Jane Burr

“ The Black Hills.
July 2.
One week has passed Dear, since you left us—a strange week of readjustment and thought. All of those precious months that you have given me are but another expression of your divine friendship. The poignant grief is gone with you and my gratitude to you can but be shown by the degree of bravery that I now manifest.
Every day this week, my son and I have sat in the sunshine near the two mounds, which my remaining bronze boy has decorated with crocuses from the neighboring ravine. He spends long hours after dark, gathering wild flowers in the moonlight. ”

“ We have attained the intimacy which thinks aloud, and instead of hating Sioux Falls and longing for my sentence to expire, I am beginning to worship every inch of the ground, and only pray that such an exile should last forever.
None of the fulminating fires that I have heretofore known are mine—only calm and peace and the joys born of a perfect understanding. We have not let the moment slip when souls meet in comprehension. ”

“ A young man makes whole ranges of mountains out of tiny mole hills which, when he has learned sense, he will spread under his foot without noticing them. Most of our differences were mere mole hills, dear, which couldn't thwart us now. For we are too big now, to be so easily thwarted. Can't we give each other the chance to prove this to each other?
If you will permit me I will love your child as my own—as every real man ought to love every child, dear little unfinished human beings. ”

“ You are great enough to appreciate the joy we feel in cheating all humanity. Carlton has willed all of his possessions to me and to our precious little future reproduction of our love, who can but be perfect, as he is a creature of perfect conditions. We are also but half great, as it pleased us that the New York papers reported our marriage; but in our lives we are all-great and all-sufficient for each other.
Our bungalow is built in rugged, primeval "Spearfish Canon," but you may address all mail to Custer, where Carlton goes in his motor every day for things that please me. ”

“ You don't know what a comfort my phonograph has been to me—I would never attempt another divorce without one. The long, lonely evenings—the endless days, when time never moves off the spot, my dogs and I have sat on the floor fascinated with the greatest music in the world. I like my machine because it may be depended upon, never is nervous, and always willing to perform. Talent is so spasmodic and dependent upon moods, while the little hard rubber discs tirelessly and graciously amuse you. ”

“ You say that you are so much stronger willed than I am—did you ever look at yourself in the mirror? Carlton has eyes that I adore—they are the deeply sad sort that would make one think that love had passed that way. ”

“ I am so happy, so proud, so grateful that my mate is as far-seeing as I am, and we feel a mutual dread for the time when we must forsake our Black Hills for the fuller and less satisfying life in New York—but we can't play always, out here in the sunshine. ”

“ My personal things are packed and on the way to Custer. Tokacon is waiting with his torch to set fire to my palace of dreams.
I could not return to your world—to my old world if I thought that other souls than ours were living in my home. The land, I have given to my Indian with sufficient money to build a home for himself, but not one corner of my own shall remain to be profaned by other human emotions. ”

“ If she could but seek rapturous peace out here in my wilderness with some man that she really loves—but no woman is born into mature society with a knowledge of its utter worthlessness. And even were you able to convince her of it now, it would be a sin to rob her sweet mentality of its blushes. No, the precious child must first suffer and find out alone. ”

“ I made up my mind to something last night—I am determined to get him away from that carrotty giraffe whom he used to believe he [Pg 59] loved. If in my convalescent state I am unable to arouse his sympathy, I'll relapse into white muslin emotions and thereby gain my end. I am made from dust and the slightest rustle from the right man's coat can blow me whithersoever it willeth. You know I am a spoiled child who has had everything it wanted, so bon-bons no longer excite me. Carlton is so thin that you can see daylight through his lattice work, and cold as paving stone in winter. ”

“ Possibility is the biggest word in the dictionary. Isn't it strange that a woman may live apart from her husband and do atrocious things, without wearing the tell-tale letter on her bosom, yet let a virtuous woman take the step for freedom, and, alas! she carries the scar as long as she breathes. But its worth it, dear. I have thought it all over and I repeat it a thousand times, its worth it. "I have written it upon the doorposts of my house and upon my gates, and I wear it as frontlets between mine eyes"—it's worth it! ”

“ My wasted years squandered in society seem hideous fancies of a perverted mind, while my one glorious year out here is a deep-breathing, pure record of clean thoughts and a perfect life. No one save God Almighty to wish us well on our wedding day; no purring women and overfed men to throw rice and old shoes along with the "wedding formula"—"Isn't she a perfect bride,"—"did ever couple seem so well suited,"—"they are real affinities et cetera," all of which started me out on my bridal trip sixteen years ago. ”

“ I send you thousands of messages and ask you thousands of questions each day, and simply because I don't waste time and paper in setting them down is no sign that you aren't constantly in my thoughts. Love knows no distance, and I go to you every evening for a good-night kiss just as I close my eyes to sleep, and always do I feel that you know it. ”

“ His tiny pink and white ear framed by a stray lock of his hair and outlined by a wrapping of lace from you, would make an artist, a painter, even an old man wildly in love with his perfect little being, and will, please God, restore me, a mad woman to her senses! ”

“ His Insouciance is charming and always turns the tide of my melancholy. He is the only man who ever ventured to stand on my tack and take me broadsides. We have framed up a little Bacchic plot to be enacted on our way back from the Post where I shall soon meander to mail this on the late Rock Island.
I am certainly in love, because I know the symptoms, but I can't tell with whom. Some temperature, high pulse and strange flutterings—but who is the victim? Bern or Howard in New York or Carlton here? ”

