第61章 MISS VINCENT WRITES A LETTER(2)

You may ask me why I address you,whom I know little or nothing of,and to whom such an advance may seem presumptuous and intrusive.It is because I was deeply impressed by the paper which I attributed to you,--that on Ocean,River,and Lake,which was read at one of our meetings.I say that I was deeply impressed,but I do not mean this as a compliment to that paper.I am not bandying compliments now,but thinking of better things than praises or phrases.I was interested in the paper,partly because I recognized some of the feelings expressed in it as my own,--partly because there was an undertone of sadness in all the voices of nature as you echoed them which made me sad to hear,and which I could not help longing to cheer and enliven.I said to myself,I should like to hold communion with the writer of that paper.I have had my lonely hours and days,as he has had.I have had some of his experiences in my intercourse with nature.And oh!if I could draw him into those better human relations which await us all,if we come with the right dispositions,I should blush if I stopped to inquire whether I violated any conventional rule or not.

You will understand me,I feel sure.You believe,do you not?in the insignificance of the barrier which divides the sisterhood from the brotherhood of mankind.You believe,do you not?that they should be educated side by side,that they should share the same pursuits,due regard being had to the fitness of the particular individual for hard or light work,as it must always be,whether we are dealing with the "stronger"or the "weaker"sex.I mark these words because,notwithstanding their common use,they involve so much that is not true.Stronger!Yes,to lift a barrel of flour,or a barrel of cider,--though there have been women who could do that,and though when John Wesley was mobbed in Staffordshire a woman knocked down three or four men,one after another,until she was at last overpowered and nearly murdered.Talk about the weaker sex!Go and see Miss Euthymia Tower at the gymnasium!But no matter about which sex has the strongest muscles.Which has most to suffer,and which has most endurance and vitality?We go through many ordeals which you are spared,but we outlast you in mind and body.I have been led away into one of my accustomed trains of thought,but not so far away from it as you might at first suppose.

My brother!Are you not ready to recognize in me a friend,an equal,a sister,who can speak to you as if she had been reared under the same roof?And is not the sky that covers us one roof,which makes us all one family?You are lonely,you must be longing for some human fellowship.Take me into your confidence.What is there that you can tell me to which I cannot respond with sympathy?What saddest note in your spiritual dirges which will not find its chord in mine?

I long to know what influence has cast its shadow over your existence.I myself have known what it is to carry a brain that never rests in a body that is always tired.I have defied its infirmities,and forced it to do my bidding.You have no such hindrance,if we may judge by your aspect and habits.You deal with horses like a Homeric hero.No wild Indian could handle his bark canoe more dexterously or more vigorously than we have seen you handling yours.There must be some reason for your seclusion which curiosity has not reached,and into which it is not the province of curiosity to inquire.But in the irresistible desire which I have to bring you into kindly relations with those around you,I must run the risk of giving offence that I may know in what direction to look for those restorative influences which the sympathy of a friend and sister can offer to a brother in need of some kindly impulse to change the course of a life which is not,which cannot be,in accordance with his true nature.

I have thought that there may be something in the conditions with which you are here surrounded which is repugnant to your feelings,--something which can be avoided only by keeping yourself apart from the people whose acquaintance you would naturally have formed.There can hardly be anything in the place itself,or you would not have voluntarily sought it as a residence,even for a single season.

there might be individuals here whom you would not care to meet,there must be such,but you cannot have a personal aversion to everybody.I have heard of cases in which certain sights and sounds,which have no particular significance for most persons,produced feelings of distress or aversion that made,them unbearable to the subjects of the constitutional dislike.It has occurred to me that possibly you might have some such natural aversion to the sounds of the street,or such as are heard in most houses,especially where a piano is kept,as it is in fact in almost all of those in the village.Or it might be,I imagined,that some color in the dresses of women or the furniture of our rooms affected you unpleasantly.Iknow that instances of such antipathy have been recorded,and they would account for the seclusion of those who are subject to it.