with the development of nations and people; and in particular, to study the women and the homes of the New World, and from the threshold of the home to obtain a view of the future of humanity, because, as the river is born from the springs of heaven, so is the life and the fate of a people born from the hidden life of the home.
I came, in a word, to occupy myself with public affairs; and it is private affairs, it is the individual which seizes upon my interest, my feelings, my thoughts. I came with a secret intention of breaking myself loose from fiction and its subjects, and of living with thinkers for other purposes; and I am compelled towards it more forcibly than ever; compelled involuntarily, both by thought and feeling, towards fiction; compelled to bring into life forms, scenes, and circumstances, which, as dim shadows, have for twenty years existed in the background of my soul. And in this so-called realist country, but which has more poetical life in it than people have any idea of in Europe, have I already, “in petto,” experienced and written more of the romance of life, than I have done for many years. And I shall continue to do so during my residence here.
When I became aware that, from my waking in the morning, I was occupied in my innermost work-room, not with American affairs and things, but with my own ideal creations, influenced by the interest which everything that surrounded me, and which my new circumstances excited within me, I then gave up the thought of attempting to do anything else but what God had given me to do. I must also here employ my talent, and follow my own vocation, and let fate and circumstances make of it what they must and will.
I shall, as hitherto, study the world of private life, but shall allow the air and life of the New World, that great world's life, to flow into it, and give to it greater effect. Thus would I always have it to be. I must work it out
