Ill



June 20, 1914.

I have just received your letter--the last, you say, that you can send
before you sail away again for "The Land of the Free and the Home of the
Brave," where you still seem to feel that it is my duty to return to
die. I vow I will not discuss that with you again. Poverty is an
unpretty thing, and poverty plus old age simply horrid in the wonderful
land which saw my birth, and to which I take off my sun-bonnet in
reverent admiration, in much the same spirit that the peasants still
uncover before a shrine. But it is the land of the young, the
energetic, and the ambitious, the ideal home of the very rich and the
laboring classes. I am none of those--hence here I stay. I turn my
eyes to the west often with a queer sort of amazed pride. If I were a
foreigner--of any race but French--I 'd work my passage out there in an
emigrant ship. As it is, I did forty-five years of hard labor there,
and I consider that I earned the freedom to die where I please.

I can see in "my mind's eye" the glitter in yours as you wrote--and
underscored--I'll wager you spend half your days in writing letters back
to the land you have willfully deserted. As well have stayed among us
and talked--and you talk so much better than you write. "Tut! tut! That
is nasty." Of course I do not deny that I shall miss the inspiration of
your contradictions--or do you call it repartee? I scorn your arguments,
and I hereby swear that you shall not worry another remonstrance from