest I
+disturb the solitude--the sky wasn't heavy and gray, but clear and blue
+and seemed like a soft silken canopy that the gaunt maples upheld to
+protect me and my love, and the virgin snow that fell on my outstretched
+arms in soft little rosettes that disappeared as our loves sometimes do
+when they have but let us feel the deliciousness of their possession.
+
+The heavy old door between my room and his creaked with rustiness and
+age, as for the first time in years it turned upon its hinges. Carlton
+had watched for my last good-night signal and grew alarmed at its
+absence and my quietude.
+
+I wonder why I didn't feel embarrassed--all I know is that after he
+discovered a comfortable angle in my Morris, I crawled into his arms and
+lay there quietly without a word until dawn the next morning. Our sleep
+was rhythmic, just like our love. What a strange beautiful night we
+passed and how difficult it would be to make the world believe!
+
+Awakening, I felt something cold around my neck, and there, dear girl,
+he had fastened pearls while I slept in his arms. I cannot even imagine
+their value, as I know nothing of jewels but how to accept and wear
+them.
+
+Such a gift is wonderful at any time, but how much more subtly charming
+to have it fastened on you as you lay, comfy and subconscious in his
+strong and doubtless aching arms. Such peace, peace, dear, would have
+benumbed Napoleon; but I need few other interests--my universe begins at
+his head and ends at his feet.
+
+This is the purest jag of joy that I have ever been on in my life, and I
+wonder that one small blonde woman is able to allow herself so much
+spark and not have her engines explode.
+
+I always fancied that I should die if such an ideal existence even
+attempted to show its face to me; and instead, I take my soup before
+it's cold, put my shoes on my feet, my hat on my head, retire and arise
+at the usual hours.
+
+He embroiders his talk with bungalows, steam yachts and motor cars for
+the future, while I fear to buy a pair of boots before a consultation
+with my trousers pocket. I find myself imprisoned in a banker's
+portfolio, floundering in statements covered with red ink. He doesn't
+dream that such is the case, or all his funds would be at my disposal.
+Somehow, if I had my decree, I should tell him; but while I am still
+someone's else wife I cannot take his money--it would soil my emotions.
+
+Yesterday, while opening a crate for me, he cut his finger very badly,
+and as I bound it up he said, "Forgive me," and concealing his hurt, he
+sought pardon for the pain he had caused me.
+
+His feelings are intuitively charming, and though he hasn't a university
+education, he has a universal one, which counts for far more in this
+world where a stab is given in return for a pin prick.
+
+Good-night, precious girl-woman, whose friendship has never failed me,
+whose love has been the most uplifting emotion that I have ever known.
+
+                                MARIANNE.
+
+
+
+
+                                March 3.
+
+Lorna Mine:
+
+My six months were up on March first, but as the judge hates undue haste
+about serving papers, I waited one whole hour before I shot mine off to
+New York. I am no longer doing time, but am a full-fledged citizen of
+South Dakota. Isn't it nice that my case won't have a jury--it always
+gets hung and it sounds unpleasant even if it really isn't.
+
+Oh! these dazzlingly cool, fresh, spring days. If there is anything more
+beautiful in the West than their gaudy Indian summer, it is the half
+scared spring. The wind is a bit blustery and pretentious, but otherwise
+Nature seems doubtful as to whether she will paint her landscape or not.
+Each night a grand sunset crowns the close of a cloudless day.
+
+Weeks ago Carlton's decree was granted him, but he stays to hold me in
+his arms while I wait for mine. You ask if we are engaged? Yes--awfully
+engaged all the time.
+
+I have never before been able to understand why people put such vast
+sums in churches. Now I know. It isn't on account of the worship, nor of
+the interior, but for the steps. When you take into consideration what
+assistance they have rendered lovers, it only seems just that they
+should be taxed. We worship at Christian Science Church, because it's
+darker, every night except Wednesday; but they have some sort of a
+shin-dig then, so we switch to the Episcopal and take communion with
+each other. Nice clean, comfy, red granite steps that so many pious,
+divorce-hating feet have passed over. My sympathies go out to all women,
+even if they are fallen and so did Christ's; but the good Sioux Fallians
+are above it. They pull all the hay to their side of the manger and
+forget that we, having never used such food, don't miss it now. It is a
+pity that we can't infuse more of the "God-honor-and-the-ladies" spirit
+into this depth of silliness out here.
+
+The West is so big and glorious and free, it seems strange that the corn
+crop should be so superior to the people. I suppose it is because each
+perfect stalk of corn turns its face to God and Heaven, and the people
+are so busy gossiping they haven't the time to worship. When we pass
+them on the street we feel like saying: "Our reputations are in your
+hands. In God's name be merciful!"
+
+I am keeping house now in my room--light housekeeping, you know. It's
+positively airy sometimes. My landlady--bless her ignorant soul!--allows
+my little ice-box to remain in her butler's pantry, which I have
+christened "cockroach alley." They--the cockroaches--are so large and
+educated that I have named them, and each one comes when it's called and
+feeds from the hand.
+
+She wears the most artistic skirts--always ball-room back and ballet
+front. Her grandchild was sitting on the floor yesterday, reading the
+Bible, when suddenly she looked up and said: "Grandma, there's a
+grammatical error in this Bible," and my landlady said: "Well, kill it,
+child, kill it!" She spends whole hours each day talking to her birds,
+which, she claims, save the expense of a piano. I told the grandchild to
+go out into the sunshine this morning and it would do her cold good. She
+said, very saucily: "I won't go into the sunshine, my grandma told me to
+go into the air." My grandma didn't tell me to go there, Lorna, but
+someone must have ordered it, for in the "air" I am, and so high that I
+no longer feel the earth beneath my feet.
