'...
The cold affects me precisely as extreme hot weather used to in
Cincinnati,--gives me a sort of bilious neuralgia. I hope to get a
clear, bright month in Florida, when I can say something to purpose.
"I did want to read some of my story to you before I went. I have read
it to my husband; and though one may think a husband a partial judge,
yet mine is so nervous and so afraid of being bored that I feel as if
it were something to hold him; and he likes it--is quite wakeful, so
to speak, about it. All I want now, to go on, is a good _frame_,
as father used to say about his preaching. I want calm, soft, even
dreamy, enjoyable weather, sunshine and flowers. Love to dear A----,
whom I so much want to see once more."
Unhappily, she could not get away so soon as she desired. There were
contracts to be signed and other business to arrange. These delays
made her visit southward much shorter than she intended, but it proved
to be only the introduction, the first brief chapter, as it were, of
her future winter life in Florida. Before leaving she wrote as follows
to her publisher:--
"I am so constituted that it is absolutely fatal to me to agree to
have _any_ literary work done at certain dates. I _mean_ to
have this story done by the 1st of September. It would be greatly for
my pecuniary interest to get it done before that, because I have the
offer of eight thousand dollars for the newspaper use of the story I
am planning to write after it.
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