The Ridge,         Berkeley, California.
October 27, 19—.  
 
Do I still read my Wordsworth on my knees? Well, we may as well have it out. I have foreseen this day so long and it that now I meet it almost with extended hands. No, I do not read my Wordsworth on my knees. My mind is filled with other things. I have not the time. I am not the Herbert Wace of six years gone. It is fair that you should know this; fair, also, that you should know the Herbert Wace of six years gone was not quite the lad you deemed him.
 
There is no more pathetic and terrible thing than the prejudice of love. Both you and I have suffered from it. Six years ago, ay, and before that, I felt and resented the growing difference between us. When under your spell, it seemed that I was born to lisp in numbers and devote myself to singing, that the world was good and all of it fit for singing. But away from you, even then, doubts faced me, and I knew in vague fashion that we lived in different worlds. At first in vague fashion, I say; and when with you again, your spell dominated me and I could not question. You were true, you were good, I argued, all that was wonderful and glorious; therefore, you were also right. You mastered me with your charm, as you were to master those who loved you.
 
But there came times when your sympathy failed me and I stood alone on outlooks I had achieved alone. There was no response from you. I could not hear your voice. I looked down upon a real world; you were caught up in a beautiful cloudland and shut away from me. Possibly it was because life of itself appealed to you, while to me appealed the mechanics of life. But be it as it may, yours was a world of ideas and fancies, mine a world of things and facts.
 
Enters here the prejudice of love. It was the lad that discovered our difference and ; it was the man who was blind and could not discover. There we , man and boy; and here, both men now, we make all well again.
 
Let me be . Do you remember the passion with which I read the "Intellectual Development of Europe?" I understood not the of it, but I was thrilled. My common sense was thrilled, I suppose; but it was all very , gripping hold of the world for the first time. And when I came to you, warm with the glow of adventure, you looked blankly, then smiled indulgently and did not answer. You regarded my ardour . A passing humour of , you thought; and I thought: "Dane does not read his Draper on his knees." Wordsworth was great to me; Draper was great also. You had no patience with him, and I know now, as I felt then, your consistent revolt against his philosophy.
 
Only the other day you complained of a letter of mine, calling it cold and . That I should be cold and analytical despite all the and pressing and moulding I have received at your hands, and the hands of Waring, marks only more clearly our temperamental difference; but it does not mark that one or the other of us is less a spirit. If I have[Pg 19] wandered away from the warmth of poesy and become practical, have you not remained and become confirmed in all that is beautifully ? If I have adventured in a new world of common things, have you not lingered in the old world of great and impossible things? If I have shivered in the gray dawn of a new day, have you not over the dying embers of the fire of yesterday? Ah, Dane, you cannot that fire. The whirl of the world its ashes wide and far, like dust, to make beautiful sunsets for a time and then to............