Broadus Unbound: The Oversized Will, Intellect, and Influence of a Small Baptist

By Betsy Reeder

Called by the famed Charles Spurgeon "the greatest of living preachers," John A. Broadus left an indelible signature not only on the Baptist denomination but on a generation. Emerging from the US Civil War as a voice of reason and reconciliation, he traveled, wrote, and tirelessly trained clergy for the urgencies of his time. Compiled by direct descendant Betsy Reeder and based on the words of Broadus and his intimates, Broadus Unbound reveals a complex and unforgettable personality, ablaze with unshakable faith and indomitable willpower. The biography includes never-before-published letters preserved for five generations by the family. Combined with other nineteenth-century writings, the result is an unveiling of the man and his world unlike any previously offered.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Oct 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666785074

Betsy Reeder

Betsy Reeder is a retired biologist and college educator, as well as a doting grandma. She is the author of a historical fiction trilogy of which Madam’s Creek represents the first book. Broomstraw Ridge and Salt in Boiling Water follow. She is also the author of the novel Tupper’s Coins and the biography Broadus Unbound.

Book preview

Introduction

This journey began a few years after my mother’s death in June 2008. Belatedly going through a box of files, I came across a manila envelope labeled Miss Lottie Letters. Who, I wondered, was Miss Lottie, and why had my mother kept her letters? I opened the envelope, pulled out a thick wad of faded, typed pages, and discovered the letters had been written (but later typed as the short manuscript I held) in 1858 by my great-great grandfather, John Albert Broadus.

Oh, yeah, I knew about him. He’d authored some book about writing and delivering sermons—Mom had received miniscule royalty checks for decades because the publication, inexplicably, remained in print. Then, in one of her spontaneous moments of generosity, she turned the revenue over to the School of Divinity of her alma mater, Wake Forest University. That action ended the sporadic postal reminders of John A. Broadus.

Lottie, as I discovered by checking Mom’s large, crumbling family-tree wheel I’d stashed years earlier, was Charlotte Eleanor Sinclair, John’s second wife and my great-great grandmother. And the letters amounted to the teasing and pleading of a widower quite desperate to win Miss Lottie’s everlasting love. Once started, I couldn’t put them down. Why had Mom never mentioned them?

Thus began a years-long descent down a twisting rabbit hole I never intended or expected to enter. One of the things that kept me going was that the more I learned about John A. Broadus, the more I understood my mother, who had been such an enigma to me I would—if not for the traits I shared with my father—been convinced there’d been a mix-up at the hospital of my birth. The journey was jaw-dropping for me because it rendered everything inexplicable about Mom perfectly sensible. In finding John, I found my mother.

Born Charlotte Robertson Easley in Louisville, Kentucky, she grew up in Wake Forest, North Carolina, an inimitable blend of firebrand and southern belle. But, lest I allow Mom’s story to steal the limelight from her great-grandfather, I’ll set it aside.

And go back, before Miss Lottie enters the room, to the formative years of John Albert Broadus, a man destined to leave an echo that continues to reverberate through his descendants, as well as the Baptist faith.

Chapter One: Prologue

I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love. —Mother Teresa

Somerville Ward Broadus awakes with a start to a fist pounding on the front door of the home she shares with her brother and several college students in Charlottesville, Virginia. Her heart races as her bare feet find the cold floor, overshooting the oval rug slid halfway under her bed. She gropes for a robe slung over the back of a chair.

The intrusion can herald only bad news, and she knows whose.

She slides a hand along the wall to reach the door without a candle, the nearly impenetrable darkness slowing her. She wonders if her step-granddaughters have been awakened but are too frightened to cry out.

Who is it? she calls before drawing back the bolt.

George and Eddie, comes the answer. We’re here for the girls.

Dear Lord, she says, as she swings open the heavy door, letting in the chill of an October night. Is it too late?

No, but there’s little time.

I’ll get them up.

Wrap them in their blankets if you will, Mrs. Broadus—we’ll carry them. No shoes, says the taller of the young men.

