If once you slip and get down, every one
walks on you. Everything's restricted, priced, tinkered with. There
is no real freedom of body or spirit. I wouldn't trade a comfy log
cabin in the woods with a big fireplace and a shelf of books for the
finest home on Maple Drive--not if I had to stay there and stifle in
the dust and smoke and smells. That would be a sordid and impoverished
existence. I cannot live by the dog-eat-dog code that seems to prevail
wherever folk get jammed together in an unwieldy social mass.
I have said the like to you before. By nature and training I'm
unfitted to live in these crowded places. I love you, little person, I
don't think you realize how much, but I can't make you happy by making
myself utterly miserable. That would only produce the inevitable
reaction. But I still think you are essentially enough like me to meet
me on common ground. You loved me and you found contentment and joy at
our little cabin once. Don't you think it might be waiting there again?
If you really care, if I and the old North still mean anything to you,
a few days or weeks, or even months of separation won't matter. An
affection that can't survive six months is too fragile to go through
life on.
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