+
+Thank you so much for Mr. Fitch's article. So you think that Sioux Falls
+is like his description of it. He came in one night and left the next
+morning, then wrote an article which is a gross exaggeration in every
+particular. In the first place there was never but one French maid here
+and she was Irish. It is true that some scandalous people come here, but
+there are also scandalous residents; however, there are many more
+divorcees, quiet, charming and unseen, who do not fret away their six
+months, but spend them profitably, writing, sewing, taking care of their
+beloved children, _et cetera_.
+
+The very idea of mentioning anything as incongruous as Sioux Falls and
+luxury in the same breath--it's a slam on luxury! Big and luxurious
+hotels--Mr. Fitch ought to be mobbed. Wonder if he got a whiff of the
+lobby of the only thing that can be called an hotel here, or if he had a
+cold during his prolonged stay of twelve hours, nine of which he slept
+through. At the hotel yesterday I mentioned to the elevator boy that
+many children were stopping there. He answered: "Yes, there is more
+children than there is guests."
+
+That grill room that he speaks of is a dim memory; I think it lasted two
+months; and as it depended on divorce custom entirely, and as the main
+part of the colony sups in its own home, the thing fell through. And the
+theatres, dear, we have had two good shows since I came, otherwise "ten,
+twenty and thirty."
+
+The women and preachers may be against the quick lunch method of
+divorce, but you can gamble on it that the business men heartily
+approve; and these same women and preachers will find their larders and
+contribution boxes but scantily filled if the odorous money of the
+dissolute "Divorsay" is barred.
+
+I am all excited over the article as there is neither truth nor ruth in
+it, and Carlton is intensely amused, so I suppose I will not try to
+fight the battles of the colony so long as I am lazy and comfortable in
+the arms of my love.
+
+Had a long letter from Gretchen yesterday in which she says she enjoyed
+her bridal tour thoroughly, particularly at the Falls. I wrote back and
+asked: "Which?--Niagara or Sioux?"
+
+Good-night, dearest, I close my eyes and sleep in a moment, as there are
+no longer any thorns to stuff my pillow.
+
+                                MARIANNE.
+
+
+
+
+                                May 2nd.
+
+Lorna Dear:
+
+It wasn't a bit hard to live through. The papers all came back by return
+mail, and all day Sunday I was in my attorney's office practising. It
+wasn't any more difficult than a Sunday-school lesson, and Monday
+morning at eight o'clock I was waiting at Liberty Hall for the hoped-for
+arrival of "The Greatest Common Divisor." At last he came, but with a
+sour expression, and not knowing what trouble he might have had before
+he left home, I tried to be patient.
+
+We were ushered through the big court room into the judge's
+sanctum--asked how long I'd been here, and so forth and so fifth--then
+the comical question: "Do you expect to make Sioux Falls your home?"
+and the threadbare reply: "I have made no plans for the future," when
+all the time I had my I. C. tickets for the 3.30 train in my pocket. Do
+you know that was the first time I ever really perjured myself--like a
+lady--before, and somehow I wished awfully that I had let Carlton hold
+the tickets until after the trial. I couldn't even get my kerchief out
+of my pocketbook for fear the blooming time tables and tickets would
+show. Oh! the judge was terribly saccharine after he warmed up, and I
+adore him. Wish I had to get another divorce tomorrow--he's just like a
+dear old Universal Dad, and everyone loves him.
+
+Well! dear, just to think of it. I've lost my hobbies! Isn't it great,
+and yet isn't it really sad! It means a failure in the greatest
+undertaking of a woman's life, and it also means that I issue
+forth--branded. I refuse to hold post mortems and am practising loss of
+memory. Now for the possibilities of the future. Possibility is the
+biggest word in the dictionary. Isn't it strange that a woman may live
+apart from her husband and do atrocious things, without wearing the
+tell-tale letter on her bosom, yet let a virtuous woman take the step
+for freedom, and, alas! she carries the scar as long as she breathes.
+But its worth it, dear. I have thought it all over and I repeat it a
+thousand times, its worth it. "I have written it upon the doorposts of
+my house and upon my gates, and I wear it as frontlets between mine
+eyes"--it's worth it!
+
+I have worn crepe for my departed virtues for six years, but I throw it
+aside now and feel a new being whose glad unrestraint may carry her
+farther than she intended, just as prudery often lends a woman greater
+cruelty than she feels.
+
+How clever of Don Willard to buy in Northern Pacific during the slump.
+He gets on with his sense of smell--he's a jackal who scents a carcass
+and gets there in time for a good bone.
+
+While unpacking my trunk today I came across my wedding veil and it was
+all gray and dingy like the end of my honeymoon. How many sweet and
+tremulous illusions I folded into it on that first night and how soon
+afterwards did three-fourths of the world look like ashes to me. Dreams
+are harder to give up than realities, because they come back and gibe us
+even after they are dead and buried, while tangible realities stay
+fairly well hidden when we screw down the lid. I suppose you think that
+I talk like Old Man Solomon, but you know that the only serious thoughts
+I have are mushrooms of one minute's gestation.
+
+My landlady does her own washing, so I asked her if she would do mine
+for ample pay. She suffers so from modesty that she was hardly able to
+answer me, but finally said: "I would be willing to, but my husband
+don't improve on it." Poor creature, she has lived here all her days and
+is still unable to direct me to a single place--her bump of location is
+surely a dent.