Somerville does as instructed, then stuffs her feet into ankle boots in a clumsy rush as the men race with their frightened nieces—six-year-old Lida and four-year-old Annie—past a row of slumbering houses. They burst into the open at full sprint to angle across the University lawn.

John hears his brothers-in-law thunder up the stairs of the Harrison home and looks up from his wife’s bedside as they enter the room, their lungs gulping for air.

Papa, says Lida as Uncle George helps her off his back. Mama?

Lida, Annie, your mama has gotten worse. She’s going home to Heaven very soon . . . . She asked to see you. His voice comes out flat, almost harsh.

He reaches for their hands, but his daughters draw back, clinging to each other.

Don’t be afraid. Come kiss your mama.

Darling girls, breathes Maria as her life force fades. Moving only her eyes, she seeks her husband. What is it? Like floating. I can’t feel the bed.

John lowers his mouth to his wife’s ear. You are . . . dying.

Well, tell me about Jesus.

¹

The Reverend John A. Broadus cannot. Here it is, his last chance to convince his doubting mate of the Risen Lord’s reality, and he cannot.

Maria makes her last request. Sing ‘Rock of Ages.’

²

Somerville enters the room as Maria’s parents, four oldest brothers, three sisters, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, and husband—choking on the words, every one of them—begin the hymn. Missing are Maria’s two youngest brothers, close in age to Lida and Annie. Somerville takes note of one-year-old Maria Louisa—her third step-granddaughter—asleep on Mrs. Harrison’s lap. She lifts Annie in her arms and joins the soft singing.

During the third verse, her eyes fastened on John’s, Maria Harrison Broadus dies.

This time, he breaks.

For his father’s sake, he’d done his best to stand strong when his mother died after his first year at the University. Struck down by a heart attack, she sent for him. As he entered her room, she uttered her last words, My son,

³

and died.

He grieved but refused to falter. His parents had sacrificed so much for him, leaving their farm in Culpeper County, his father taking a job at the University of Virginia to enable John to attend. Their faith in his potential must be fulfilled, and his faith in Christ upheld him through his sorrow.

During his third year at the University, John confided in his eldest sister his bittersweet reaction to another loss, his sister Caroline’s (Carry’s) marriage and departure.

University of Virginia, Feb.

3

,

1849

Sister C. is married and gone . . . . I might have been sad, if I would; sad, not because she has married the man she has, my friend of many years, a friend whom every trial has but rendered more fondly dear, but because my sister, who it seemed to me had become indispensable and necessary to my happiness, is gone, and I am left alone, as desolate as an only child, with none who can so well sympathize in my joys and sorrows, none to counsel and aid, as a fond sister only can. But I have striven, and successfully, against everything like sadness. One thing, however, I have learned that I did not know before, that when dear friends part, they who stay must always sorrow more than those who go. I have had experience now in both. Our mamma [new stepmother, Somerville] is very kind and affectionate, and I love her most sincerely. She must have many troubles as the head of such a household as this, yet nothing that I can do shall be wanting to make her happy.

⁴

Papa’s death proved harder than the previous hurts. At the time, John prepared a speech, his duty as graduating valedictorian of his class. Instead of attending commencement, however, he attended his father’s funeral, and the address languished, undelivered.

But he’d won Maria’s love by then. They’d met in the Chapel choir, exchanging flirtatious notes at the onset of their mutual interest. John began making visits to the Harrison home, the center house on the west side of the University’s lawn. His desire to see Maria overruled the awkwardness of courting the daughter of his professor, Dr. Gessner Harrison, master of ancient languages and Chairman of the Faculty.

With Maria at John’s side, the family interred Major Edmund Broadus

⁵

next to his first wife, Nancy Simms Broadus, in a graveside service at the University cemetery. Somerville asked to be laid to rest adjacent to John’s parents, and John promised.

That evening, John retreated to the house inhabited by himself, his stepmother, and his roommate—G. W. Hansbrough. Visitors included his sister Carry and her husband William Whitescarver, John’s first college roommate. As well, John’s eldest siblings, Martha and Madison, squeezed in with their spouses and children.

