Our destinies were already united.
This is the twenty-first night of the moon,
The night when women die in child-birth.
I am but as a captive song-bird,
A captive bird in the hand of the fowler.
If you must travel far up river,
Search for me in every village;
If you must die, while I yet linger,
Wait for me at the Gate of Heaven.”
One of the fascinations of letter-writing is that one can wander at will from one subject to another, as the butterflies flutter from flower to flower; but I suppose there is nearly always something that suggests to the writer the sequence of thought, though it might be difficult to explain exactly what that something is. I think the reference in the above stanzas to Adam and the Gate of Heaven,—or Paradise,—have suggested to me the snake,