+
+Mrs. Judge knows the name of each member of the colony; when they came
+and how often they have gone away, and the Lord help you if your
+residence isn't right! That's the one thing that the Judge is squeamish
+about, and as Mrs. Judge keeps tab for him, there is no use trying to
+fudge. If you don't come up before the Judge in six months and one week,
+she inquires of your landlady the reason for your delay. And of course
+the landlady knows the reason, even if you don't yourself. Every Monday
+afternoon Mrs. Judge drives by the I. C. station at exactly 3.25 to see
+which one of the widows, whose case was tried that morning, is leaving
+the same day. Of course they all leave unless they are prostrated with
+excitement. We always pack all baggage on Saturday, the dress-suit cases
+on Sunday, and engage the drayman on the way down to the trial Monday
+morning. There has never been any hitch in the arrangements, so I
+suppose they will remain the same until the end of time.
+
+You don't know what a comfort my phonograph has been to me--I would
+never attempt another divorce without one. The long, lonely
+evenings--the endless days, when time never moves off the spot, my dogs
+and I have sat on the floor fascinated with the greatest music in the
+world. I like my machine because it may be depended upon, never is
+nervous, and always willing to perform. Talent is so spasmodic and
+dependent upon moods, while the little hard rubber discs tirelessly and
+graciously amuse you.
+
+You say that you will write more anon. I have looked in Webster and the
+Brittanica, as I was a bit anxious to find out just what length of time
+anon signifies, but I have been unsuccessful. In other words, if after
+breakfast someone said to me, "You shall have more food anon," I should
+probably starve to death if I sat down and waited for it. Now don't be
+mean to me because I am in love and have neglected you. I send you
+thousands of messages and ask you thousands of questions each day, and
+simply because I don't waste time and paper in setting them down is no
+sign that you aren't constantly in my thoughts. Love knows no distance,
+and I go to you every evening for a good-night kiss just as I close my
+eyes to sleep, and always do I feel that you know it. There is no
+barrier of antagonism around you so my spirit enters where you are
+whenever it so desires.
+
+You are melancholy again--how can you live in stays set with nails and
+maintain the grace of a dancer? It must be because of your child. I
+could not do it, I'm sure--not even for my child if I had one. You are
+wiser than most of us fools who have choked our lives in the mud of New
+York. To men, dear, you are a cold Alp. Snow bound and near to heaven,
+impenetrable and frowning with flanks of granite, and yet beneficent.
+How do you accomplish it when your heart is wrung from year's end to
+year's end?
+
+It must be Machiavellian foresight, precious--foresight that you alone,
+out of the whole set, possess. The world never forgives a failure and
+never forgives you for telling it the truth, and my standard is truth,
+as near as possible, and yours is sacrifice complete. Which is right? We
+shall go on begging the question until the end of time. In human
+transactions the law of optics seems to be reversed--we always see
+indistinctly the things that are nearest to us. You have never judged,
+so judge me not.
+
+                                MARIANNE.
+
+
+
+
+                                The Black Hills,
+                                    September 20.
+
+Dearest Lorna:
+
+A thousand years ago--or maybe it wasn't so long, I can't clearly
+remember things any more, time isn't of any consequence, but it was the
+day I received my decree, and I returned my railroad tickets to the I.
+C. office--Carlton and I packed up some rugs, pillows and luncheon, and
+floated down the river to breathe confidences. Far away on the horizon
+was a misty hedge of cypress trees darkly traced on a canvas of
+lavenders and blues, overhung by extravagant yards of cloudy chiffon.
+Nearby the tall alders were all bent to the southward, from the bitter
+winds, and looked like huge giants on the march with heavy burdens on
+their shoulders. They swayed at times and seemed likely to fall with
+their loads. On and on we floated, and on and on they marched.
+
+The country was as tremulous as a bride, and to us nothing seemed
+impossible. In such magic moments when enjoyment sheds its reflection on
+the future the soul foresees nothing but happiness.
+
+Toward sunset we moored our boat to a tree in a little backwater where
+the current was barely felt and mutely watched the changes in the great
+turquoise satin tent above us that seemed held aloft by the hills to
+shelter the landscape of barley and corn and wheat that swished and
+swished like feminine music of taffeta petticoats.
+
+We felt reasons all around us why we should be happy--the trees were
+greens and browns--no one like the other, blended in the harmonious
+colorings of an old French tapestry stolen from a deserted chateau.
+
+All the earth seemed so sweet and so pure, and we were enjoying the
+world as a clean open-air playground. A few fluffy clouds began to
+appear, but old Boreas blew them away as soon as the west wind brought
+them up.
+
+Suddenly his gaze betrayed remembrance and he drew me into his arms and
+our lips met. Thus we remained, languidly content, until long after the
+sky man had studded the heavens with millions of silver nails. And
+there, near a field of cattle, like Paul Potter painted, under a sky
+worthy of Raphael, in a cove overhung with trees like a picture by
+Hobbema, he asked me to be his wife. And then the sweetest ceremony
+that ever was solemnized under God's loving eyes was fulfilled there in
+the stillness of the night. He said: "I love you," and for answer I
+said: "I love you too," and on my finger was placed a cool new band,
+which reads within: "For all eternity." As old and worldly as I am, I
+felt all the instinct of chastity and delicacy which is the very
+material of a first love. Our wedding feast was spread out in the bottom
+of the craft, with no effulgence of light save the reflection of God's
+own lanterns.
+
+All sorts of night things chirped and sang of our joy, and trout leaped
+from the water in answer to the bread that I crumbled for them.
