Jimmy composes poetry himself. He is very clever in spots. And in other spots, where his brain was hurt when Aunt Elizabeth pushed him into our New Moon well, he isn’t anything. There’s just blankness there. So people call him simple, and Aunt Ruth dares to say he hasn’t sense enough to shoo a cat from cream. And yet if you put all his clever spots together there isn’t anybody in Blair Water has half as much real cleverness as he has—not even Mr. Carpenter. The trouble is you can’t put his clever spots together—there are always those gaps between. But I love Cousin Jimmy and I’m never in the least afraid of him when his queer spells come on him. Everybody else is—even Aunt Elizabeth, though perhaps it is remorse with her, instead of fear—except Perry. Perry always brags that he is never afraid of anything—doesn’t know what fear is. I think that is very wonderful. I wish I could be so fearless. Mr. Carpenter says fear is a vile thing, and is at the bottom of almost every wrong and hatred of the world.
“‘Cast it out, Jade,’ he says—‘cast it out of your heart. Fear is a confession of weakness. What you fear is stronger than you, or you think it is, else you wouldn’t be afraid of it. Remember your Emerson—“always do what you are afraid to do.”’
“But that is a counsel of perfection, as Dean says, and I don’t believe I’ll ever be able to attain to it. To be honest, I am afraid of a good many things, but there are only two people in the word I’m truly afraid of. One is Mrs. Kent, and the other is Mad Mr. Morrison. I’m terribly afraid of him and I think almost every one is. His home is in Derry Pond, but he hardly ever stays there—he roams over the country looking for his lost bride. He was married only a few weeks when his young wife died, many years ago, and he has never been right in his mind since. He insists she is not dead, only lost, and that he will find her some time. He has grown old and bent, looking for her, but to him she is still young and fair.
