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Do You Remember . . . ? Letter to Mary Hansen, December 6, 190929 204 S. Lansing St., E St. Johns, Mich. Dec. 6,1909. Dear Old Girl:— Your second letter came to-day. I was going to answer the first one any how today. . . . every day I thought to answer it, but some way I couldn’t make up my mind to write until I had settled whether to come back or not. And I felt just like you said; as if I were far, far down a long black tunnel , with only unknown darkness before me, and a lot of immeasurable pain behind. And I looked back at you all, and thought over and over what going back means, and shook my head and went farther down the tunnel. And twice I was resolved not to come back, and had decided to go on to Chicago for this winter. . . . But at last, after a good hard sickness , I gave in and turned back. And though I’m acting against my judgment in some respects, and am very little hopeful of being satisfied in Philadelphia, I’m going back again next week or soon after; and so I hope, old girl, we’ll see each other soon again, for it never was a pleasant thought that I was going far from you, and you’ve played as big a part in my life as I have in yours. It is a long time, isn’t it, since those days when we met up in poor Foster ’s stable, among the weevils and the scrap-iron. Life didn’t look over-buoyant even then, and we didn’t see all the black things a coming. I remember how awfully little your waist was, and how white your hands were. And I remember also being very much exercised in my mind when you went to live with G. B.30 for fear he wasn’t good enough! Did I ever tell you? We can all laugh about it now; but I’m still of opinion he 178 29. Source: Ms. Houghton Library, Harvard University, bMS Am 1614 (256). 30. George Brown, Mary’s partner. wasn’t quite good enough. Did I ever tell you about that 4th of July, when you, he, Elliott, and I went down to 34th St to look at the fireworks; and I saw, as you and he stood on the box, or chair was it? how he pulled your head over and kissed you there in the crowd? It was dark, and I think no one else saw but me. And I’ve always been glad, dear girl, that that time I was shot I was living with you, though it made you so much trouble . . . [She continues with reminiscences of pets, then of Mary’s concern about her relationship with her former lover Samuel Gordon]: Do you remember the morning on Newmarket St. when Gordon had said something hard to me, and you came up and found me half on the floor, and asked me if he had struck me?—Did I ever tell you how both of us—both he and I—after we had a quarrel—went and took poison? And he came up in spite of all (I had taken some of that morphine of Tomsie’s) and took me away to Dr. Morgan’s, when we had told each other: and Dr. M. sent me to Horn and Hardart’s for black coffee that made me vomit terribly, and G’s own stomach was burned up with some stuff he had taken—his lips were black next day, and we were both like rags. O Girlie, if we were to go on counting the old things—the infinitely little things, that have left the indelible mark. . . . When I went came to Detroit, on my way here, I stopped off a week, and my cousin and I went up to Port. Huron (my old home with Father) and across the river to my old convent. Pt. Huron must have stopped when I left it, 26 years ago, and gone backward slowly ever since. Where once the busy sawmill chewed up logs and spit them out, no trace of life is seen; the mill is gone; discouraged piles of lumber stand leaning here and there, and rank weeds grow up to the rotting breakwater. Heaps of ruin where life was. Only one ferry wharf where two were once; the other not only dismantled but completely removed. This...

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