The Woman in White

Chapter 1

How many days have I still to wait? Only one! To-morrow, the

twelfth, the travellers return to England. I can hardly realise

my own happiness--I can hardly believe that the next four-and-

twenty hours will complete the last day of separation between

Laura and me.

She and her husband have been in Italy all the winter, and

afterwards in the Tyrol. They come back, accompanied by Count

Fosco and his wife, who propose to settle somewhere in the

neighbourhood of London, and who have engaged to stay at

Blackwater Park for the summer months before deciding on a place

of residence. So long as Laura returns, no matter who returns

with her. Sir Percival may fill the house from floor to ceiling,

if he likes, on condition that his wife and I inhabit it together.

Meanwhile, here I am, established at Blackwater Park, "the ancient

and interesting seat" (as the county history obligingly informs

me) "of Sir Percival Glyde, Bart.," and the future abiding-place

(as I may now venture to add on my account) of plain Marian

Halcombe, spinster, now settled in a snug little sitting-room,

with a cup of tea by her side, and all her earthly possessions

ranged round her in three boxes and a bag.

I left Limmeridge yesterday, having received Laura's delightful

letter from Paris the day before. I had been previously uncertain

whether I was to meet them in London or in Hampshire, but this

last letter informed me that Sir Percival proposed to land at

Southampton, and to travel straight on to his country-house. He

has spent so much money abroad that he has none left to defray the

expenses of living in London for the remainder of the season, and

he is economically resolved to pass the summer and autumn quietly

at Blackwater. Laura has had more than enough of excitement and

change of scene, and is pleased at the prospect of country

tranquillity and retirement which her husband's prudence provides

for her. As for me, I am ready to be happy anywhere in her

society. We are all, therefore, well contented in our various

ways, to begin with.

Last night I slept in London, and was delayed there so long to-day

by various calls and commissions, that I did not reach Blackwater

this evening till after dusk.

The house is situated on a dead flat, and seems to be shut in--

almost suffocated, to my north-country notions, by trees. I have

seen nobody but the man-servant who opened the door to me, and the

housekeeper, a very civil person, who showed me the way to my own

room, and got me my tea. I have a nice little boudoir and

bedroom, at the end of a long passage on the first floor. The

servants and some of the spare rooms are on the second floor, and

all the living rooms are on the ground floor. I have not seen one

of them yet, and I know nothing about the house, except that one

wing of it is said to be five hundred years old, that it had a

moat round it once, and that it gets its name of Blackwater from a

lake in the park.

Eleven o'clock has just struck, in a ghostly and solemn manner,

from a turret over the centre of the house, which I saw when I

came in. A large dog has been woke, apparently by the sound of

the bell, and is howling and yawning drearily, somewhere round a

corner. I hear echoing footsteps in the passages below, and the

iron thumping of bolts and bars at the house door. The servants

are evidently going to bed. Shall I follow their example?

No, I am not half sleepy enough. Sleepy, did I say? I feel as if

I should never close my eyes again. The bare anticipation of

seeing that dear face, and hearing that well-known voice to-

morrow, keeps me in a perpetual fever of excitement. If I only

had the privileges of a man, I would order out Sir Percival's best

horse instantly, and tear away on a night-gallop, eastward, to

meet the rising sun--a long, hard, heavy, ceaseless gallop of

hours and hours, like the famous highwayman's ride to York.

Being, however, nothing but a woman, condemned to patience,

propriety, and petticoats for life, I must respect the house-

keeper's opinions, and try to compose myself in some feeble and

feminine way.

Reading is out of the question--I can't fix my attention on books.

Let me try if I can write myself into sleepiness and fatigue. My

journal has been very much neglected of late. What can I recall--

standing, as I now do, on the threshold of a new life--of persons

and events, of chances and changes, during the past six months--

the long, weary, empty interval since Laura's wedding-day?

Walter Hartright is uppermost in my memory, and he passes first in

the shadowy procession of my absent friends. I received a few

lines from him, after the landing of the expedition in Honduras,

written more cheerfully and hopefully than he has written yet. A

month or six weeks later I saw an extract from an American

newspaper, describing the departure of the adventurers on their

inland journey. They were last seen entering a wild primeval

forest, each man with his rifle on his shoulder and his baggage at

his back. Since that time, civilisation has lost all trace of

them. Not a line more have I received from Walter, not a fragment

of news from the expedition has appeared in any of the public

journals.