Unable to sleep, John listened to Hansbrough’s soft snoring and reflected on his earliest memories of his father. He recalled the dignified man astride his bay gelding, Old Prince, a handsome horse with a star between his eyes. He felt the coarse texture of Papa’s riding coat as he clung from behind, happy to have Papa home from Richmond.

Go along, sir,

⁶

said Papa, and off they skated on that smooth and natural pacer. Major Broadus lowered his son to the ground at each fence crossing, and John lifted down enough rails for Old Prince to step over.

Once, he didn’t return the top rail to its position because of its weight, and Papa said, No, no, my boy—put it up. Whenever you pass through a gate or draw-bars or fence, always leave it at least as good as you found it.

⁷

John wrestled the thick rail into place while his father waited.

He remembered Old Prince’s habit of stopping whenever passing a traveler on the road, expecting his rider to engage in campaigning. It became something of a joke among the neighbors. Sadly for the son, the father won enough votes to leave home whenever the Legislature was in session. John recalled Papa’s homecomings, his habit of sitting before the fire recounting tales of politicians and their arguments, as if attentive little Jack were a man.

He would tell Maria. The eldest of ten siblings, dark-haired, petite Maria knew how to lend an ear, how to mother him in his anguish, and he intended to let her.

For now, as the minutes crept past midnight, John attempted to soothe himself by listing the ways he’d made his father proud, culminating in his master’s degree at the head of his class, despite poor preparation in math, French, and Greek. He hadn’t blamed his uncle and boyhood teacher, Albert Simms, who—along with his mother—instilled in him a fervent love of reading and taught him much Latin, history, literature, and geography, while augmenting his natural gift for writing. The man didn’t know everything.

John pictured his father moved to tears at the triumphant event of the undelivered commencement speech, the culmination of four years of punishing effort.

John’s tabulation of successes soon turned to topics he avoided in the light of day—the ways he’d made his father ashamed.

He relived the incident involving the University’s Jefferson Debating Society, which had begun with his scathing criticism of another member’s argument. That individual—so distasteful to John that he avoided speaking his name and referred to him by his initials, S. P.—gave fellow-member Hansbrough a written demand for an apology, which John’s roommate promptly delivered.

Hansbrough helped draft a response, which lacked a conciliatory tone. As expected, the note was not well received by the older, taller, undisputedly handsome law student, a peacock of a fellow. S. P. shoved the note back at Hansbrough, claiming it unacceptable.

Hansbrough, his cheeks bright from exertion and brisk air, his hair disheveled, blasted back into the room he shared with John. Here’s what ‘his Haughtiness’ said!

He stopped when he saw Major Broadus seated at John’s desk, the chair facing outward.

I’ll have a look at that note, my boy, said Major Broadus.

Standing beside his father, John beseeched Hansbrough with a look of desperation. But Hansbrough, deflated as a squashed June bug, passed the note to the outstretched hand.

The elder Broadus shook his head slowly as he read, then locked his pale eyes on his son’s. John, John, this will never do. You were wrong—such style of speech is wholly inconsistent with your profession and purposes in life. You must forthwith send an unconditional apology.

⁸

He rose on arthritic legs, picked up his cane, and left John to enact his father’s will.

Hansbrough made his second trip across campus to Kirkland Hall without a bounce in his step. He started to leave after S. P. snatched the small envelope from his hand, but the law student snapped, Wait! Let me read Broadus’s reply and send you back with mine.

After a moment, the frowning law student looked down his long nose at the sixteen-year-old freshman and said the apology was accepted on the condition that the apology should be made as public as was the insult.

⁹

Thus, John prepared an eloquent address for the Jefferson Debating Society’s next meeting. When his turn came to speak, the small, somber, clean-shaven man with straight black hair stepped to the front of the room and spoke from memory, without notes. He expressed deep regret and shame. He apologized, not directly to S. P., but to his Lord, for giving way to sinful anger and indulging in unseemly sarcasm.

¹⁰

Many years later, Hansbrough wrote of the event, I could perceive in the countenances of all around me a manifestation of unusually heightened respect and admiration for Mr. Broadus, and a corresponding disapprobation and contempt for his adversary. Upon his concluding statement, a silence of subdued sympathy and appreciation prevailed for a considerable time.

