Читать книгу The Bread Line: A Story of a Paper - Paine Albert Bigelow - Страница 5

My dear, dearest Dorry: When I sit down to write to you there is always so much I want to say that I never know where to begin, and in the end I seem to tell you nothing at all except that I love you, which you have heard so much I am always afraid you will grow tired of hearing it again. Then I turn cold at the thought, and rewrite the letter to leave out some of the times, but before I am done I find them all in again somewhere else; so it is no use, you see, and I generally send the first letter, after all. Then, when it is gone I want it back, though I don't know whether I want it to take out some of the times I've said it, or to put in some more that I didn't say.

"Oh, Dorry dear, I do love you, and often when I have thought of you in your beautiful home surrounded by luxury, and then remembered that I have asked you to leave it all and cast your fortunes with a chap whose fortunes depend on the whim of the public and the fancy of the art editor, it has made me feel so guilty that I have more than once put into those letters I didn't send something about letting you take it all back and not allowing you to make such a sacrifice for me, even though you are true and noble and willing.

"And then I didn't send those letters, and I'm glad now that I didn't, for the hard days are going to be over soon, and I feel that I shall be able to offer you comforts that will, perhaps, keep you from regretting altogether those you have left behind. I am glad you are so enthusiastic too, now, about the paper, though you didn't feel just that way at the start, and after I got your first letter I had to talk the scheme all over again with Barry and Perny and Van to get back my courage and to be sure the Bible premium was all right.

"You know, Dorry, that money is a great thing, or at least you don't know, because you never had to do without it, but it is, and especially here where it is so hard to get, and where it takes so much of it to live even respectably. All that you have so often said about the bohemian life is fine and beautiful, and true in a way, too, but there are unpleasant phases of it as well. The struggle is very hard sometimes, and even Perny and Van, who do not need much money, and who will never be anything different from what they are now, even they are glad that they will be worth a million at least by this time next year.