have not wished you and Sheila were here. Sheila--why, she is a
young woman! She's about the age you were when I left Ireland, and
you were one of the most beautiful and charming creatures God ever
gave life to. The last picture I have of you was a drawing made
soon after your marriage--sad, bad, unhappy incident. I have kept
it by me always. It warms my heart in winter; it cools my eyes in
summer.

My estate is neither North nor South, but farther South than North.
In a sense it is always summer, but winter on my place would be like
summer in Norway--just bitingly fresh, happily alert. I'm writing
in the summer now. I look out of the window and see hundreds of
acres of cotton-fields, with hundreds upon hundreds of negroes at
work. I hear the songs they sing, faint echoes of them, even as I
write. Yes, my black folk do sing, because they are well treated.

Not that we haven't our troubles here. You can't administer
thousands of acres, control hundreds of slaves, and run an estate
like a piece of clockwork without creaks in the machinery. I've
built it all up out of next to nothing. I landed in this country
with my little fortune of two thousand pounds. This estate is worth
at least a quarter of a million now. I've an estate in Jamaica,
too. I took it for a debt. What it'll be worth in another twenty
years I don't know. I shan't be here to see. I'm not the man I was
physically, and that's one of the reasons why I'm writing to you
to-day. I've often wished to write and say what I'm going to say
now; but I've held back, because I wanted you to finish your girl's
education before I said it

What I say is this: I want you and Sheila to come here to me, to