¹¹

S. P. had no choice but to swallow the acidic remarks he intended as follow-up and gained, for all his effort, a second humiliating defeat at the hands of upperclassman John Albert Broadus.

This night, however, the memory haunted. John fingered like a stone in his pocket not his victory but Papa’s rebuke. He rolled off his back and onto his side, resisting the urge to cry. How he’d wanted, from his earliest years, to make his father proud. Major Broadus, a man of principle, intelligence, and integrity. A man who sought justice and prudence in human affairs. And yet, a man who owned slaves.

John had grown up with two slave boys as his playmates. His only brother, separated from him by fourteen years and two sisters, had left childhood far behind by the time John toddled out into the world. John and his dark-skinned friends romped and explored as naturally as any children, and delighted in the tales recounted by Uncle Griffin, who took the boys upon a knee and orated the adventures of Bre’r Rabbit and Bre’r Wolf.

But the day came when Uncle Griffin gruffly refused young John’s request for a story. Smarting, the boy didn’t understand what the slave did, that they inhabited different worlds destined to diverge more and more as John grew. John would become master, and Uncle Griffin’s children his possessions. The blurred lines must be clarified and the slaves’ legends kept apart.

John’s chest and abdomen constricted with the effort of denying the sobs that would wake Hansbrough.

Papa. The young graduate reflected further on his father who, as a member of the Whig party, had opposed the relocation of Indians from their lands east of the Mississippi and endorsed a progressive platform that favored modernization in industry, roads, canals, and rail lines, as well as universal public education. In particular, he pushed for the training of professional teachers and improved education for girls. He spoke passionately in support of prohibition. On the subject of slavery, however, he remained entrenched. Being a slaveowner imposed a bias he did not surmount.

Edmund Broadus exemplified a Southern gentleman. He chose not to separate Uncle Griffin and his wife, Aunt Suky, from each other or their children. He shared in their joys and sorrows, feeling a fatherly protectiveness and affection for them. He sent Uncle Dick, the wagoner, to Fredericksburg to fetch supplies, trusting him to handle money and return home.

John replayed a particular memory, when his father grilled Uncle Dick upon the slave’s homecoming from such a trip, which necessitated an overnight stop along the way. One of the irksome habits of travelers was to steal fence rails to burn in their campfires. Major Broadus had instructed his slave to do no such thing and questioned him upon his return.

Uncle Dick replied, No suh, exceptin’ pieces.

As the muscular black man left the room, John heard him mutter, I made ‘em pieces, and then I burnt ‘em.

¹²

John giggled, picturing Uncle Dick tossing thin and wormy fence rails into the wagon and carrying them along to his resting place, where he broke them into the fragments he could truthfully report using as fuel.

Such an exchange typified Edmund Broadus’s incomplete trust and patronizing leniency. The thought of freeing Uncle Dick or Uncle Griffin and his family never cost him sleep. How could the farm function without them? Slavery had its unsavory aspects, to be sure, but it remained for Edmund an unexamined part of the natural order of life, the only life he’d ever known. He justified its outrage by its necessity.

John embraced his father’s ideology, accepting slavery. As members of a race they believed superiorly endowed, whites owed their slaves care and fairness. Decency. But not education. Not income. Not liberty. The shame John expressed concerned religion—his people had withheld access to Christianity from far too many Negroes.

John’s musings prompted an insight. That day of Uncle Dick’s return, surely his remark, for John’s ears only, had been offered for the boy’s amusement. What a compliment to be entrusted with the mischievous secret. There had once been that trust between them, a trust that made the sting of Uncle Griffin’s refusal sharp when the slave’s storytelling ceased, from then on reserved for his own brethren. John’s years within the circle of confidence ended abruptly.

His sadness deepened. He’d be less of an orphan now if Uncle Griffin and Aunt Suky were there. Of course they didn’t attend the funeral. Of course not.

John’s fatigue and grief drew another painful recollection to the surface—the day he allowed his father to believe he’d been thrown out of Albert Simms’ boarding school. The lad packed his trunk and walked the six miles home, as he’d done every previous Friday, without the trunk. Upon John’s return, his father questioned him. Why did he abandon school in the fall?

