Keats. I sounded her on poetry in some of its human aspects: there was nobody at home. Her own enlightened north country has some poets of borealic iron and brain-brawn and beauty: to Josephina's wooden intellect their books are eternally closed.
But the Demon Rum looses a heated flood of poetry upon her, which I can but vision and not feel.
I am incapable of strong drink even as Josephina is incapable of John Keats.
We are quits there.
I look on myself as the more fortunate.—John Keats!
A woman so drunk as to fall and reel about is always an exquisitely shameful thing. And when I think of how she's tossed into the wagon—to mention but one item—
But it's a matter of the human equation. Doubtless it is all relative. The Finn woman is not aware of how she is knocked about, and if she were she would not regard it with any of my imagination. So what matter?
A likeable and admirable person is Josephina. A so strong fine businesslike worker, a so thoroughbred sport, a so splendid drunkard, and asking no odds of God or man. In her stolid Finn fashion she likes me as she has proven, and I like her though she makes me feel inferior.
—if Josephina could and would write her inner
