Greenfield, Aug. 27 '78.
Dear Dream:
I have just time to write half a dozen words now, but will write you better either Friday or Saturday. I am too full for utterance. My last has made such a hit, and I am so deluged with letters of congratulations and inquiry etc. that I am really too elated to think, let alone act.
I go to Indianapolis tomorrow or day after÷can't tell till to-night's mail. In the meantime, I am not wholly selfish, but think of you very often and very tenderly. Write! When you get so terribly blue Write! Why, I tell you, if your last letter could be published it would make you famous. That's the secret÷the "open Sesame," as God hears me, I believe of a writers success this very intensity of sorrow÷misery, love, joy÷call it what you will tip my heart on edge and pour you out a molten kiss.
J.

Indianapolis, April 23, 1880.
Dear Dream
Your last letter that I have so anxiously and impatiently waited for is here, and it is good. I do not think nor did I think it your desire to hurt or wound me anyway only I could not understand the strength of your deep sorrowing nor the occasion for it. Having for so long trained myself to meet with no lasting happiness, and defying as I do all agonies resulting from the few delights that have been mine, and shall be though I die, I have, perhaps, overlooked your capacity to accept things as they come only I someway thought that, like me, you could abide, having your day of victory. Great God, I have been king of men am king now this minute holding your vast love as I do. What is it that can wrench you from me even though I should never, from this day till death, touch the hand of you again. This is the insane passion of my love my unutterably gracious dower that Fate may not wrend from me, and in which I can be glad at times beyond all words. True enough, that I will writhe, that I will cry out in the night, with empty hands that reach in vain for you. but when the limit of such agonies are reach'd, why, I will hold you none the less, and kiss your lips across all worlds, and call you mine and make you so a thousand thousand happy times. Wish you could see me know me as I am. I don't think you ever do for you forget so. You question without reason. Can't you be Faith itself? I am. I never question you. I can't. If you had a thousand suitors I would pity every one, knowing you could not give them such love as has been and is forever mine! Dear Woman, how I hold you here, wedged in my heart. You must know this: If you do not, why you shall. That's why I am strong. That's why my love is greater greater o, worlds greater than your own because I know nothing can separate us. If you could come to know this as I do, I think you could thank God touching the same world I live on, and so live on rejoicing with your soul at least shut fast in mine. Don't think that I can bear our separation, should it come, if come it must, with no treamor of regret or anguish. I shall moan with you but I will hold you till our wet eyes shall be glad again with smiles and we will go on blent together through all time. I trust because I love, and I do know no shade of doubt. I want you now, and I would die for you; but shall either be? Has it been ordained? Then, since the answer is not as we desire, who shall be weak enough to tickle fate by an endless fit of tears. I love you. You love me now who will change it while the world spins round. You said that you were skeptical of my love. You are not. You know the strength of it as no woman on God's earth has ever known it. Why then are you not throned forever with me, god and god?
O, my woman, how I crush you to my heart! It seems that I have idled when I had you by my side, and in my arms. I ought not have wasted time in kissing your sweet mouth, but should have told you more with words the measure of my love. Now, here: I wrench you to me, and my breath goes crumbling, and my heart grips all of you and holds you writhing. Kiss me burn me with your mouth. Hold me love me O my darling my queen my woman my world my heaven! You say "now go to sleep" I will never go to sleep till your own eyes are clean quit of tears, and your face is bright with smiles of perfect and eternal trust. And O to hear the utter joy and happiness of these my words must make you glad as I am as I write. Dear Love. mine! mine! O queen÷my own my all, my my my my
Write me at once, and tell you are glad, and tell me, too, when I may hold you again, and tell you in warm murmurous speech what is so feebly written here
As ever,

Your God