John answered, with the shrug of a sixteen-year-old, My uncle says he has no further use for me.

¹³

Did you do something wrong?

No, sir.

Then what did he mean by that? John shrugged again, enjoying his parent’s discomfort.

Mr. Broadus saddled Old Prince and rode to the school, where his concern inspired a belly-laugh from his brother-in-law. I assure you, Edmund, John wasn’t expelled. He graduated. I’ve nothing left to teach him—he knows as much as I, possibly more.

A tear escaped and zigzagged through black stubble on John’s cheek.

I was unkind. I will make it up to you, Papa.

John climbed out of bed and dropped to his knees. He prayed for forgiveness and healing. He prayed he would find strength to make wise decisions without his father’s counsel. He prayed thankfulness for having such a father to look up to, a father who loved him. And he prayed for sleep.

1

. Robertson, Life and Letters,

116

.

2

. Broadus, Recollections,

5

.

3

. Nancy S. Broadus, quoted in Robertson, Life and Letters,

67

.

4

. Martha Bickers, quoted in Robertson, Life and Letters,

70

.

5

. Major of the Culpeper militia; descendant of a Welsh immigrant, the name Broadus derived from Broaddus derived from Broadhurst.

6

. John A. Broadus, quoted in Robertson, Life and Letters,

24

.

7

. John A. Broadus, quoted in Robertson, Life and Letters,

24

.

8

. G. W. Hansbrough, quoted in Robertson, Life and Letters,

69

.

9

. G. W. Hansbrough, quoted in Robertson, Life and Letters,

69

.

10

. G. W. Hansbrough, quoted in Robertson, Life and Letters,

69

.

11

. G. W. Hansbrough, quoted in Robertson, Life and Letters,

69

.

12

. Uncle Dick, quoted in Robertson, Life and Letters,

29

.

13

. John A. Broadus, quoted in Robertson, Life and Letters,

33

.

Chapter Two: Emerging

An educated man . . . can keep looking at a subject till he sees into it and sees through it. If anybody imagines it easy to think, in this steady way, he has not tried it much. —John A. Broadus

¹⁴

Having absorbed the zest for learning his father embodies, teen-aged John Broadus continues his post-boarding-school education in 1844 by studying on his own, determined to fashion himself into the sort of man that evokes a father’s pride.

Edmund Broadus has steered his son away from law and politics, virtually synonymous at the time, considering their effects on one’s character potentially damaging. A few months after John leaves his uncle’s boarding school, he takes a teaching job in Clarke County—two counties to the north—with the aim of saving money for further education. Edmund approves of his son’s plan to become a physician.

But a powerful conversion experience at Mt. Poney Church of Culpeper Court House pulls the younger Broadus in another direction, toward the ministry. That emotional turning point, followed by baptism in Mountain Run, nags while John receives medical training, studies Greek, and attends a singing school in his spare time.

His sisters, entertained by his initial accounts of teaching, urge John to keep a diary. For two years he does, candidly recording the struggles of a young schoolmaster.

His entry on July 23, 1844, pertains to a boy who causes a disturbance while John leaves the room for a few minutes. The boy then spurns correction upon his teacher’s return.

There I sat in my chair with my feet up on the stove; within six feet of me sat a boy I knew to be as stubborn as an ox and who had just failed to comply with a positive command repeated five or six times; and all around were the scholars looking to see what I would do. What could I do? I didn’t want to whip him, and besides I could not conquer him by that. So I just went to him and taking him by the arm led him to my chair and seated him in it, telling him to sit still. (You may see I did not know what to do.) He got up and I sat him down again and held him there. He struggled, I held him; he cursed me and I talked to him mildly. He threatened to tell his mother, and I laughed at him. He threatened to blow me up (send me away, you know), and I told him to blow on. After about fifteen minutes, weary of being held, he sat still, and I let him go.

¹⁵

John perseveres with the daily challenges. Near the end of his teaching stint, a letter from his father touches on politics, a familiar topic yet with an eerily prescient twist.

