Kansas University Weekly.
263
lost my voice. It was only my long training in appreciating the joke on myself that saved me when the dear old gentleman said: "He never did think that Josephine meant much by her nonsense of wanting to be a singer and this proved it." Of course, we couldn't tell him that it was through his Minnie's disobedience I took the disease, and it grew to a screaming farce when he insisted that I sing to him with my scrap of a croak remaining. But the child had never been taught to obey so what could one expect; and also she suffered with us. Oh well!
Will you pardon me if I talk a good deal about myself and be patient if I write you an unconscionably long letter? The valedictory is usually of some length I believe, and so this only follows established usage.
It's a curious fact that into my life have come "windfalls" which if they had been only a few days sooner might have entirely altered it for the good, I think, but which coming tardy as they do have almost no influence. I read somewhere concerning genius, "What matter if Nature spoil a thousand making one of these." Which is comforting to the thousand. I think I must be about No. 963. Nature has yet to fit circumstances together well enough to let the creation develop. She arranged them with exasperating inaccuracy in my life. But perhaps it wasn't her fault. I really believe that was it, for you remember that my set in college was—well, "not slow""and I'm sure I skipped something girlish and innocent that ought to have been in my life.
But I suppose it doesn't matter much as it is. Although my last gift from the gods has not come just on time and when I was longing for it, I don't think I am particularly sorry to go. Death isn't such an especially awful thing to meet. I feel rather inclined to shake hands with all the skeletons I see and say "how are you, old chum. Just tell them I'm a-coming too." And think how I will appreciate all your jokes—with what a grin I can meet them!
I can't be doleful. Isn't it appropriate that I should die of it after I have been a "cheerful idiot" all my life. But I'm rambling on in a desultory way, not writing at all what I started to.
There, I'm getting flippant again. But consumption is such a cheerful disease, Frank, that
There are several things I want to say to you now that the "play is played out" with you at one end of the earth and—well, I'm not quite at the other—say half way. I've gotten the idea somewhere—probably I'm mistaken and you'll say to yourself "what a conceited little fool!" but it really doesn't matter you know—I've somehow decided that you have begun to idealize me with that fatal facility of yours, and consequently to imagine that you like me in a certain mistaken way. This has been brought on by my own attitude I know. Now confess, Frank, haven't you thought that I was in a fair way to fall in love with you, if not already in? And like a knight of ye olden tyme you chivalarously put yourself to return it. Really, Mr. Auld, I must say that for an educated youth you are what they call "easy." I might as well admit that I was doing that pose,—for a purpose? —no, simply for amusement. And you swallowed the bait with the avidity of an eighteen-year-old.
Now, Frank, because I have turned my actions inside out for your benefit I don't want you to jump to the conclusion, as you are prone to do, that what I am all girls must be. It is only girls who need excitement to exist, who crave it as a smoker his cigar, who would set out to do such a thing. Some few of us, there are unhappy products of this fin-de-siecle time, that will stoop to almost anythinfi for the satisfaction of their desire for change. There is much which is not honest in what I have done, which a sweet true girl such as are many—oh very many, Frank, of those in this round world would never have dreamed of doing. I hope you will love and marry one of the "good girls," my friend. A tender, pure, strong woman who will lift your aspirations by the force of her white soul to a plane I never could hope to reach. Her tenderness will cover and clothe with a sweet fragrance your strength and your weakness, your good and your sin, and laying