The Doctor shows me that it is my DUTY to be self-indulgent, and I can
be so with a quiet conscience, and shall soon be all right in body, as
I am all right in mind and heart. Mr. Hawthorne never has anything. I
do not believe there is another spirit so little disturbed by its body
as his.
. . . Mr. Hawthorne, you may be sure, will take care of me. I should
think he would suppose you thought he had no interest in the matter;
but he thinks of nothing else, and would give up the Consulate to-day
if he saw it was best for me.
After so hard a beginning, I long for him to repose from anxiety for
the future of our life. I only wish that for others as well as for
ourselves the fables about this Consulate had been truths. Because
what my husband would like would be to find always his right hand
(unknown to his left) full of just what his fellow mortals might need,
with no more end of means than there is of will to bestow. In him is
the very poetry of beneficence, the pure, unalloyed fountain of
bounty. It has been well tested here, where every kind of woe and
want have besieged him.
That provoking Consular bill has been in force nearly two years,
depriving us of our rights to the amount now of about $35,000, because
ever since it became the law the times have been more prosperous. The
year before that the business was miserable. I think it was unjust
that the actual incumbents of the office should not have been allowed
to fulfill their terms with the conditions upon which they commenced
them.
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