Term's over--all but a beastly "dinner." D--n dinners! I'll _see_ you presently.
DEAR McDONALD,--Do you know we talked uninterruptedly the other day for ten hours,--for the period that people are wont to qualify when speaking of the enormity of time as "ten _mortal_ hours"? What a pity that they could not be made _im_mortal! They will be always with me,--though I really fear that I must have tired you, in spite of protests. Every time I can get such a chat with you, you become much dearer to me--so that I really cannot feel as sorry as I ought for keeping you engaged that long.
Well, I don't quite know what I shall do about the "Ghostly Japan." I shall think a little longer. My duty, I feel, is to sacrifice it: only I don't want to have any tricks played upon me,--just because tricks annoy. Nevertheless I ought to accept the annoyance cheerfully: it is part of the price one must pay for success. Huxley says that one of the things most important for anybody to learn is that a heavy price must be paid for success.
I got a letter from a Yale lad, which I enclose, and a magazine which I am sending you. The wish is for an autograph; but there the case is meritorious and I want the sympathy of boys like that--who must be the writers and thinkers of 1900. So I wrote him as kind a letter as I could,--assuring him, however, that I am not a Buddhist, but still a follower of Herbert Spencer. It is a nice little magazine. I suppose that H. M. & Co.'s advertisement had something to do with the matter; but from the business point of view, it is an excellent idea to try to work a book through the universities. Those lads are thinkers in their own way. See the poem on page 90,--also on page 83: both show thinking. I ventured to advise the writer of "Body and Soul" to make a new construction of the thought. The conditions might be reversed. First the man is the body; the woman the soul. But the woman's soul is withered up by the act of the man; and the body only remains. Then the man gets sorry, and gets a soul through the sorrow of the wrong that he has done. Then _she_ becomes the Flesh, and _he_ the Ghost. I did not explain all this--only suggested it. A case of vicarious sacrifice. How many women have to lose their own souls in order to give souls to somebody else!