Boston, Mass.
Dec. 8th, 1883

My Very Dear Friend:
Yours of the 8th, and appendix of the 9th, came to-day. You never yet wrote me a letter in which your pen travelled faster than my pleasure. And I never flatter. I do receive letters, the length of which weakens and wearies the strength of my patience. And some think I have infinite patience. But your letters are personal revelations of thoughts and impressions. And, after all, what should be less formal and more personal than communings of minds and hearts! Very few know how to write letters. Many know how to compose letters. In writing, as in conversing face to face, we should be simple and sincere. Besides, there is a certain spell, hard to define, that is created by separation, and that makes us more frank and candid with one another. Nearness causes timidity; and timidity only half reveals. Distance begets, somehow, more confidence; and the greater the confidence, the greater the sincerity. When faces are too close together, they fail to see clearly one another's expressions, which are always revelations of hearts and minds. A pen held in a hand far away is braver than a voice near enough to reach one's hearing. Those who know me best regard me as a prodigy of naturalness; and yet I can write better and more like myself than "I can converse" face to face. It may seem strange when I tell you that there are only three persons living to whom I write in the same key and chord and tone as I do to you. Letters between souls that are akin (and that is higher kinship than that of maternal blood) ought to be like Sacred Scriptures-all truth, all revelations of the unseen, all, also, beautiful Apocalypses of hearts. This world (I mean its people) is very shallow, very narrow, very formal, very artificial, very superficial, and very insincere. It does not understand a dreamer or his dreamings. It cannot comprehend a thinker or his thoughts. Its standards are low. Its criteria are uncharitable. Its mind is mean, and its heart is hollow; hence hypocrisy, the mother of many vile children.

Frankness is a fault in its eyes, and candor is a horror. To that world, even grace apart, I never belonged by temperament. If there were no religion, I would adore honor. I cannot stand aloof from that world, but I certainly stand apart from it. Aloof means contempt, apart means pity.
--

A man is never fully known until he has been tried. Who ever knows the awful temptations of a man, public and popular, admired and applauded? No one. Who ever knows the awful gauntlet of allurements, tender and terrible, through which he must pass? Very few. I know it all. And when I am dead and gone, it may be known, but the grave wherein I rest will be pure as an altar. I will not care much then, for I think I will rest awhile; and when you and I meet in Heaven, as meet we shall, you will think of this letter of Earth. I love God with a love beneath Him-but oh ! I love Him with every fibre of my being. I want to live a little longer-perhaps for selfish ends, -but when I close this letter with my name, I could die at once; I would if so God willed. The older I grow, the less love, but the more pity I have for the world. It has (poor thing) treated me with so much kindness,-it has given me love and applause. When I die it is going to talk finely about the poet-priest. My death will be noted, my qualities exaggerated, my life will be written about, etc., etc., but my inner self's story will remain in the silences. It is better so. Silence is like a true woman's heart, and is feminine. Speech is masculine. How I do wander off and wander on when I write to you, like a person half a-dreaming! I think that most of my thoughts wear the drapery of dreams. I was told a hundred times, and often by Bishop Quinlan, that I never looked myself except when wearing the cassock; that secular clothes seemed to be out of place, or I out of place in them. And so it is with my, thinkings-they like to wear the altar robes of reveries.

Now let me talk about that outer world-the people. They have amazed me in more ways than one. They have taken me (figuratively, of course) into their arms. They have startled me by their enthusiasm. Almost every day I meet with new surprises. I listen, and am listless. That amazes them. Yesterday, the Archbishop came to return a call I had made on him. He said: "Well, there are three rages in Boston now: Mrs. Langtry, Lawrence Barrett, and F. Ryan. But the last-mentioned rage moves about with such a strange indifference, that to priests and people, Protestant and Catholic, he is a perfect wonder." I smiled. "Do you never laugh?" said the Bishop. "Rarely," said I, " and never aloud."

Last Saturday, several Jesuit Fathers came to my room after night-prayers. I had promised to preach next day at High Mass. They had heard me lecture. But in my lecture I was calm and very deliberate, and my style in them would be what rhetoricians call elegant, nothing more. So one of the Fathers said to me: "The elite of the city will be in church to-morrow, and you must let yourself out." I said: " Very well, to-morrow I will let myself half out," and with that annoying quiet way of mine, said: " I will startle you all." After awhile they went. I walked up and down my room till one o'clock in the morning; and after reading the Gospel of Second Sunday in Advent, I went to bed prepared. Said Mass in the morning at seven, was chatting away with the Fathers, and smoking, they wondering I did not return to my room.

The church was crowded. I went to the pulpit. I looked at them, read the Gospel, and began. In five minutes I saw I held them,-not for vanity sake, but for Christ's and truth's. In the last few years I am sometimes very dramatic. Then I described John the Baptist leaning over the edge of his desert-pulpit, gazing on the sunset of the Old Dispensation, he its only golden cloud, and looking on the sunrise of the New Dispensation flashing out of the face of Christ when He besought baptism. The church was thrilled. Besides, my voice is stronger than ever it was in olden years. Well, after Mass I went quietly to my room. It was soon crowded. The highest compliment to power suddenly revealed is first a wondering silence. The wonder is in their look at one-silence on their lips. Then when silence was broken, I heard a priest turn towards me and say:" I never heard the like; such a sermon was never preached in Boston," and so on. Now I stood in that scene absolutely as quiet in heart as in manner, as if I were by myself alone. Next day one of the papers said: "His action was that of a sacred dramatist; his voice is phenomenal, his appearance mysterious, his gestures as unconsciously made as a child's, and every one that heard him left the church with the impression that he did not try to make an effort, and that he holds in reserve an indefinite power of thought which he can muster into service whenever he so wishes." Since then I have become the "sensation." It all amuses me. Every day I am called on by crowds. Is it not strange, or is it? that when the poor hard-worked factory girls, all of Irish race, call on me in twos and threes, that I feel happiest? And I know they leave me with a little more brightness in their hearts. You ought to pray every night for the factory girls. O my God! it is awful, too awful, to put the story into a letter. Some day in the future, in a vague way, I will tell you the reasons why I ask your prayers for them. Factories are like Sodoms and Gemorrahs. But enough. I will not reach home before first of April. Now, you see, I have out-lengthened your letter; only my penmanship is very often ungraceful. But I must write in a hurry. Your presentiment about my nearness on the 8th was true to fact. I will pray for you in your retreat. I have not, like you, any perceptible regret in the deaths of years. Since a certain year, when I was only sixteen years of age, died, I have no special affection or sympathy with any particular year. Christmas makes me feel lonesome. I only spent seven Christmases at home; their memory is dim. My fifteenth Christmas I spent with relatives. It was a sweet, bright feast from the Communion of all of us in the morning to the good-nights, and especially one good-night. Every Christmas I spend over again my fifteenth Christmas. You see, I live in yesterdays; my dreams, are there. In to-days I work hard. To-morrows give me no troubles or joy. I wish you a holy Christmas and a blessed New Year. Regards to all,

Yours faithfully,
A.J. Ryan