I fear still the political effect of the division between North and South. Everything which tends to estrange and sever the feelings of people of different sections of the Union, weakens so far the Union itself, and renders more probable what is already dreaded by every patriot . . . .

¹⁶

In 1846, John completes two-and-a-half years at the classroom helm. At this time, his father accepts the newly created position of Steward for State Students, and Edmund and Nancy Broadus move to Monroe Hill on the Charlottesville campus to fulfill their dream of seeing their bright son earn a college degree.

John relishes the opportunity but must make a decision before he begins. In August he hears a transfixing sermon by a Dr. Poindexter that lays his path clear before him. He will give up his medical aspirations and become a preacher of the Baptist faith.

John applies himself. With diligence and doggedness, he plows through a rigorous curriculum that includes mathematics and ancient languages.

Late in his college years, John begins his courtship of Maria Carter Harrison with a series of letters, notes,

¹⁷

and visits. Maria responds warmly.

May 23rd

Dear John, If you like ice-cream and have the disposition to do so, won’t you take your dinner with us to-day? I didn’t know when you were here that there would be anything unusual in the meal or I would have told you then.

Please don’t think it strange of me to send for you, and don’t come if it is not entirely agreeable. I have been part of the way to town this morning and found the heat quite oppressive. But I must stop; good bye till dinner, but please don’t put yourself to any inconvenience to come here then.

Maria.

¹⁸

I have no good reason, Maria carissima, for wishing you to read this affair, unless you will consider what follows a good reason. I feel a strange desire to have you know me—all that I am, all that I am not;—to unbosom myself, to reveal all the secrets of my mind and my heart, to the only being I have ever found who could & would understand, appreciate, sympathize.

I have no silly notion that even in your so kindly partial eyes that this production which I confessed to you cost me much labor will seem aught else than what it is,—a tissue of weaknesses—a map of follies. I just took a notion that I wanted you to read it—and that is why I ask it.

I have been so happy at thinking much of the sweet converse we had last night—of the many kind words you spoke. O I thank you, dear Maria, for every treasured word & look & smile. I am happy, yes, and confident.

Adieu.

John Albert.

¹⁹

Saturday afternoon.

I told you long time ago that I had ordered some of Mozart’s music from Philadelphia. Well, to-day Mr. Deems brought me the pieces I send you, fresh from Fiot’s, he says. I am troubled that the paper is so rough and they look so much spoiled—I suppose they have been lying long time in the Music Store since they crossed the ocean. Of course I know nothing of their merits—of that you will judge, if ever you have leisure and inclination to examine them. I took them because I believe you have not very much music that bears the great composer’s name. But enough—and too much.

In the examination this morning, I succeeded tolerably well—not a few mistakes, doubtless, but I hope not very many. I have been trying to study since, and with tolerable success. I have marked out a long task for to-night—a long one. If it should be perfectly convenient for you to send me, any time after tea, a little note, though it be but three words, it would delight me very much to receive it, and would give me real aid in my exertions. Any thing from you would please me very much—even if it were possible for you to write what was not pleasing in itself; —but the sweet words which you know so well how to use, the earnest words which are prompted by your warm heart—that heart which I rejoice to know is all my own—O they delight me so much!

I would not have you trouble yourself—but if you can conveniently write a line, please do, and please believe all the while, that every word you pen will send a thrill of pleasure through the bosom of him who loves you, dear Maria, dear, dear Maria, with all his heart’s devotion.

Yours ever,

John.

²⁰

Tuesday morning

My dearly loved John will perhaps be surprised (agreeably of course) to hear from me this morning. But I have just finished learning a German lesson and fearing that I might not be able to keep up my industry during the whole day after such great exertion thought I might be induced to persevere in my attempts to do something in the way of studying by writing to inform you of the wonderful change that has come over me since you saw me last. For I am sure that you will be pleased to hear that I have actually spent two hours and a half over a lesson, which although very short and not at all difficult, I found quite a task, owing to my having been so very idle for so long a time. I am going to practice and do a great many other things to-day if I can, because I don’t wish to be as lazy always as I have told you I was recently, and I wouldn’t like to tell you to-morrow that I had again failed . . . .