The same dense, disheartening obscurity hangs over the fate and

fortunes of Anne Catherick, and her companion, Mrs. Clements.

Nothing whatever has been heard of either of them. Whether they

are in the country or out of it, whether they are living or dead,

no one knows. Even Sir Percival's solicitor has lost all hope,

and has ordered the useless search after the fugitives to be

finally given up.

Our good old friend Mr. Gilmore has met with a sad check in his

active professional career. Early in the spring we were alarmed

by hearing that he had been found insensible at his desk, and that

the seizure was pronounced to be an apoplectic fit. He had been

long complaining of fulness and oppression in the head, and his

doctor had warned him of the consequences that would follow his

persistency in continuing to work, early and late, as if he were

still a young man. The result now is that he has been positively

ordered to keep out of his office for a year to come, at least,

and to seek repose of body and relief of mind by altogether

changing his usual mode of life. The business is left,

accordingly, to be carried on by his partner, and he is himself,

at this moment, away in Germany, visiting some relations who are

settled there in mercantile pursuits. Thus another true friend

and trustworthy adviser is lost to us--lost, I earnestly hope and

trust, for a time only.

Poor Mrs. Vesey travelled with me as far as London. It was

impossible to abandon her to solitude at Limmeridge after Laura

and I had both left the house, and we have arranged that she is to

live with an unmarried younger sister of hers, who keeps a school

at Clapham. She is to come here this autumn to visit her pupil--I

might almost say her adopted child. I saw the good old lady safe

to her destination, and left her in the care of her relative,

quietly happy at the prospect of seeing Laura again in a few

months' time.

As for Mr. Fairlie, I believe I am guilty of no injustice if I

describe him as being unutterably relieved by having the house

clear of us women. The idea of his missing his niece is simply

preposterous--he used to let months pass in the old times without

attempting to see her--and in my case and Mrs. Vesey's, I take

leave to consider his telling us both that he was half heart-

broken at our departure, to be equivalent to a confession that he

was secretly rejoiced to get rid of us. His last caprice has led

him to keep two photographers incessantly employed in producing

sun-pictures of all the treasures and curiosities in his

possession. One complete copy of the collection of the

photographs is to be presented to the Mechanics' Institution of

Carlisle, mounted on the finest cardboard, with ostentatious red-

letter inscriptions underneath, "Madonna and Child by Raphael. In

the possession of Frederick Fairlie, Esquire." "Copper coin of the

period of Tiglath Pileser. In the possession of Frederick

Fairlie, Esquire." "Unique Rembrandt etching. Known all over

Europe as THE SMUDGE, from a printer's blot in the corner which

exists in no other copy. Valued at three hundred guineas. In the

possession of Frederick Fairlie, Esq." Dozens of photographs of

this sort, and all inscribed in this manner, were completed before

I left Cumberland, and hundreds more remain to be done. With this

new interest to occupy him, Mr. Fairlie will be a happy man for

months and months to come, and the two unfortunate photographers

will share the social martyrdom which he has hitherto inflicted on

his valet alone.

So much for the persons and events which hold the foremost place

in my memory. What next of the one person who holds the foremost

place in my heart? Laura has been present to my thoughts all the

while I have been writing these lines. What can I recall of her

during the past six months, before I close my journal for the

night?

I have only her letters to guide me, and on the most important of

all the questions which our correspondence can discuss, every one

of those letters leaves me in the dark.

Does he treat her kindly? Is she happier now than she was when I

parted with her on the wedding-day? All my letters have contained

these two inquiries, put more or less directly, now in one form,

and now in another, and all, on that point only, have remained

without reply, or have been answered as if my questions merely

related to the state of her health. She informs me, over and over

again, that she is perfectly well--that travelling agrees with

her--that she is getting through the winter, for the first time in

her life, without catching cold--but not a word can I find

anywhere which tells me plainly that she is reconciled to her

marriage, and that she can now look back to the twenty-second of

December without any bitter feelings of repentance and regret.

The name of her husband is only mentioned in her letters, as she

might mention the name of a friend who was travelling with them,

and who had undertaken to make all the arrangements for the

journey. "Sir Percival" has settled that we leave on such a day--

"Sir Percival" has decided that we travel by such a road.