“ Now the colony will transplant itself, then watch the death agony of Sioux Falls. She's foolish—foolish! The Easterners have made this burg what it is. Take away our influence and she'll sink into nothingness again. Some of us are bad, but all of us are not; however, the Sioux Falls gossips make no distinction. They lift their $2.98 skirts when they pass us, for fear of inoculation by the bacillus divorce. I often wonder if they realize that the prejudice is returned with compound interest. ”

“ And they have decreed that conjugal love, apart from passion, is elevating and a woman in yielding herself may evict the sanctum of love if the man may legally call her his own. It's all wrong dear—woman has been sacrificed to the family. And what a degrading imitation of Nature to propagate the species. ”

“ He could not speak, but knelt beside us and kissed the baby's lips; my infant opened his innocent eyes and put his arms around Donald's neck, as much at ease as though he had known him all of his dear little life. Awake and rested, he must needs be tumbled about and played with, which our visitor seemed pleased to do. The strain would have been more than terrible, had it not been for the sweet influence of the child who occupied us both constantly on our long walk, home. ”

“ Do you remember the day when we were at school in Paris, that we passed Printemp's baby shop and planned our progenys' outfits—twenty years ago? I am now fuller of the joy of living than I was then—but on the threshold of womanly emotions.
From my window I can see far down the icy canon. The mountain stream is a fluted ribbon of snow and ice, and where the spray tumbled before it froze, there are thousands of filmy rosettes iridescent in the sun's rays. The path is finished and Dr. Harmen is building a snow man. ”

“ Last night I dreamed that I was a saint with an apple pie for a halo—this boarding house pie habit will eventually tell on the strongest nerves.
Last night I cut my leg on a barbed wire—no dear I wasn't hurdling the fence—the wire was on the side walk, where everything except the kitchen stove usually lies. I hope I won't have lockjaw—it's harder on a woman than it is on a man anytime. I was just thinking how clever it would be, if a man who had a chattering wife, would keep a bunch of rusty pins on hand. ”

“ My dear it is worth a trip out here to see a whist party "let out." No, not "bridge,"—they haven't heard of it yet—just plain whist; but as I was saying, to see one turn out with its white alpaca skirt and blue satin ribbon belt. I've paid two dollars at Hammerstein's to see things not half so funny. O, for a sip of Fleischman's coffee—there are grounds for divorce in every cup out here. The butter we eat, walks in from the country alone, and at every meal we get smashed potatoes piled as high as the snow on the Alps. I can't look a potato in the eye any more. ”

“ Every night before we sleep, we talk to our baby, we pray to our baby, we worship our baby. Only beautiful thoughts come to our minds; only beautiful things come to our hands,—surely God sends babies for other reasons than to propagate the species—we are grown entirely unselfish ”

“ The little things are wonderful and the discretion of your love is more so. Each little article is an expression of your faultless friendship, for losing which, not even Carlton's love could compensate me. ”

“ The women and preachers may be against the quick lunch method of divorce, but you can gamble on it that the business men heartily approve; and these same women and preachers will find their larders and contribution boxes but scantily filled if the odorous money of the dissolute "Divorsay" is barred.
I am all excited over the article as there is neither truth nor ruth in it, and Carlton is intensely amused, so I suppose I will not [Pg 88] try to fight the battles of the colony so long as I am lazy and comfortable in the arms of my love. ”

“ All day, dear, I go about my duties with a most ladylike absence of passion, but when night comes I cross the sandy waste of the past and stretch out my hands to fondle the idea of perfect companionship. ”

“ Each day I awaken more warmed and thrilled, like the sun which finds the mountain tops that he touched with his departing rays still warm when he sends his shaft of light in the morn.
No maelstrom of distrust do we feel, only a mighty, overpowering passion that no undress of intimacy can ever destroy. ”

“ And like eternity the mystic course lay hidden in darkness before us, but also like the things that look most forbidding in the future, as we rushed by, the yellow hedge turned golden by our lamps, the grassy plumage rose and fell in sallow waves of approbation. ”

“ Not a soul knows what I'm here for. One must never tell. That's the first divorce colony by-law. I have become a perfect diplomat and know how to keep still in three languages. I just casually told my troubles to the boarding house keeper and her daughters, but they don't count, as they are such dears, and it won't go any further.
As long as I live, my attorney says, I must sign in hotel registers from Sioux Falls—If I do the clerks will stoop to pick cockle burrs and tumble weeds off my skirts and help me to loosen my Indian wampum—whatever that is. ”

“ The fellow whose motor sent me to the brink of the Styx, is now preparing me by night light to take the 33d degree of happiness. You have heard of him I know, Carlton Somerville, the Wall Street broker. I forget what it was his wife did that got on his nerves, but anyway he too is hibernating in Sioux Falls clay. We have gotten "First-namey" and have frankly decided that in order to keep our cleverness from dying of inanition, we will practice on each other.
How could you, my dearest friend, accuse me of being forgetful of Bern? He wouldn't appreciate me at all if I forgot how. ”

“ Her dental arch is like the porte-cochere of the new Belmont Hotel, and last night a precocious four-year-old said, "Miss Mandy, why don't you tuck your teeth in?"—Miss Mandy would if she could but she can't. She is the sort who would stop her own funeral to sew up a hole in her shroud.
The moonlight nights here are a perfect [Pg 19] irritation, and I really think this moon isn't half as calloused to demonstration as our dear old New York moon. There are so few men here that the female congregation is getting terribly out of practice. ”