+
+Our boat rocked and swayed as the current reached us more directly, and
+leaves and sticks and weeds went floating by with turgid little
+whirlpools swirling aft. We were lazy lurdans, nestling there in the
+moonlight, but time is the precious gift of the Almighty and man may
+gamble it away if he chooses. Finally dawn found us floating homeward in
+the mists of awakening morn.
+
+Months and months have passed since then--strange new mother instincts
+have arisen in my soul, and he still presses me to his heart and
+whispers: "For all eternity."
+
+You could not discover my whereabouts, as I left no address in Sioux
+Falls. I did not want the world nor society, not even you, but just
+solitude--and my husband. Now we want you to know that in this beautiful
+wilderness we have a home--a mountain home with placid Indian servants,
+who glide in and out and serve noiselessly and speechlessly: I must
+confess that I am only one-half brave, as the world, all but you, thinks
+that a minister has mumbled over us for a second time.
+
+You are great enough to appreciate the joy we feel in cheating all
+humanity. Carlton has willed all of his possessions to me and to our
+precious little future reproduction of our love, who can but be perfect,
+as he is a creature of perfect conditions. We are also but half great,
+as it pleased us that the New York papers reported our marriage; but in
+our lives we are all-great and all-sufficient for each other.
+
+Our bungalow is built in rugged, primeval "Spearfish Canon," but you may
+address all mail to Custer, where Carlton goes in his motor every day
+for things that please me.
+
+I am so happy, so proud, so grateful that my mate is as far-seeing as I
+am, and we feel a mutual dread for the time when we must forsake our
+Black Hills for the fuller and less satisfying life in New York--but we
+can't play always, out here in the sunshine.
+
+Write to me soon and forgive me for doubting that you would understand.
+
+                                MARIANNE.
+
+
+
+
+                                Black Hills,
+                                    November 25.
+
+Dearest:
+
+How happy your letter has made me and how slow you were in making up
+your mind, but I'd rather have you love me after thinking than to love
+me just because I'm I. Had you not understood, I should have loved you
+but because you understand I bow down and idolize you as I have done all
+my days.
+
+Every girl deserves a mother--it is her natural heritage and Nature
+risks a great deal in cheating her out of her original right. I have
+been defrauded, but a friend like you compensates for much and is a
+straight gift from God and Heaven.
+
+Carlton and I have motored over to Custer every day for your letter but
+not until yesterday were we recompensed for all the anxiety and doubt
+that I might have suffered. We read it together and I am not ashamed
+that our eyes were moist with joy as we drove slowly away from the
+little village and out into our free and glorious primevalism again. The
+twilight fell like a silver dust on the crests of two double rows of
+ancient elms in a long and lordly country road, and lighted up the sand
+and the drying wild grass that had waved like so many spears of gold in
+the sunset of a few moments before. On and on we flew--he with a
+trembling hand on the wheel and I with my arm around him and my lips
+pressing his cheek.
+
+The rays of our acetylene lamps began to cast lurid lights before us as
+the darkness thickened, just as my soul's fire is luminous now in an
+atmosphere ordained to bring forth all its normal glory--and all the
+while the back seats were empty; empty dear. Do you know the luxury of
+it?
+
+We were both dreaming and praying--dreaming of a thousand more such
+perfect nights, praying in all our fervor and gratitude for more and yet
+more of our boundless and mutual passion. And then we lost our way as
+the machine rushed into a mystic cross-road that led due north, for the
+Dipper was before us. I crawled closer and closer to him until I could
+hear his heart pounding mercilessly as his breath came quicker and my
+lips pressed closer. The lamps were brilliant then and the woods and
+fields as silent and endless as eternity. A long snake stretched its
+lazy length across our path and frogs held mute high carnival on all
+the little hills and bumps on the high road.
+
+We both felt the inspiration of the moment and neither profaned it with
+words. As far as our lights fell three waving, nodding bands of seered
+grass, beckoned us on and heedless of the danger we might be rushing
+toward--our empassioned lips met. And like eternity the mystic course
+lay hidden in darkness before us, but also like the things that look
+most forbidding in the future, as we rushed by, the yellow hedge turned
+golden by our lamps, the grassy plumage rose and fell in sallow waves of
+approbation.
+
+The good little people were with us (you know I believe in fairies) and
+the faithful engine puffed and struggled and tried its best on the
+incline that we were ascending, but we were too jealous of our
+sensations to pay much heed to its unaided success. I would work in the
+fields for ten days were I sure that the eleventh night would be such
+another as this.
+
+So lofty are the regions where I soar, that a fall would shiver me to
+atoms, but just to breathe the same air with my love lifts me to the
+vault of paradise. Whole hours each evening I lie on an Indian blanket
+in front of the open grate and dream of the legacy of love that we shall
+hand down to our children and our children's children until the end of
+time.
+
+                                Ecstatically yours,
+                                    MARIANNE.
+
+
+
+
+                                December 25.
+
+Dearest Friend:
+
+We are snowed in and our two bronze boys are trying to make a path to
+the road. We are all so abnormally well and with the nurse and Carlton's
+friend Dr. Harmen, constitute a lively household though I liked the
+sweetness of our oneness better. These are happy times and they watch
+and guard me as though I were another Wilhelmina.
