think that if you and Grandma will use your natural wits at a little better planning--you’ll be able to get along fairly comfortably without working so hard. One can live happily on very little, I have found, if the mind and spirit have some definite objective in view. I expect I’ll always have to drudge for my living, and I’m quite willing to always do it, but I am no more fooling myself that the mental bondage and spiritual bondage of the more remunerative sorts of work is worth the sacrifices inevitably involved. If I can’t continue to create the sort of poetry that is my intensest and deepest component in life--then it all means very little to me, and then I might as well tie myself up to some smug ambition and “success” (the common idol that every Tom, Dick and Harry is bowing to everywhere). But so far, as you know, I only grow more and more convinced that what I naturally have to give the world in my own terms--is worth giving, and I’ll go through a number of ordeals yet to pursue a natural course. I’m telling you all this now, dear, because I don’t want you to suffer any more than inevitable from misunderstandings--for once we see a thing clearly, usually nine tenths of our confusion and apprehension is removed. Surely you and I have no quarrels, and I think you understand me well enough to know that I want to save you as much suffering from Life’s obstacles as can be done without hypocrisy, silliness or sentimentality. You may have to take me on faith for some things, because I don’t know whether it is possible for all people to understand certain ardours that I have, and perhaps there is no special reason why you, as my mother, should understand that side of me any better than most people. As I have said, I am perfectly willing to be misunderstood, but I don’t want to put up any subterfuges before _your_ understanding of me if I can help it. You have often spoken to me about how you lamented the fact that you didn’t follow certain convictions that you had when you were my age because it wasn’t easy enough; and I know what strong obstacles were put in your way. I, too, have had to fight a great deal just to _be myself_ and _know myself_ at all, and I think I have been doing and am doing a great deal in following out certain natural and innate directions in myself. By Jove--I don’t know of much else that is worth the having in our lives. Look around you and see the numbers and numbers of so-called “successful” people, successful in the worldly sense of the word. I wonder how many of them are happy in the sense that you and I know what real happiness means! I’m glad we aren’t so dumb as all that, even though we do have to suffer a great deal. Suffering is a real purification, and the worst thing I have always had to say against Christian Science is that it wilfully avoided suffering, without a certain measure of which any true happiness cannot be fully realized.