justified in failing to take in some good solid reading. You spoke of unnecessary travelling. I do not know whether you would class my trip to Cleveland to hear Barrett, under that head or not. I will say this for myself, however. I was animated quite as much (nay, more) by a sense of duty in going up, as pleasure, i.e., I regarded it as an important part of my education. I will say more. I was thinking entirely about the profit to be derived, not about the pleasure at all (that of itself was an insignificant consideration), and so far as I can tell, I never spent a dollar more profitably. Why, you will see in my letter to Helen. I do take care of my own room, Mother. Auntie has made my bed four times this term, but the other eighty times I have made it myself. She has swept my room two or three times, when I have been gone to class. I am fully conscious of the defects of my handwriting, and have been meditating on the subject for some time. I wonder if that Gaskell’s Compendium is of any use. I believe Helen and Bowen both agree that they didn’t derive much profit from their writing lessons here. The College offers microscopic work in Zoology next term, which is going to be interesting, I suppose, but it is about $4.00 extra, I believe, and so I guess this child won’t take it. A Dr. Lord is giving a course of lectures on History here now. He has given two, one on Hildebrand, the other on Elizabeth, and his last will be on Madam Maintenon. They are very fine. I am taking them all in. He is a celebrated lecturer on historical topics, and a decidedly amusing old man. Miss Cary has just been here with the Temple quartet. If I had gone and taken a girl, it would have cost me $2.33, nearly enough to take me to Cleveland to hear Mr Barrett twice. I did not go at all. Do not imagine, Helen, that I remember what I read, any more than you do. I imagine that failure of memory is the greatest discouragement that all readers have to contend with. Never mind, “It cleans the sieve.” If we forget facts, we retain ideas, and that is far more important. So let us keep up our courage. Your last letters, Helen, were splendid. You have no idea how much I enjoyed them. Your remarks about going on and graduating are perfectly just. I wish to do so. I have got over my little fit of dissatisfaction long ago. In fact, I had forgotten that I had one. I am well (saving a cold) and happy (saving occasional fits of the blues), and as contented as I am likely to be very soon, anywhere. I have not that divine discontentment which is the perpetual assurance of better things. My dissatisfaction is of the grumbly kind, which portends indigestion, or some kindred ailment.
Allow me to defend, Helen, my criticism of Hypatia. I have not read Kingsley’s Life, and so do not know the circumstances under which the work was written. I have forgotten just what I said, and I may have fallen into error. But the novel must be judged finally as a work of art, and from that point of view it makes no difference whether the book is “strictly historical” or not. It explains, of course, the author’s purpose, and perhaps gives the book value in other respects, as a picture of the times, etc. But my impression is that I objected to it before as a work of art. And from that standpoint, as I remarked above, it makes no difference whether the novel is strictly historical or not. If Kingsley was so unfortunate as to choose a subject incapable of thoroughly artistic treatment, it is to be regretted, of course. But the misfortune of the selection remains unchanged. But after all, I think the misfortune was as much with the artist as with his subject. The novel was not all historical, by any means. Philammon was, I suppose, purely fictitious; also the Jew, I forget his name. I believe that the story was in his own hands after all. It all depended upon his manipulation of it. A few central facts were prescribed for him, to be sure, but the rest was all his own. The grouping of those facts, the perspective, and the arrangement of light and shade. The story, though horrible, is perhaps really no more tragical than Romola. And yet, what a contrast. Romola is nothing if not artistic. The storm and play of passion in it (Hypatia) is no greater than in the middle of Adam Bede, yet how different is the shadeless, unrelieved, tense horror in which it ends, from the deep peace and calm of the close of the latter work. Dan Bradley, however, thinks that it is an exceedingly fine novel, one of the best three or four, I understand. It is needless to add, however, that Dan Bradley is crazy. As to Wilfred Cumbermede, of course I am probably mistaken in setting so high a value on it, as I never knew any one, that I know of, who thought much of it. If I had the