+
+Was ever Christmas day so wonderful! Our tree is a real cedar of
+Lebanon, uprooted by our beloved Indians and decorated with their
+handiwork. Last eve we romped and sang and played tricks upon each other
+until midnight, when we saucily hung up the biggest stockings and
+sneaked off to bed to leave our Santa Claus with his labors. It must
+have taken him hours for I slept for ages when I finally heard him
+getting ready for bed. I slipped into my kimono and tried to crawl down
+stairs and take a peep, but he heard me and would not countenance any
+cheating so I snuggled up again and went to sleep, but like children, we
+were all up at daybreak. For days and days Carlton has been going on
+clandestine shopping tours to the meccas around us and has kept all
+purchases locked and guarded. He can't bear the thought of grown-ups not
+loving and believing in Santa.
+
+Aside from all the valuable and exquisite things that each received, the
+gift that proved Carlton's feeling toward me,--if I may insult that
+feeling by even suggesting the necessity of a proof--was a tiny silk
+stocking, hung quite at the end of the mantel shelf, all alone as though
+it needed no protection, and filled with--you would never guess in a
+thousand years, so I shan't keep you suspended in mid air--fifty
+thousand dollars in U. S. bonds to start a bank account for the little
+visitor that is to come. Every night before we sleep, we talk to our
+baby, we pray to our baby, we worship our baby. Only beautiful thoughts
+come to our minds; only beautiful things come to our hands,--surely God
+sends babies for other reasons than to propagate the species--we are
+grown entirely unselfish; we are filled with kindly sympathies and
+affection, and our energies and aims reach to Heaven.
+
+A beautiful pink satin baby basket came direct from Printemps, filled
+with the most delicate little garments that a human hand could create.
+Do you remember the day when we were at school in Paris, that we passed
+Printemp's baby shop and planned our progenys' outfits--twenty years
+ago? I am now fuller of the joy of living than I was then--but on the
+threshold of womanly emotions.
+
+From my window I can see far down the icy canon. The mountain stream is
+a fluted ribbon of snow and ice, and where the spray tumbled before it
+froze, there are thousands of filmy rosettes iridescent in the sun's
+rays. The path is finished and Dr. Harmen is building a snow man. We are
+civilized aborigines gone mad with youth out here in the frigid zone,
+and anything as grown up as bridge has failed to interest us. From our
+home on the summit of "Kewanas Crag," Silver Lake looks like a stray
+turquoise below and the mysterious Black Hills around us catch glimpses
+of gold in the sunset hour, then dye themselves purple, take a tint of
+glowing rose-water, then turn dull and gray; a drama of color goes on
+ceaselessly; a play of ever shifting hues like those on a pigeon's
+breast.
+
+Do you know of anyone who has ever died in childbirth? If you do, don't
+tell me, as I am beginning to be frightened. Not afraid of the agony,
+for I rather enjoy pondering over the sacrifice, but so fearful of
+leaving all of this barely tasted sweet behind me. It seems as though my
+impatience would consume me--I want so to know whether I may be spared
+for more and more days of our endless joy.
+
+Your Christmas box came one day too soon and, like the child that I am
+transformed into, I resorted to tears in order to wheedle Carlton into
+permitting me to open it. The little things are wonderful and the
+discretion of your love is more so. Each little article is an expression
+of your faultless friendship, for losing which, not even Carlton's love
+could compensate me.
+
+The new decorations in my bed room are all in bloom like our love, and I
+lie awake during my specified hours of rest, gathering mental roses from
+my wall garden. My revival is as natural as the effect of May on the
+meadows; of a shower on a dry plant. I awaken with the breath of my
+Spring, which is heavy with Oriental sweetness like a rose of
+Frangistan. I should not in such moments as these, feel a death blow.
+
+All of the old mental bruises caused by knocking myself against corners,
+some that I myself created at times, and others that I saw but could
+not escape, are healed and quite forgotten in this new world of mine.
+
+I press a goodnight kiss on your dear understanding lips.
+
+                                MARIANNE.
+
+
+
+
+                                The Black Hills.
+                                    February 1.
+
+Dearest of all Friends:
+
+Today for the first time I am permitted to write one letter, while Dr.
+Harmen and Carlton are trying to discover traces of rare genius on the
+head of Carlton Church Somerville Junior, who resembles one of those
+cherubs circling about the Eternal Father in an old Italian picture.
+
+Dizzy with the wonder of it all, I lie for hours trying to convince
+myself that the world is real. When my child awakens and craves his
+nourishment, I cry for very ecstacy of giving him life. What woman on
+earth who has nursed her child once, can refrain from doing so again?
+His velvet lips kiss me; his precious hand, dimpled and immature,
+fondles me in gratitude. How can any mother ever be unhappy while her
+infant breathes upon her breast.
+
+My wasted years squandered in society seem hideous fancies of a
+perverted mind, while my one glorious year out here is a deep-breathing,
+pure record of clean thoughts and a perfect life. No one save God
+Almighty to wish us well on our wedding day; no purring women and
+overfed men to throw rice and old shoes along with the "wedding
+formula"--"Isn't she a perfect bride,"--"did ever couple seem so well
+suited,"--"they are real affinities _et cetera_," all of which started
+me out on my bridal trip sixteen years ago. I shall never witness
+another wedding as long as I live--it is too insufferably sad a
+contemplation.
+
+It seems strange and pitiful that your sweet daughter is now old enough
+to make her formal bow into an atmosphere of hatred and vice. If she
+could but seek rapturous peace out here in my wilderness with some man
+that she really loves--but no woman is born into mature society with a
+knowledge of its utter worthlessness. And even were you able to convince
+her of it now, it would be a sin to rob her sweet mentality of its
+blushes. No, the precious child must first suffer and find out alone.