Sometimes she writes "Percival" only, but very seldom--in nine

cases out of ten she gives him his title.

I cannot find that his habits and opinions have changed and

coloured hers in any single particular. The usual moral

transformation which is insensibly wrought in a young, fresh,

sensitive woman by her marriage, seems never to have taken place

in Laura. She writes of her own thoughts and impressions, amid

all the wonders she has seen, exactly as she might have written to

some one else, if I had been travelling with her instead of her

husband. I see no betrayal anywhere of sympathy of any kind

existing between them. Even when she wanders from the subject of

her travels, and occupies herself with the prospects that await

her in England, her speculations are busied with her future as my

sister, and persistently neglect to notice her future as Sir

Percival's wife. In all this there is no undertone of complaint

to warn me that she is absolutely unhappy in her married life.

The impression I have derived from our correspondence does not,

thank God, lead me to any such distressing conclusion as that. I

only see a sad torpor, an unchangeable indifference, when I turn

my mind from her in the old character of a sister, and look at

her, through the medium of her letters, in the new character of a

wife. In other words, it is always Laura Fairlie who has been

writing to me for the last six months, and never Lady Glyde.

The strange silence which she maintains on the subject of her

husband's character and conduct, she preserves with almost equal

resolution in the few references which her later letters contain

to the name of her husband's bosom friend, Count Fosco.

For some unexplained reason the Count and his wife appear to have

changed their plans abruptly, at the end of last autumn, and to

have gone to Vienna instead of going to Rome, at which latter

place Sir Percival had expected to find them when he left England.

They only quitted Vienna in the spring, and travelled as far as

the Tyrol to meet the bride and bridegroom on their homeward

journey. Laura writes readily enough about the meeting with

Madame Fosco, and assures me that she has found her aunt so much

changed for the better--so much quieter, and so much more sensible

as a wife than she was as a single woman--that I shall hardly know

her again when I see her here. But on the subject of Count Fosco

(who interests me infinitely more than his wife), Laura is

provokingly circumspect and silent. She only says that he puzzles

her, and that she will not tell me what her impression of him is

until I have seen him, and formed my own opinion first.

This, to my mind, looks ill for the Count. Laura has preserved,

far more perfectly than most people do in later life, the child's

subtle faculty of knowing a friend by instinct, and if I am right

in assuming that her first impression of Count Fosco has not been

favourable, I for one am in some danger of doubting and

distrusting that illustrious foreigner before I have so much as

set eyes on him. But, patience, patience--this uncertainty, and

many uncertainties more, cannot last much longer. To-morrow will

see all my doubts in a fair way of being cleared up, sooner or

later.

It is a still, sultry, moonless night. The stars are dull and

few. The trees that shut out the view on all sides look dimly

black and solid in the distance, like a great wall of rock. I

hear the croaking of frogs, faint and far off, and the echoes of

the great clock hum in the airless calm long after the strokes

have ceased. I wonder how Blackwater Park will look in the

daytime? I don't altogether like it by night.

The main body of the building is of the time of that highly-

overrated woman, Queen Elizabeth. On the ground floor there are

two hugely long galleries, with low ceilings lying parallel with

each other, and rendered additionally dark and dismal by hideous

family portraits--every one of which I should like to burn. The

rooms on the floor above the two galleries are kept in tolerable

repair, but are very seldom used. The civil housekeeper, who

acted as my guide, offered to show me over them, but considerately

added that she feared I should find them rather out of order. My

respect for the integrity of my own petticoats and stockings

infinitely exceeds my respect for all the Elizabethan bedrooms in

the kingdom, so I positively declined exploring the upper regions

of dust and dirt at the risk of soiling my nice clean clothes.

The housekeeper said, "I am quite of your opinion, miss," and

appeared to think me the most sensible woman she had met with for

a long time past.

So much, then, for the main building. Two wings are added at

either end of it. The half-ruined wing on the left (as you

approach the house) was once a place of residence standing by

itself, and was built in the fourteenth century. One of Sir

Percival's maternal ancestors--I don't remember, and don't care

which--tacked on the main building, at right angles to it, in the

aforesaid Queen Elizabeth's time. The housekeeper told me that

the architecture of "the old wing," both outside and inside, was

considered remarkably fine by good judges. On further

investigation I discovered that good judges could only exercise

their abilities on Sir Percival's piece of antiquity by previously

dismissing from their minds all fear of damp, darkness, and rats.