book by me, I could point out some of its excellencies. All I can say now is that one of them is that it portrays well a strong and beautiful friendship. I have always been a great believer in genuine friendship. David and Jonathan are exceedingly interesting figures to me, and so I suppose I was prepared to be unduly pleased when I read this. The close of the book is very unfortunate. It is essentially tragic, and the attempt to make it end happily, by saying that Mary sent for him, etc., injures the effect. But we may suppose the book to end just before that episode. I liked the book because I regarded it as a fine recognition of the fact that what seemed a tragic and unfortunate ending is not really so. Then there are religious discussions scattered through it which have pleased me, and which seemed to me infinitely superior to the sermons which he so obdurately sprinkles through The Seaboard Parish and Thomas Wingfold. The latter work I think is an undeniable failure. The sermons in it may be good as sermons, but I hate to have them stuffed down my throat artfully concealed in the pages of a novel. It is simply a theological treatise inside the covers of a story; a veritable wolf in sheep’s clothing. The first time I read Wilfred Cumbermede I didn’t like it at all. The second time I read it aloud to Mother in 1880, and liked it exceedingly. How long is it since you read it? I have an intense sympathy with the temperament of Charlie (not that I am like him at all), but I am not capable of comparing the book with his others, as I have not read any of the others for a good many years, and Robert Faulkner I have never read at all. By the way, how do you like Phantastes? That is a delightful work, I think. Carrie read it aloud to me when I was laid on my back with the measles. I am not sure that I fully understand it. Of course it is allegorical partly, but how much I cannot tell. It is meant to be read between the lines. Must close.
Affectionately,
HENRY.
OBERLIN, Sunday, December 25, 1881.
DEAR ONES AT HOME,
I shall not have many more opportunities to write you this year. Only a few days and we must all head our letters “1882.” This is one of the most disconsolate Christmas days I ever spent, or ever will spend, I hope. I wonder how your day is passing. What are you doing as I write? Four hours of my Christmas more than of yours has dragged away. With me it is three o’clock, with you after ten. Perhaps at this moment the horse (Prince no longer?) is being harnessed; or perhaps at this very moment you are coming out of the dining-room door, to enter the carriage. I like to dwell on the picture. It is a pleasant one to me, though of course humdrum enough to you. What right have I to be unhappy to-day? You have taken pains to remember me most kindly. And I have nothing to complain of. I have stayed cooped up in the house all day, and done nothing. This is vacation, you know, and what an amount of reading and writing letters and essays, and studying, etc., I was going to do. What has it all amounted to? How I was going to enjoy the vacation! How much enjoyment has it given me? O, I have felt wretchedly all vacation. Something the matter with my head. But to-day the ailment has turned into a headache (not at all violent, and intermittent), and a headache is quite curable. To-morrow morning I expect to wake up well. What a host of disappointed hopes, broken resolutions, unfulfilled aspirations, there are in this world. How I have looked forward to this vacation as a time of unbroken happiness, when I could sit quietly in my cosy corner room and read to my heart’s content, and write long letters home, and in the clear evenings learn at my leisure new constellations. And what a wretched time it has been. The first four or five days it rained almost all the time, and we didn’t see a single ray of sunshine until Friday afternoon, when a little streak of sunshine broke through the clouds and poured through our window on to the floor. That night it cleared off. How grand it seemed to see the stars again. But I was not well enough to go out and look at them. The other morning I tried to saw one stick of wood, and managed to get it cut through and split, after which latter process I felt such a curious sensation in the pit of my stomach that I dropped into a convenient chair. I crawled upstairs and lay down. This child hasn’t sawed any wood since, and doesn’t expect to for some time to come. He has made arrangements to have his wood sawed for him. We are differently constructed in this world. Some of us were made for sawing wood and others not. The Divine Architect of the Universe did not intend me to make my way through College by sawing wood. He intended Chauncey to do so, because he endowed