Maria's letter as I have it now ... not complete.

Corrections? I can't leave this up many days because of undertakings with the archive that owns it. The date is uncertain. Can anyone capture it. It would be on the page with the cross writing.

Woman’s Hospital
49th St & 4th Ave.
Unreadable Date

Dear Sister Mary,

You think I could be so rude as not to answer your sweet letter. The very day I received it I answered it & thanked you for your kind help in thinking of me & also for your quotifying [?] criticism. Will says he has not enjoyed a visit home so [? nicer] for many years & your kind wish to have me there with him was deeply appreciated by me, I can assure you. His stay with you and Joe was particularly & especially enjoyed & he said you left no stone unturned to add to his pleasure. Accept my thanks & we hope to have you [and] the children with us this summer.[?] And we can keep that place for a summer resort when we get the [?]ship & the [?] house.

But ill-health has kept me so long an enforced idler that now I must be up & doing something [?] if possible, to make up for lost time. Besides I have been too happy & too much in love to write. Not but that I am happy still as still in love, but not at the same tempestes furioso temperature – or else I should be dead. Undoubtedly genius, talent, or by whatever name you call it thrives best in attics as in poverty. And those who think they can coquette with the muses in slippered luxury & at such time as suits their self-indulgence & sweet fancy, will never [?, crossed out] [where, crossed out] reach the dizzy heights where Homer soared, or write their names on fame’s eternal scroll. George Eliot said: "Genius meant daily labor." And so it does. In point of fact, was every any-thing accomplished without hard, daily, persistent & consistent work? [??] I know a "[??], genius, lunatic, fanatic" re re re in this city of Bohemians, who has enough real genius or divine afflatus, to make half a dozen poets & half a dozen more brilliant musicians - besides which he is the finest reader of English I have ever heard. What he has accomplished? Nothing! Who has ever heard of him? No one, except a few nobodies for whom he makes pastime. And why? He has too much genius, never sticks to anything two days in his life. For my part - from childhood up I have led such a busy life, that I am wretched when idle. Indeed "doing nothing" is the task as difficult for me, as rolling the stone up the hill, then down again was to Sisphus [sic]. And looking at it from another point of view, I think it wicked to lead a life of idleness & believe, as firmly as I believe in my God, that we must render an account of talents given & not used. Indeed the parable of the talents is one of the most forcible in all the teachings of the sweet, but lowly Nazarene. My Rector used to say that I was born with as distinctive a mission as any one he had ever known - & that mission was to teach though my writings, the right & the wrong, the follies & weaknesses of human nature - He also said I possess a rare combination, which at the same time as recognizing all the light & shadow of right & wrong, felt a broad sympathy for all the foibles of humanity - I once hoped all this was true, prayerfully, & in the sight & fear of God, accepted, through numerous trials, sufferings & tribulations, the awful responsibility. After accepting the rôle, I went forth as the knights of old, with spear drawn & helmet down, confident in my own ability – not only to battle for my brothers & sisters, but hopeful of my own capacity to win the fight. - that they wounded me to the core, is also, true, for like all persons of fervid imaginations, I am morbidly sensitive. But alas! L’hommes propose – mais Dieu dispose! Then came troubles thick and fast – heart-aches – oceans of tears – poutings – the tearing asunder of all home times – the uprooting of all I had done. Then attacked by foes within and foes without – with no strong but loving hand to guide me, much as a father might have done – I fell like a tree blasted by the lightning – obliterated – paralyzed amidst the ruins of all the beautiful home and dreams that I myself had created. Then my courage forsook me, for griefs do make cowards of us all, and I lost all hope of every doing ought again – lost all confidence in my own capacity to accomplish any-think. Those ones – the inhumanity of man – make cruel ship-wreck of so many lives. But my entire with-drawl from the busy world and painful scenes – my life of peace and quiet and prayer and reflection in the mountains – My beautiful life with one who loves and appreciates me, has confidence in me, bids me again hopeful and again buckle on the armor of old. So once more I take up the broken thread and shall bravely with the help of God try once more to re-write this Penelope web and so all things come to those who wait. Shall hope that like the heroic goddess of old I too shall be rewarded by waiting – hoping and praying. Now, my dear sister, you really must pardon this long and personal letter – For nothing was further from my intention than to write such a letter when I began. It has slipped unconsciously from my pen. Read it. Take it for what it is worth – throw it in the fire – forget it! As [?] as I read Will’s daily letter this a.m. in which he told me Bro. Joe has written him you had never received a reply to your letter,