I wonder if you have thought about me to-day,—I don’t know, but as you tell me to judge of you by myself, I reckon you have, if you have not been too busy. If I was not afraid that I was asking you to do what might be inconvenient, I would say please write to me before to-morrow when I shall see you. But as you like to please me I know, maybe you can find time to do what always affords more pleasure than I have ever given you to understand, perhaps. I thought when I began that I had something to say, but I have not said anything that expresses as much as the first four words, and now I must stop as I have only a few minutes left to write, even if I could write something that was worth it.

Good-bye, your own Maria.

²¹

My fondly loved Maria will permit me to hand in this hasty line, to say—I know not what! To say that you are inexpressibly dear to me—that you are a noble, genuine, true-hearted, whole-souled lady—that when I think that you, you, you, dearest Maria,—that you love me (& do I not know that you love me?)—I feel a weight of happiness that is almost burdensome to my spirit. O how I rejoice in the precious truth that the one I love with all my heart’s devotion, that that one loves me too, & with her whole heart. I know it is so, and I am happy.

Adieu. Your J.

²²

I am sick, dear Maria—not really sick, but worn down. I feel like it would be impossible for me to bear up under the crushing weight of my burden. I rose this morning with an aching head—I have labored with a heavy heart. I have no buoyancy of mind or spirits. If the request seems not too foolish, will you send me two or three little flowers? They need not be many nor rare. It would be as coming from you that I would prize them.

Do not despise me, Maria,—no, I know you cannot despise me—but please make some allowance for me when I say I cannot bear up. I am weak, physically, mentally, every way. That is why I seek comfort and support from you, from you whom I love, from you who love me.

Fondly but sadly yours,

John.

Do not understand that I have determined to quit—it is not so—but I lack energy to go on with vigor.

²³

Maria’s scrawls a brief reply. An additional, longer message is suggested by John’s response.

Please send me word how you are this morning, won’t you? I can’t help hoping that you are better, but I was frightened by being told that you might be very sick if you did not take care of yourself.

²⁴

Just a word, dear Maria.

1. Never say again that you are not able to write; for you wrote me this morning the prettiest note I ever saw. Not only the sweetest in thoughts, but the most unexceptionable, rhetorically, of all the billets, on all subjects, I have seen. I declare it’s a fact—and you may believe it, for I know I have some little taste in matters of rhetoric, and it is not altogether blinded by love.

2. I did say I was coming to-morrow, & I mean to do it.

3. There is not the slightest danger of my making myself sick—for apart from the pretty reason you suggested, I am rather too lazy. I think I see my way through my reviewing—hope to do tolerably well.

I thank you, Maria dearest, for all the sweet words you wrote. I am working very hard, but I am happy, happy, all the time.

Adieu till 1 o’clock to-morrow.

Ever—

John.

²⁵

The overwhelmed student responds also to the gift of a flower.

It was a very sweet little double violet you sent me—and you will bear with me for writing this one of several crude verses which long years agone I addressed to the first violet of Spring.

All winter long, in many an hour

Of dreariness and gloom,

I’ve sighed to see some spring-time flower

In beauteous freshness bloom:

Then I rejoice that thou art here,

That Winter’s gone, that Spring is near.

I do not claim, you know, to have any thing poetic about me, and so I don’t care a fig if all the rhymes I scribble are as dull as practicing. I would even inflict ever so many more stanzas on your patience, if I hadn’t most fortunately forgotten them.

There, did you ever, in all your long life & eventful career, see so long a note with so little sense in it. One thing, however, it plainly shows—that I am in a great humor to-night. Bybye.

²⁶

Friday, June 1st

I cannot come this evening, Maria dear, to take our wonted walk. My father is to ride, the Dr. directs half past 5 as the hour, and of course I go with him. At 7½, I wish, by your leave, to see you for a little while—not more, perhaps, than one meagre half-hour.

I am in too great a hurry to write, or I should say many things, of my love—my sorrows—I do not say my joys, for all I have now are included in the other word, love. Though sorrows gather like dark clouds around me and before me, yet it is enough that I can bask in the beams of your love-lit eye, and—Oh pshaw! I haven’t time to poetize any more.

Good-bye. Your