I am perfectly sane, but I can't persuade him to tell my son I am well
enough to go home.

My dear Lewis has gone eight hundred miles beyond Winnipeg surveying. I
am sorry to have him go so far. Will I ever see him again? But I feel so
badly when he comes to see me, and refuses to take me home with him; and
I say to myself, "I would die here alone rather than that he, my darling
boy, should be shut in here and treated as I am;" for his temper, if so
opposed, would make him a maniac. I have dreamed of seeing him looking
wretched and crying for fresh air, for he was suffocating. All the time
I had those troubled dreams, I was smothering with gas coming in my room
through the small grating intended to admit heat to make us comfortable,
but it did not. I was obliged to open the window to be able to breathe;
my lungs required oxygen to breathe when I was lying in bed, not gas
from hard coal.

There is one lady whose room is carpeted and furnished well, but she is
so cold she sits flat on the carpet beside the little grate, trying to
be warm. She has not enough clothing on to keep her warm. Her friends
call often, but they never stay long enough to know that her room is
cold. They cannot know how uncomfortable she is, or what miserable food
she has, for we all fare alike.

April is nearly gone. Tom has promised to come for me on Monday; I feel
so happy to think I am going to be free once more. I sat on my favorite
seat in the window sill, looking at those poor men working on the
grounds. There were three; they did not look like lunatics, no overseer
near them; they were shoveling or spading, and three ducks followed
them. Fed by the All-Father's hand, they gather food for themselves; the
men never disturb them; they cannot be violent. Many a farmer would be