What a lucky
fellow you are with your wife and child!
After all, I see more and more clearly that both men
and women are incomplete, fragmentary, mutilated
creatures, as long as they are single. Do what they may
to persuade themselves that their state is the happiest,
they are still full of vague unrests, of dim, ill-defined
dissatisfactions, of a tendency to narrow ways and
selfish thoughts. Alone each is a half-made being, with
every instinct and feeling yearning for its missing
moiety. Together they form a complete and symmetrical
whole, the minds of each strongest where that of the
other needs reinforcing. I often think that if our souls
survive death (and I believe they do, though I base my
believe on very different grounds from yours), every male
soul will have a female one attached to or combined with
it, to round it off and give it symmetry. So thought the
old Mormon, you remember, who used it as an argument for
his creed. "You cannot take your railway stocks into the
next world with you," he said. "But with all our wives
and children we should make a good start in the world to
come."
I daresay you are smiling at me, as you read this,
from the vantage ground of your two years of matrimony.
It will be long before I shall be able to put my views
into practice.
Well, good-bye, my dear old chap! As I said at the
beginning of my letter, the very thought of you is good
for me, and never more so than at this moment, when I am
alone in a strange city, with very dubious prospects, and
an uncertain future.
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