It is hard for us to feel that we are but puppets in the great game of life, of so small worth to any man. How can we women read their hearts--what do we know of men? I cannot say, though I am a married woman. My husband married me. We had our honeymoon--and he went away about the business of his plantations. Does every girl dream of a continuous courtship and find a dull answer in the facts? I do not know.
How freely I write to you, seeing that you are blind and deaf, of that wish of a woman to be the one grand passion of a strong man's life--above all--before even his country! What may once have been my own dream of my capacity to evoke such emotions in the soul of any man I have flung into the scrap-heap of my life. The man, the one man--no! What was I saying, Meriwether Lewis, to you but now, even though you were blind and deaf? I must not--I must not!
Nay, let me dream no more! It is too late now. Living or dead, you are deaf and blind to all that I could ever do for you. But if you be still living, if this shall meet your living eyes, however cold and clear they may be, please, please remember it was not for myself alone that I took on the large ambitions of which I have spoken to you, the large risks engaged with them. Nay, do not reproach me; leave me my woman's right to make all the reproaches. I only wanted to do something for you.
I have not written so freely to any man in all my life. I could not do so now did I not feel in some strange way that by this time--perhaps at this very time--you are either dead or in some extreme of peril. If I knew that you would see this, I could not write it. As it is, it gives me some relief--it is my confessional. How often does a woman ever confess her own, her inner and real heart? Never, I think, to any man--certainly not to any living, present man.
I married; yes. It seemed the ordinary and natural thing to do, a useful, necessary, desirable thing to do. I should not complain--I did that with my eyes well opened and with full counsel of my father. My eyes well opened, but my heart well closed! I took on my duties as one of the species human, my duties as wife, as head of a household, as lady of a certain rank. I did all that, for it is what most women would do. It is the system of society. My husband is content.