Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 115.djvu/51

lary,—all this was part of her zestful preoccupation.

These instances are characteristic.

'It was like a breath from Gibraltar to hear your voice again, Sue. Your impregnable syllables need no prop to stand.'

'I dreamed of you last night and send a carnation to endorse it.'

'Sister of Ophir. Ah, Peru! subtle the sum that purchase you.'

'No words ripple like Susan's. Their silver genealogy is very sweet to trace: amalgams are abundant, but the lone student of the mines loves alloyless things.'

'Emily is sorry for Susan's day. To be singular under plural circumstances is a becoming heroism.'

'Susan knows she is a Siren and at a word from her Emily would forfeit righteousness—

'Birthday of but a single pang,
That there are less to come—
Afflictive is the adjective
Though affluent the doom.'

'Your little mental gallantries are sweet as chivalry,—which is to me a shining word though I don't know what it means.'

Here are three of those Nature touches which are to be found in her every note or letter of more than a single phrase:—

'It would be good to see the grass and hear the wind blow that wide way through the orchard. Are the apples ripe? Have the wild geese crossed? And did you save the seed of the pond-lily? Do not cease, dear. Should I turn in my long night I should murmur "Sue."'

'Nothing is gone, dear, or no one that you knew. The forests are at home, the mountains intimate at night and arrogant at noon. A lonesome fluency abroad, like suspended music.'

'To take you away leaves but a lower world, your firmamental quality our more familiar sky. It is not Nature, dear, but those who stand for Nature. The bird would be a soundless thing without expositor. Come home and see your weather; the hills are full of shawls. We have a new man whose name is "Tim." Father calls him "Timothy" and the barn sounds like the Bible!'

Her passion for brevity deducted relentlessly. She refuses an invitation thus,—

Thank Sue, but not to-night. Further nights. Emily.

After some flash of pleasure, given her by my mother, she wrote, 'Don't do such things. The Arabian Nights unfits the heart for its arithmetic.'

I quote at random a few passages from her notes to us.

'A spell cannot be tattered and mended like a coat.'

'No message is the utmost message, for what we tell is done.'

'Trust is better than contract, for one is still, the other moves.'

'The ignominy to receive is eased by the reflection that interchange of infamies is either's antidote.'

'To lose what we never owned might seem an eccentric bereavement, but Presumption has its own affliction as well as claim.'

'Our own possessions, though our own, 't is well to hoard anew, remembering the dimensions of possibility.'

'The things of which we want the proof are those we know the best.'

'Where we owe but little we pay. Where we owe so much it defies money, we are blandly insolvent.'

'Those that are worthy of life are of miracle, for life is miracle and death is harmless as a bee except to those who run.'

'Has All a codicil?'

'Adulation is inexpensive, except to him who accepts it. It costs him Himself.'