I am amused and interested in the “ower true tale” you told of the “Mr. A+Miss B., etc.” entanglement. But I fear it is too complicated for my pen. Kipling would glory in such a plot. Real life puts fiction to shame in the queer situations it evolves. Things won’t go by rule. Your story reminds me of the old nursery tale of my childhood where the pig wouldn’t go, the stick wouldn’t beat the pig, the fire wouldn’t burn the stick, etc. But in the end it wound up happily by everything beginning to do what was wanted of it. I fear few of the “real” stories develop so satisfactorily. Generally folks go on wanting something all their life or—far greater tragedy still—get it after they have outgrown the wish for it and find nothing but the outward husk of their desire left. Have you ever read The Story of an African Farm? There is a little incident in it of a child who longed for a box of beautifully coloured spools her mother had. One day her mother gave her the box and, wild with joy, she rushed away to open it. Alas, the spools were there—but all the beautiful coloured threads were gone. I fear life gives us many boxes of spools.
Thank you for your tract on the sympathy of religions. I enjoyed it much and agreed with it. Am returning it as requested under separate wrapper. Hope I haven’t inconvenienced you by my delay. I was keeping it to show a friend who did not come until very recently. Sometimes I wonder whether religion has been a curse or blessing to the world. It has much that is beautiful in it but it seems also to have caused hideous suffering. Jesus spoke no truer word than “I have not come to send peace but a sword.” Most religions have set men at variance with each other. Nothing is so bitter and relentless as the “theologicum odium.” There are queer contradictions in these matters. I know an old lady who is one of the sweetest kindest creatures alive. She would not harm a fly and I have seen her weep bitterly over the sufferings of a wounded cat. But it puts her into a simple fury to even hint that a merciful and loving God will hardly burn for all eternity the great majority of his creatures. I cannot understand this attitude on the part of so many. Nothing seems to enrage some people so much as any attempt to take away or mitigate their dearly beloved hell.
I’ve been re-reading a very fascinating book lately,—The Law of Psychic Phenomena. Probably I’ve mentioned it before. I do wish you could read it. If it were mine I would send it to you but it is not. I’d love to try some of the experiments in it with some mutually interested friend. I have tried one or two, such as I could try alone, and have had success too. For example, I told a friend of mine that I meant to try to make her dream of me some night. She was to mark it down in the morning if she did but she was not to know the night I was to make the attempt. One night before I went to sleep I began repeating in thought “I’ll make So-and-So dream of me tonight” and kept it up, thinking of nothing else until I went to sleep. She did dream of me that night. It may have only been a coincidence. Let us try it. When you receive this try to make me dream of you some night and if I do I’ll carefully observe the date and let you know the result. Also, I’ll try to make you dream of me after I think this letter has had time to reach you. It would be better to will that the dream should be horrible as we would be more likely to remember it. It is claimed that we only remember the dreams that we dream just before awakening. An unpleasant dream would probably awake us. If we can succeed it will be very interesting as establishing the possibility of mind acting upon mind, independent of matter and in defiance of time and space. Of course it will be well to remember the difference in the time between here and Alberta. It’s about two or three hours, isn’t it? Midnight out there would be between two and three here. So if you command your “subjective mind” to make mine dream of you during those hours it would probably contribute to the success of the experiment. I have also been trying some little experiments in “mental healing” on myself, by impressing ideas on my “subjective mind” before going to sleep, and there is certainly something in it. The book explains it all by purely natural laws and discards all “supernatural” explanations. It explains “Christian Science” along the same lines, also all manifestations of so-called spiritualism. I have found one thing anyway beyond dispute—it is a cure for insomnia. If I keep saying a thing over to myself persistently before I go to sleep one night, the next night I can put myself at once to sleep again by beginning to say it. The book mentions this as self-hypnotism. I believe fully that a person’s “subjective mind” has great power over that person’s body and objective mind but I am not at all convinced that it can influence another person. If you can make me dream of you or vice versa it will go far to convince me. Well, good-night. Laugh at my experiments if you will. They cost nothing.
Yours sincerely,
L. M. Montgomery.
Cavendish, P.E.I.,
Sunday morning,
April 5, 1908.
My dear Mr. W.:—
I am going to answer your letter over the heads of several others having the prior claim of previous receipt because there are some parts of it I want to discuss before they grow cold with keeping.
I am very sorry to learn that you are still “on the rocks” of trouble. But as I can do nothing save express sincere sympathy and hope that you will find a way out of your difficulties, I will simply say that I do so sympathize and hope and leave it so.
I have not tried to make you “dream” yet but shall some of these times. I did dream of you one night—March 14th—but as you say you did not try to make me there was nothing in that. It was a foolish dream. I was visiting at an uncle’s and my aunt asked me to “go to the granary and get some wheat for the hens.” I went and when I opened the door you were sitting on a keg inside. I don’t know how I knew it was you but I did and I was not at all surprised to see you there. You at once began telling me that you had been all through the Boer War and were giving me an account of your South African campaign when I woke up!
Dreams are usually very unaccountable. I had such a silly one one night last week. I dreamed I was haunted by the ghost of a hat! Everywhere I went I was attended by a black hat floating in the air beside my head. When I tried to grasp it my hand went through it in the most approved ghostly fashion. I was not frightened only annoyed because of the comment it provoked—since the hat seemed to be visible to all!
My book hasn’t come yet but I am expecting it every day now. The clipping I enclose was taken from a New York paper—a publisher’s foreword, of course, so counting for nothing as far as honest criticism is concerned. Of course, I don’t expect there will be much criticism of any sort, good or bad. The reviews don’t often take account of such small fry as juvenile books. I wonder what Miriam would have to say about my book if she knew. I’d love, just out of sheer curiosity, to hear her frank opinion of it. She has never written me since I sent her my frank criticism on what she sent for review—but perhaps that had nothing to do with her not writing. Do you ever hear from her now? I often think of her—she was a unique character in many ways, as expressed in her letters. Well, well, you know what the old Quaker lady said, “Everybody’s queer but thee and me—and thee’s a little queer!”
As for photograph, well, I have none of mine on hand just now and don’t know when I will have any. I can’t get to town for more than a day at a time twice a year and there I’m always too tired and worried to bother with photos. But whenever I do I’ll remember you, and shall hope to have one of yours in exchange.
Yes, I only do three hours’ literary work a day—two hours’ writing and one typewriting. I write fast, having “thought out” plot and dialogue while I go about my household work. I think the magazines really are raising their pay. Everything has gone up so I suppose they have to fall in line too. Yesterday I got $35 for an old serial from the Housewife. It was five or six chapters long and was much peddled,—name, “Four Winds.”
Your experience with Mr. Tyner amused me very much. I have met so many men of his type. I remember one time, when I was teaching school up west I went home to dinner one day and found a “preacher” there who evidently