I am grateful for your letter of 23d which I have but now opened. I hardly need say that I have been passing the bitterest week of my life, resentment gradually giving way to a realization of the truth. In my flurry I have done some things which I would not do now and for which I am sorry. If I can be treated in the spirit suggested by your letter; if I can continue to live at home, and, especially, if I can, in any humble and limited way, be useful to you for a short time longer, it will be a great comfort to me. You cannot think how I have been dreading that it would be thought expedient that I should be sent to an “institution.” Anything but that. My father was a director of an Insane Retreat, and first and last, having been professionally employed and behind the scenes in several, my dread of such places is intense. Your letter indicates a view of my condition which I have hardly dared to anticipate. It seems to me not unreasonable; not unsound. I cannot say that I am fully prepared to accommodate myself to it. I cannot say that I do not hope that with cooler weather I shall be found to be better than I am now thought to be. But depend upon it (you and John and the family) that I shall try hard to justify the most favorable view that can be taken of my case. If I can be treated in the spirit of your note, gently, and with consideration for a gradual decay of my faculties, it seems, today, that I shall be able to reconcile myself to the facts of the situation. I shall need to be reasoned with patiently but I cannot believe that I am incapable of being reasoned with. It was perhaps right to deceive me as I was deceived when brought here, but further dealings with me in that spirit—with [951]any deception—will greatly aggravate my misfortune. Dealt with frankly and kindly I hope to be able to cultivate a spirit of Christian resignation. I shall be greatly helped to do so if I am consulted with and otherwise treated as a man of not wholly unsound mind.

Affectionately Yours