"You mustn't get discouraged, True. Your letters, lately,
have been rather blue sometimes, and I know just how you
feel. But, whatever you do, stick it out to the end. Don't
think for a moment of giving it up; don't do it, True, after
putting in as much thought and time and money as you have
already. For, after all, as you once said, True, money is a
great thing,--a lot of money,--you can do so much with it;
and now, when we are almost at the turn of the tide, is the
very time to pull hardest and get over the bar. Even if it
takes every cent you can scrape together to pay you through,
put it in, and if it takes more than that I can buy a share
and put in a little, too, for I have five hundred dollars
that papa gave me last August when I was twenty-one, and I
will have five hundred more soon, because I am not going
away at all this summer, and papa is going to give me, in
money, what it would cost.
"I thought of going at first, and then I kept putting it off
from week to week, and remembered you working away there in
the heat for me, and I made up my mind at last that I
wouldn't go, either. Besides, our home is cool and
beautiful, and I am alone, and can do as I please, and not
have to dress and go and be torn to pieces. Next summer we
will go together.
"So you see, True, I will have a thousand dollars of my own,
and if your assessments take more than you have I will send
it to you, and you can invest it for me. I had intended to
buy things for our house with it, but we won't need it by
that time, and the success of the paper now is the
all-important thing. I did not care so much at first, but
now it has gone along so well, and with all the new plans
and such a beautiful paper as you can get up, I want to see
it make the success and fortune for you that I am sure it
must. Besides, True, won't it be fine to own our interest
together?
"I know, of course, that there are many unpleasant things
about it,--some, I suspect, that you don't tell me of,--and
that it isn't altogether the money that bothers you; but you
must put up with the burden and suspense a little longer,
and with Bates, who must be a dreadful nuisance, though he
surely means well and works hard to get so much advertising.
I should love to meet the Colonel. The first little sketch
you sent me of him I have pinned up over my desk, and when I
read your letters about him I look up at it and laugh and
imagine just how he looks and acts. What a beautiful model
he must make for the picture, and how glad I am you are
working at it so enthusiastically again! Perhaps that is one
reason why you are less interested in the paper, and worried
over the annoyances that must always come with the more
practical pursuits of life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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