"I think heroic deeds were all conceived in the open air, and free poems, also. Now I see the secret of making the best persons: It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth."
I mayn't have quoted correctly, but you know the sort of thing I mean, that sounds so _breezy_ and _stimulating_. And they've helped me understand the immensity of the landscapes and the ideas out here, the big, throbbing, rough young life, and under it all, as Whitman says, "a meaning--Democracy, _American_ Democracy." Really it's been interesting, _the jolliest time of my life,_ and it's got me all unsettled. More than once in watching some scene typical of the region, the plain, busy, earnest people, I've actually thrilled to think that this was _my country_--felt that queer little tickling tingle that locates your spine for you. I'm sure there's no _ennui_ here. Some one said the other day, "_Ennui_ is a disease that comes from living on other people's money." I said no, that I'd often had as fine an attack as if I'd been left a billion, that _ennui_ is when you don't know what to do next and wouldn't do it if you did. Well, here they always _do_ know what to do next, and as one of them told me, "_We always get up early the day before to do it_."
Auntie, dear, the trip has made me _more restless and dissatisfied_ than ever. It makes me want to _do_ something--to _risk_ something, to want to _want_ something more than I've ever learned to want.
That's one reason I'm acting badly. The other will interest you more.
It's no less a reason than _the athletic young Bayard_ who cheated those cab-horses of their prey that night Fred didn't drink all the Scotch whiskey in New York. Our meeting, and the mater's treatment of him before she discovered who he was, are too delicious to write. I must wait to tell you.
It is enough to say that now I heard his name it recalled nothing to me, and I took him from his dress to be a _workingman_ in the mine we visiting, though from his speech and manner of a gentleman, someone in authority. Dear, he was _so_ dear and so Westernly breezy and progressive and enterprising and so _appallingly candid_. I've been the "one woman", the "unknown but remembered ideal" since that encounter. Of course, that was to be said, but strangely enough he meant it. He was actually and unaffectedly making love to me. He's not so large or tall, but quick and springy, and muscled like a panther. He's not beautiful either but pleasant to look at, one of those broad high-cheeked faces one sees so much in the West, with the funniest quick yellowish grey eyes and the most disreputable moustache I ever saw, yellow and ragged, If he must eat it, I wish he would _eat it off even_ clear across. And he's likely to talk the most execrable slang, or to quote Browning. But he was making real love, and you know I'm not used to that. I'm accustomed to go my pace before sharply calculating eyes, to show if I'm worth the _asking price_. But here was real love being made off down in the earth (we'd run away from the others because I _liked him at once_). I don't mind telling you he moved me, partly because I had wondered about him from that night, and partly because of all I had come to feel about this new place and the new people, and because he seemed such a fine, active specimen of Western manhood. I won't tell you all the wild, lawless thoughts that scurried and _sneaked_ through my mind--they don't matter now--for all at once it came out that he was the only son of that wealthy Bines who died awhile ago--you remember the name was mentioned that night at your house when they were discussing the exodus of Western millionaires to New York; some one named the father as one who liked coming to New York to dissipate occasionally, but who was still rooted in the soil where his millions grew.