Under these circumstances, I unhesitatingly acknowledged myself to

be no judge at all, and suggested that we should treat "the old

wing" precisely as we had previously treated the Elizabethan

bedrooms. Once more the housekeeper said, "I am quite of your

opinion, miss," and once more she looked at me with undisguised

admiration of my extraordinary common-sense.

We went next to the wing on the right, which was built, by way of

completing the wonderful architectural jumble at Blackwater Park,

in the time of George the Second.

This is the habitable part of the house, which has been repaired

and redecorated inside on Laura's account. My two rooms, and all

the good bedrooms besides, are on the first floor, and the

basement contains a drawing-room, a dining-room, a morning-room, a

library, and a pretty little boudoir for Laura, all very nicely

ornamented in the bright modern way, and all very elegantly

furnished with the delightful modern luxuries. None of the rooms

are anything like so large and airy as our rooms at Limmeridge,

but they all look pleasant to live in. I was terribly afraid,

from what I had heard of Blackwater Park, of fatiguing antique

chairs, and dismal stained glass, and musty, frouzy hangings, and

all the barbarous lumber which people born without a sense of

comfort accumulate about them, in defiance of the consideration

due to the convenience of their friends. It is an inexpressible

relief to find that the nineteenth century has invaded this

strange future home of mine, and has swept the dirty "good old

times" out of the way of our daily life.

I dawdled away the morning--part of the time in the rooms

downstairs, and part out of doors in the great square which is

formed by the three sides of the house, and by the lofty iron

railings and gates which protect it in front. A large circular

fishpond with stone sides, and an allegorical leaden monster in

the middle, occupies the centre of the square. The pond itself is

full of gold and silver fish, and is encircled by a broad belt of

the softest turf I ever walked on. I loitered here on the shady

side pleasantly enough till luncheon-time, and after that took my

broad straw hat and wandered out alone in the warm lovely sunlight

to explore the grounds.

Daylight confirmed the impression which I had felt the night

before, of there being too many trees at Blackwater. The house is

stifled by them. They are, for the most part, young, and planted

far too thickly. I suspect there must have been a ruinous cutting

down of timber all over the estate before Sir Percival's time, and

an angry anxiety on the part of the next possessor to fill up all

the gaps as thickly and rapidly as possible. After looking about

me in front of the house, I observed a flower-garden on my left

hand, and walked towards it to see what I could discover in that

direction.

On a nearer view the garden proved to be small and poor and ill

kept. I left it behind me, opened a little gate in a ring fence,

and found myself in a plantation of fir-trees.

A pretty winding path, artificially made, led me on among the

trees, and my north-country experience soon informed me that I was

approaching sandy, heathy ground. After a walk of more than half

a mile, I should think, among the firs, the path took a sharp

turn--the trees abruptly ceased to appear on either side of me,

and I found myself standing suddenly on the margin of a vast open

space, and looking down at the Blackwater lake from which the

house takes its name.

The ground, shelving away below me, was all sand, with a few

little heathy hillocks to break the monotony of it in certain

places. The lake itself had evidently once flowed to the spot on

which I stood, and had been gradually wasted and dried up to less

than a third of its former size. I saw its still, stagnant

waters, a quarter of a mile away from me in the hollow, separated

into pools and ponds by twining reeds and rushes, and little

knolls of earth. On the farther bank from me the trees rose

thickly again, and shut out the view, and cast their black shadows

on the sluggish, shallow water. As I walked down to the lake, I

saw that the ground on its farther side was damp and marshy,

overgrown with rank grass and dismal willows. The water, which

was clear enough on the open sandy side, where the sun shone,

looked black and poisonous opposite to me, where it lay deeper

under the shade of the spongy banks, and the rank overhanging

thickets and tangled trees. The frogs were croaking, and the rats

were slipping in and out of the shadowy water, like live shadows

themselves, as I got nearer to the marshy side of the lake. I saw

here, lying half in and half out of the water, the rotten wreck of

an old overturned boat, with a sickly spot of sunlight glimmering

through a gap in the trees on its dry surface, and a snake basking

in the midst of the spot, fantastically coiled and treacherously

still. Far and near the view suggested the same dreary

impressions of solitude and decay, and the glorious brightness of

the summer sky overhead seemed only to deepen and harden the gloom

and barrenness of the wilderness on which it shone. I turned and

retraced my steps to the high heathy ground, directing them a

little aside from my former path towards a shabby old wooden shed,

which stood on the outer skirt of the fir plantation, and which

had hitherto been too unimportant to share my notice with the

wide, wild prospect of the lake.

