They said
some very charming things about my books--mostly to the effect that
they read and enjoyed them when feeling ill or suffering from mental
collapse. I gathered that had they always continued in a healthy
state of mind and body it would not have occurred to them to read me.
One man assured me I had saved his life. It was his brain, he told
me. He had been so upset by something that had happened to him that
he had almost lost his reason. There were times when he could not
even remember his own name; his mind seemed an absolute blank. And
then one day by chance--or Providence, or whatever you choose to call
it--he had taken up a book of mine. It was the only thing he had
been able to read for months and months! And now, whenever he felt
himself run down--his brain like a squeezed orange (that was his
simile)--he would put everything else aside and read a book of mine--
any one: it didn't matter which. I suppose one ought to be glad
that one has saved somebody's life; but I should like to have the
choosing of them myself.
I am not sure that Ethelbertha is going to like Mrs. St. Leonard; and
I don't think Mrs. St. Leonard will much like Ethelbertha. I have
gathered that Mrs. St. Leonard doesn't like anybody much--except, of
course, when it is her duty. She does not seem to have the time.
Man is born to trouble, and it is not bad philosophy to get oneself
accustomed to the feeling.
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