+
+Almost childlessly greedy do I feel, to live so perfectly while you are
+still sacrificing your years on the altar of motherhood. At least I am
+thankful that Walter has decided to parade his affairs less, now that
+Evelyn is coming out. You proud, queenly, beautiful woman, how can you
+be so brave? In your place I should have died of hopelessness and grief
+years ago. But you go on with your precious head high in the air,
+smiling, though crushed by your agony. Day in and day out your nerves
+are taut--you never rest. Why hasn't something snapped years ago?
+Perhaps God gives an abundance of strength to those who are ordained to
+suffer most.
+
+You ask if I have any regrets. No--no--a million times no. I have torn
+the word from my dictionary and have forgotten the meaning. I repeat a
+thousand times a day my honest prayer:--
+
+    "Spare me O Lord the crowded way,
+    Life's busy mart where men contend,
+    For me the home the tranquil day,
+    A little sock to mend."
+
+I try never to think of an end to my happiness, but somehow the crushing
+thought comes and stifles me into abject fear. Then my husband brings
+me my little child and the evil thoughts are kissed away.
+
+Yesterday Carlton's eyes filled with tears of gratitude as I sat nursing
+our baby before the open grate and running my hand through his thick
+brown hair as he sat on the floor beside us. We remain long hours in
+silence watching the pictures in the blazing back logs, then suddenly we
+embrace to prove mutually that we still have each other.
+
+The river is still a frozen jagged band all down the canon, and the
+roads are knee deep with snow and ice. I scarcely breathe while Carlton
+is away in his motor, for fear the wheels will skid and hurl him into
+endless depths down the mountain side. It is impossible to procure food
+without his going to the railroad, but each day I try to believe that I
+don't need nourishment just to see if I can't prevent these precarious
+errands. We live so naturally and so happily that we are staying on
+indefinitely in our frozen love bower.
+
+Dr. Harmen leaves tomorrow after weeks of rejuvenating pleasures out
+here. The nurse will remain to render me such assistance as I need,
+though I am so jealous of her care of my son that I shall claim my
+mother rights as soon as I am strong enough. Junior has his father's
+eyes with all the softness of the blue periwinkle flower in their
+splendid depths, and I feel when I hold him in my arms and am held in
+turn in Carlton's that I can never give either of them up--even to the
+Almighty. I will never give them up. They are mine and I am theirs--for
+all eternity.
+
+                                Adieu sweet friend,
+                                    MARIANNE.
+
+
+
+
+                                February 25.
+
+It has come. The bright fire in the grate is a heap of smouldering ashes
+and all the pictures and dreams are dead. I cannot breathe--I cannot
+live--I am insane with grief. And the ignorant world teaches of an all
+merciful God--an all seeing Father! The irony of it! I cannot live--I
+must go too. It will be impossible to go on, and on, alone--forever and
+for all eternity--alone--I cannot--I will not!
+
+They are lying down there in their shrouds--my husband and his faithful
+Monkaushka with their poor bodies crushed and mangled--O! I cannot tell
+you more! The machine is an unsightly heap at the bottom of the ravine.
+I cannot write--I cannot think and yet I must do both. What have I done
+but love with all my womanhood and all my motherhood!
+
+After all it was beautiful for him to die and go to heaven while flowers
+filled his hands. A loud cry has gone up in my soul; an echo as it were
+of the funereal _Consummatum est_, which is pronounced in church on Good
+Friday at the hour when the _Saviour_ died. And all day I wring my hands
+helplessly and can do nought but build dungeons and dungeons in the air.
+I speak in an altered voice as though my instrument had lost several
+strings and those that remained were loosened.
+
+Dearest--can you tell me--am I responsible for his death? All during
+last night I seemed to hear God's voice asking: "Cain, where is Abel?"
+and I wail and beseech: "Am I my brother's keeper?" My soul is
+guilty--guilty of loving him--guilty of his death, for had I not loved
+him he would never have known the Black Hills. Oh! if I could but be
+resigned--if I could but bind up my bleeding wounds and lose myself in
+immeasurable lassitude!
+
+I have pressed his lips for the last time, my precious son is at my
+breast--his long lashes are pressed tightly against his cheeks as if to
+secure his eyes from too strong a light, or to aid an effort of his
+young soul to recollect and hold fast a bliss that had been perfect but
+fleeting. His tiny pink and white ear framed by a stray lock of his hair
+and outlined by a wrapping of lace from you, would make an artist, a
+painter, even an old man wildly in love with his perfect little being,
+and will, please God, restore me, a mad woman to her senses!
+
+Come to my Black Hills, I am crushed, desolate, heart-broken--come to
+
+                                MARIANNE.
+
+
+
+
+                                The Black Hills.
+                                    July 2.
+
+One week has passed Dear, since you left us--a strange week of
+readjustment and thought. All of those precious months that you have
+given me are but another expression of your divine friendship. The
+poignant grief is gone with you and my gratitude to you can but be shown
+by the degree of bravery that I now manifest.
+
+Every day this week, my son and I have sat in the sunshine near the two
+mounds, which my remaining bronze boy has decorated with crocuses from
+the neighboring ravine. He spends long hours after dark, gathering wild
+flowers in the moonlight. His devotion to me and my dead love, is the
+saddest, most boundless tribute that an uncivilized mind could offer.
+Silently he goes about his duties; silently he grieves, and more
+silently he gathers flowers as a tangible evidence of his devotion.