On approaching the shed I found that it had once been a boat-

house, and that an attempt had apparently been made to convert it

afterwards into a sort of rude arbour, by placing inside it a

firwood seat, a few stools, and a table. I entered the place, and

sat down for a little while to rest and get my breath again.

I had not been in the boat-house more than a minute when it struck

me that the sound of my own quick breathing was very strangely

echoed by something beneath me. I listened intently for a moment,

and heard a low, thick, sobbing breath that seemed to come from

the ground under the seat which I was occupying. My nerves are

not easily shaken by trifles, but on this occasion I started to my

feet in a fright--called out--received no answer--summoned back my

recreant courage, and looked under the seat.

There, crouched up in the farthest corner, lay the forlorn cause

of my terror, in the shape of a poor little dog--a black and white

spaniel. The creature moaned feebly when I looked at it and

called to it, but never stirred. I moved away the seat and looked

closer. The poor little dog's eyes were glazing fast, and there

were spots of blood on its glossy white side. The misery of a

weak, helpless, dumb creature is surely one of the saddest of all

the mournful sights which this world can show. I lifted the poor

dog in my arms as gently as I could, and contrived a sort of make-

shift hammock for him to lie in, by gathering up the front of my

dress all round him. In this way I took the creature, as

painlessly as possible, and as fast as possible, back to the

house.

Finding no one in the hall I went up at once to my own sitting-

room, made a bed for the dog with one of my old shawls, and rang

the bell. The largest and fattest of all possible house-maids

answered it, in a state of cheerful stupidity which would have

provoked the patience of a saint. The girl's fat, shapeless face

actually stretched into a broad grin at the sight of the wounded

creature on the floor.

"What do you see there to laugh at?" I asked, as angrily as if she

had been a servant of my own. "Do you know whose dog it is?"

"No, miss, that I certainly don't." She stooped, and looked down

at the spaniel's injured side--brightened suddenly with the

irradiation of a new idea--and pointing to the wound with a

chuckle of satisfaction, said, "That's Baxter's doings, that is."

The girl grinned again more cheerfully than ever. "Bless you,

miss! Baxter's the keeper, and when he finds strange dogs hunting

about, he takes and shoots 'em. It's keeper's dooty miss, I think

that dog will die. Here's where he's been shot, ain't it? That's

Baxter's doings, that is. Baxter's doings, miss, and Baxter's

dooty."

I was almost wicked enough to wish that Baxter had shot the

housemaid instead of the dog. Seeing that it was quite useless to

expect this densely impenetrable personage to give me any help in

relieving the suffering creature at our feet, I told her to

request the housekeeper's attendance with my compliments. She

went out exactly as she had come in, grinning from ear to ear. As

the door closed on her she said to herself softly, "It's Baxter's

doings and Baxter's dooty--that's what it is."

The housekeeper, a person of some education and intelligence,

thoughtfully brought upstairs with her some milk and some warm

water. The instant she saw the dog on the floor she started and

changed colour.

"Only yesterday. She said some one had reported that a stranger

answering to the description of her daughter had been seen in our

neighbourhood. No such report has reached us here, and no such

report was known in the village, when I sent to make inquiries

there on Mrs. Catherick's account. She certainly brought this

poor little dog with her when she came, and I saw it trot out

after her when she went away. I suppose the creature strayed into

the plantations, and got shot. Where did you find it, Miss

Halcombe?"

"Ah, yes, that is the plantation side, and the poor thing dragged

itself, I suppose, to the nearest shelter, as dogs will, to die.

If you can moisten its lips with the milk, Miss Halcombe, I will

wash the clotted hair from the wound. I am very much afraid it is

too late to do any good. However, we can but try."

Mrs. Catherick! The name still rang in my ears, as if the

housekeeper had only that moment surprised me by uttering it.

