HIROSHIMA, February 19th, 1902.


After a sleepless night I got up this morning with a splitting
headache. I have been back in the traces for a month, and I am
beginning to feel like a poor old horse in a tread mill, not that I
don't love the work, but oh! Mate, I am so lonesome, lonesome,
lonesome. I think I used up so much sand when I first came that the
supply is running low.

"All day there is the watchful world to face
The sound of tears and laughter fill the air.
For memory there is but scanty space
Nor time for any transport of despair.
But, Love, the pulse beats slow, the lips turn white
Sometimes at night!"

Perhaps when I am old and gray and wrinkled I'll be at peace. But
think of the years in between! I have been cheated of the best that
life holds for a woman, the love of a good husband, the love of her
children, and the joys of a home.

The old world shakes its finger and says "you did it yourself". But,
Mate, I was only eighteen, and I didn't know the real from the
false. I staked my all for the prize of love, and I lost. Heaven knows
I've paid the penalty, but I'd do it over again if I thought I was
right. The difference is that then I was a child and knew too little,
and now I am a woman and know too much.