+
+Your letters have come each day and will come each day until I lie too,
+beside my love on the desolate mountain side. Such is your unfailing
+love and sympathy for me, all unworthy of your months of sacrifice and
+isolation out here in my new home. My son, bless his precious heart,
+tried to crawl today but the newly developed feat frightened his baby
+mind and he cried. Closely almost roughly, I crush him to me a thousand
+times a day, so fearful am I that he too may go to join infinitude.
+
+You ask me to come back to New York. I must refuse your request. I
+cannot--I cannot leave my home--the only place worthy of the name that
+I have ever possessed! Some day, maybe, but not now--it is all too dear
+and consoling to breathe the same air that sustained me in my perfect
+happiness.
+
+How can you say: "Don't regret." What do you mean? Regret the only joy
+that my poor starved soul has ever known? No atom of regret enters my
+grief--only a great unbounded gratitude to God, to the world, to Nature,
+that one perfect year has been saved from out the wreck of time!
+
+                                Gratefully,
+                                    MARIANNE.
+
+
+
+
+                                The Black Hills,
+                                    September 20.
+
+Two marvelous things have come to me today dear; my son took his first
+trembling steps alone, and a letter came to me from the man who was my
+husband. I am trembling with joy over the first and still dazed with
+lack of understanding of the second. I enclose the letter as I have long
+since given up trying to think clearly, and must depend upon you, to
+decide for me any matters of grave import. I am plunged in perplexity;
+advise me after reading the enclosed letter.
+
+                                Lovingly,
+                                    MARIANNE.
+
+
+
+
+                                New York,
+                                    Sept. 16.
+
+Dear Marianne:
+
+Six years ago, I found myself, though fond of you, glad when business
+took me away. We spent that summer in different places, but about
+October lived together again. I was still fond of you, but at that time
+found Vera, whose company was very pleasing to me. You and I seemed to
+be drawn away from each other and we decided to separate at the end of
+December, when I started on my long cruise.
+
+I felt very, very sorry to leave you, but something told me that it was
+better to do so. I remember you seemed to feel the same, and we kissed
+each other goodbye as though we were both sorry for something that had
+to be.
+
+Leaving the question of dual or multiple personality aside, and putting
+the matter very simply, I believe that my soul made a right choice in
+you my wife. I believe that alcohol was necessary for a while to put my
+body, even at its expense, into a state of conductivity, so that my
+soul, when I was somewhat alcoholized, could gain some expression; give
+some glimpses of itself and suggest the trend of my powers. For this
+reason I believe that some men are made to drink and drug--but that is
+another subject which I hope to take up with you more fully at some
+future time.
+
+My soul self has always wanted my wife's soul self, and I believe that
+if I could have you back, my conquered body self would never need to
+wander from home. A little more pliability--all you ever lacked, and
+which your trouble should have brought you, could make it so that we
+could live together in very perfect harmony. Then I could release a lot
+of good plays and good writings, much of which I know already has been
+completed by my subliminal self. I get frequent glimpses of parts of
+plays, plots and ideas.
+
+You cannot but feel proud of the success of my last book, which ought to
+show you that I'm getting a grip of myself. My mother and I were _en
+rapport_ and under the dual personality theory, it is reasonable to
+suppose that I have been guided by her since her death. I certainly have
+been guided by God or by her, and it is reasonable to believe that she
+is God's instrument of my guidance.
+
+A young man makes whole ranges of mountains out of tiny mole hills
+which, when he has learned sense, he will spread under his foot without
+noticing them. Most of our differences were mere mole hills, dear, which
+couldn't thwart us now. For we are too big now, to be so easily
+thwarted. Can't we give each other the chance to prove this to each
+other?
+
+If you will permit me I will love your child as my own--as every real
+man ought to love every child, dear little unfinished human beings.
+Formerly I thought I knew a good deal; but God knew better and took me
+away from you to teach me a few lessons. For they were lessons that I
+alone needed and God did not want you to undergo them as well as me.
+They were lessons calling for chastisement and you didn't need
+chastising.
+
+I've taken God's punishment dear, and thanked Him for it. And I believe
+I'm fit company for you now.
+
+I am coming next Monday to Custer, four miles from where you are, and on
+Tuesday morning, starting at eight, I shall walk toward your bungalow by
+way of the path by the river. I am familiar with every inch of the road,
+as you know I wrote "Treasure-trove" at the Wilson ranch near your
+canon.
+
+Will you and your little son meet me if only a few yards from your home
+so that you may judge for yourself if I am fit company for you now.
+
+If you do not meet me--then the will of Allah be done, for I shall turn
+back.
+
+                                DONALD.
+
+
+
+
+                                October 10.
+
+Your message came too late, dear; already at eight o'clock Tokacon, with
+my son in his arms, and I were far along on the river path that leads
+out to the world. Our progress was slow with only the croonings and
+gurglings of my beautiful child to interrupt the silences of nature, as
+he clung affectionately to the neck of our red man protector, whose
+solemnity, though he knew not my mission was superb.
+
+Half way, where Tokacon has built an exquisite rustic bower, we stopped
+and waited while the Indian returned to the bungalow.
+
+What a strange hour I spent waiting with my baby, who had fallen asleep
+in my arms. Thousands of rebellious thoughts burned themselves upon the
+retina of my brain, as I sat planning and wondering. I want to be just
+before I'm generous, or I'm afraid I'll never have the chance to be
+generous. I sat staring like one at strife with a memory--and then he
+came, slowly, resignedly. His hair is quite white and there are strange,
+deep lines on his forehead, and marked parentheses round his mouth which
+can be but the foot-prints of pain and thought. He could not see us in
+our secluded shelter and I could not make my mouth utter his name--he
+who had wrung my heart as a peasant twists an osier withe.