While we were attending to the dog, the words of Walter

Hartright's caution to me returned to my memory: "If ever Anne

Catherick crosses your path, make better use of the opportunity,

Miss Halcombe, than I made of it." The finding of the wounded

spaniel had led me already to the discovery of Mrs. Catherick's

visit to Blackwater Park, and that event might lead in its turn,

to something more. I determined to make the most of the chance

which was now offered to me, and to gain as much information as I

could.

"Oh dear, no," said the housekeeper. "She lives at Welmingham,

quite at the other end of the county--five-and-twenty miles off,

at least."

"On the contrary, Miss Halcombe, I never saw her before she came

here yesterday. I had heard of her, of course, because I had

heard of Sir Percival's kindness in putting her daughter under

medical care. Mrs. Catherick is rather a strange person in her

manners, but extremely respectable-looking. She seemed sorely put

out when she found that there was no foundation--none, at least,

that any of us could discover--for the report of her daughter

having been seen in this neighbourhood."

"I am rather interested about Mrs. Catherick," I went on,

continuing the conversation as long as possible. "I wish I had

arrived here soon enough to see her yesterday. Did she stay for

any length of time?"

"Yes," said the housekeeper, "she stayed for some time; and I

think she would have remained longer, if I had not been called

away to speak to a strange gentleman--a gentleman who came to ask

when Sir Percival was expected back. Mrs. Catherick got up and

left at once, when she heard the maid tell me what the visitor's

errand was. She said to me, at parting, that there was no need to

tell Sir Percival of her coming here. I thought that rather an

odd remark to make, especially to a person in my responsible

situation."

I thought it an odd remark too. Sir Percival had certainly led me

to believe, at Limmeridge, that the most perfect confidence

existed between himself and Mrs. Catherick. If that was the case,

why should she be anxious to have her visit at Blackwater Park

kept a secret from him?

"Probably," I said, seeing that the housekeeper expected me to

give my opinion on Mrs. Catherick's parting words, "probably she

thought the announcement of her visit might vex Sir Percival to no

purpose, by reminding him that her lost daughter was not found

yet. Did she talk much on that subject?"

"Very little," replied the housekeeper. "She talked principally

of Sir Percival, and asked a great many questions about where he

had been travelling, and what sort of lady his new wife was. She

seemed to be more soured and put out than distressed, by failing

to find any traces of her daughter in these parts. 'I give her

up,' were the last words she said that I can remember; 'I give her

up, ma'am, for lost.' And from that she passed at once to her

questions about Lady Glyde, wanting to know if she was a handsome,

amiable lady, comely and healthy and young----Ah, dear! I thought

how it would end. Look, Miss Halcombe, the poor thing is out of

its misery at last!"

The dog was dead. It had given a faint, sobbing cry, it had

suffered an instant's convulsion of the limbs, just as those last

words, "comely and healthy and young," dropped from the

housekeeper's lips. The change had happened with startling

suddenness--in one moment the creature lay lifeless under our

hands.

Eight o'clock. I have just returned from dining downstairs, in

solitary state. The sunset is burning redly on the wilderness of

trees that I see from my window, and I am poring over my journal

again, to calm my impatience for the return of the travellers.

They ought to have arrived, by my calculations, before this. How

still and lonely the house is in the drowsy evening quiet! Oh me!

how many minutes more before I hear the carriage wheels and run

downstairs to find myself in Laura's arms?

The poor little dog! I wish my first day at Blackwater Park had

not been associated with death, though it is only the death of a

stray animal.

Welmingham--I see, on looking back through these private pages of

mine, that Welmingham is the name of the place where Mrs.

Catherick lives. Her note is still in my possession, the note in

answer to that letter about her unhappy daughter which Sir

Percival obliged me to write. One of these days, when I can find

a safe opportunity, I will take the note with me by way of

introduction, and try what I can make of Mrs. Catherick at a

personal interview. I don't understand her wishing to conceal her

visit to this place from Sir Percival's knowledge, and I don't

feel half so sure, as the housekeeper seems to do, that her

daughter Anne is not in the neighbourhood after all. What would

Walter Hartright have said in this emergency? Poor, dear

Hartright! I am beginning to feel the want of his honest advice

and his willing help already.

Surely I heard something. Was it a bustle of footsteps below

stairs? Yes! I hear the horses' feet--I hear the rolling wheels----

In the 1600s, Balthasar Gracian, a jesuit priest wrote 300 aphorisms on living life called "The Art of Worldly Wisdom." Join our newsletter below and read them all, one at a time.