However, her interest was becoming more appreciated by me since my trip to the Brooklyn hospital, and finally I wrote my sister in Chicago not to bother about hospital accommodations there for I had decided to remain in Asbury Park, away from everybody, and go through it all by myself. I was so free from fear concerning any serious complications that I even welcomed the coming pain of childbirth; I have never been so superbly healthy as I was that summer.
Mr. Harding had listed some books which had been favorites of his at different times in his life and these books I obtained from the public library in Asbury which was just down the street. I have a notebook which contains many of the names of these books, copied from the list Mr. Harding gave me, and others which I read that summer. Among them were Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Far From the Madding Crowd, Gertrude Atherton's The Conqueror (Mr. Harding said he had met Mrs. Atherton, and had told her how he admired her novelized life of Alexander Hamilton, his favorite character in American history); O. Henry's books, and many others. I can see Mr. Harding now as he wrote down the list for me—the way he would look up and ask me if I had read this or that, and his hearty, "Oh, you must read that, Nan!"
My time was delightfully idled all summer, reading, crocheting baby's jackets and writing love-letters to my beloved. The latter consumed a great deal of my time. His letters to me were the most beautiful things imaginable, always full of cheer, and ever implying that he wanted to do everything in his power to make me comfortable. He spoke often of the "reverential love" he felt for me as the mother of our coming child. I used to wish in moments when I naturally yielded to the longings I felt for him, that we were together on the longed-for "farm" and that he could minister to me personally in the manner portrayed in his incomparable letters.
It was Mrs. Tonnesen who suggested my seeing the "society doctor of the Jersey shore," as Dr. James F. Ackerman is called. He was of a very sympathetic and kindly nature, albeit brusk.