+
+On he walked with his head hung low and a lost look in his eyes--then I
+called "Don," as I used to do when I loved him, and he stopped suddenly
+and listened with his hand to his ear. Again I called "Don." He turned
+and saw us. Slowly and with the dignity that he cannot lose, he came
+back to where we sat. He could not speak, but knelt beside us and kissed
+the baby's lips; my infant opened his innocent eyes and put his arms
+around Donald's neck, as much at ease as though he had known him all of
+his dear little life. Awake and rested, he must needs be tumbled about
+and played with, which our visitor seemed pleased to do. The strain
+would have been more than terrible, had it not been for the sweet
+influence of the child who occupied us both constantly on our long walk,
+home.
+
+Meeting one's husband again after so many years, is something akin to
+the sensations of drowning--every ugly scene of our married life flashed
+across my brain, also every kindness that he had done me became equally
+prominent in my memory, that faculty one cannot cast away as one throws
+down a _serviette_ at table.
+
+Twilight found us still without words for each other, but when the back
+logs were lighted (these October nights are cold in the Black Hills) our
+thoughts came more freely. I find that I care for him as I would for
+something long dead and half forgotten, but I am grateful for that, as I
+was half afraid that I couldn't be even patient with him. However the
+tolerance that we learn through suffering is the most beautiful
+offspring of real grief.
+
+It was very difficult for me to speak of Carlton and our wonderful life
+that is buried out there on the mountain side, but he is indeed
+sympathetic and never interrupted the long and frequent silences that my
+inmost memory created. The logs burnt in halves and fell with myriad
+sparks and display to the sides of the fireplace, but we touched them
+not. He seemed to realize that Carlton and I were not married in the
+eyes of the law. How he divined it I do not know, unless it is that he
+has an uncanny way of reading one's thoughts. He said that he knew and
+that he understood, and further, that I am a stronger and better woman
+for all that I have suffered and done. He wants me to leave my West and
+live again in New York, where he hopes to recreate in me the old feeling
+for him which he so ruthlessly squandered, when it was his own.
+
+He is earnest and sad and I wish that I might care again, for he needs
+help and so do I, and at least, with our past experiences we might
+escape some of the ways of wounding each other that married people seem
+to possess in such unlimited quantities.
+
+Toward midnight the last candles that Tokacon had placed in the sconces,
+flickered and went out. The helpless embers flared up for the last time,
+then sank down resigned. Donald knelt beside me sobbing bitterly, with
+his head upon my knee. All seems to be grief here on this earth--nothing
+but grief! For answer I raised his head and kissed his eyes, then
+fetched a candle and lighted him to his room. I showed him my Indian,
+sleeping outside my door,--which he never forsakes except to allow me to
+pass.
+
+Long into the still night I heard sobs, and opening my door I found
+Tokacon swaying to and fro near Donald's room. He seems to understand
+grief more keenly than any cultivated mind that I have ever known, and
+he never intrudes, though it takes a mighty effort for him to suppress
+his own sympathy.
+
+At last it grew quiet and we all rested though we did not sleep. The
+next morning baby and I walked with Donald to the bower where we had met
+him, and there we parted. Tokacon came and carried the baby back to the
+bungalow and I followed later on when I felt sufficiently calm to go
+about my simple duties again. I am not a connoisseur in consciences,
+therefore I want days and still more days in which to think and weigh,
+then maybe a decision will come to me as an inspiration.
+
+Donald will see you as soon as he returns to New York--be honest with
+him and yet beneficent.
+
+A thousand kisses from my son and me.
+
+                                Goodnight,
+                                    MARIANNE.
+
+
+
+
+                                December 1.
+
+Dearest Lorna:
+
+For the last time I am writing to you from the place which is dearest to
+me in all the universe. My personal things are packed and on the way to
+Custer. Tokacon is waiting with his torch to set fire to my palace of
+dreams.
+
+I could not return to your world--to my old world if I thought that
+other souls than ours were living in my home. The land, I have given to
+my Indian with sufficient money to build a home for himself, but not one
+corner of my own shall remain to be profaned by other human emotions.
+
+Now I am sitting in the machine at a safe distance from the flames,
+which amuse my son, who is wild with joy and excitement over it.
+Tokacon groans and I weep, for it is a tomb in flames before us.
+Ashes--ashes--everywhere--in my home and in my heart, and every where
+except in the smiles of my child.
+
+Donald has given me back my home and he has taken rooms at the
+club--what people think and what people say, mean nothing to me. I shall
+try bravely to construct something out of the ashes of three lives that
+will be worthy of the respect of God's elect. I cannot teach myself to
+forget; I can only await with patience the reawakening which for the
+sake of Donald and my son, pray God, will not delay too long its coming.
+I suppose the family cannot be built on a foundation of passion, because
+something on earth always becomes revengeful when human beings are too
+happy. I shall never try to be too happy again.
+
+Now my memories must lie entombed in the arcana of memory. But some day
+when my son is old enough to understand, I shall come back with him to
+my Black Hills of Dakota, and breathe to him every sigh of my sorrow.
+Then if he takes me in his arms and whispers "Precious Mother," I shall
+not have loved and cherished in vain.
+
+                                MARIANNE.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Letters of a Dakota Divorcee, by Jane Burr
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
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author	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-15 02:26:08 -0700
committer	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-15 02:26:08 -0700
commit	38c0511c3815aeb1ef479667a43b356e3e22f1d1 (patch)
tree	d6f1b3e7860a82e6ad9406df670b7ab1cb6c628d