Part 12 (1/2)

But of course n.o.body else should touch it, till you give them leave, and show them how.

I am sorry for poor Miss Brown, and for your not having known the Doctor. He should have come here when I told him. I believe he would have been alive yet, and I never should have been ill.

I believe you know more Latin than I do, and can certainly make more delightful use of it.

Your mornings' ministry to the birds must be remembered for you by the angels who paint their feathers. They will all, one day, be birds of Paradise, and say, when the adverse angel accuses you of being naughty to _some_ people, ”But we were hungry and she gave us corn, and took care that n.o.body else ate it.”

I am indeed thankful you are better. But you must please tell me what the thing was I said which gave you so much pain. Do you recollect also what the little bit in ”Proserpina” was that said so much to you?

Were you not thinking of ”Fors”?

I am very thankful for all your dear letters always--greatly delighted above all with the squirrel one, and Chaucer. Didn't he love squirrels![39] and don't I wish I was a squirrel in Susie's pear trees, instead of a hobbling disconsolate old man, with no teeth to bite, much less crack, anything, and particularly forbidden to eat nuts!

[Footnote 39:

”And many squireles, that sett Ful high upon the trees and ete And in his maner made festys.”

”The Dethe of Blaunche,” 430.]

Your precious letter, showing me you are a little better, came this morning, with the exquisite feathers, one, darker and lovelier than any I have seen, but please, I still want one not in the least flattened; all these have lost just the least bit of their sh.e.l.l-like bending. You can so easily devise a little padding to keep two strong cards or bits of wood separate for one or two to lie happily in. I don't mind giving you this tease, for the throat will be better the less you remember it. But for all of us, a dark sky is a.s.suredly a poisonous and depressing power, which neither surgery nor medicine can resist. The difference to me between nature as she is now, and as she was ten years ago, is as great as between Lapland and Italy, and the total loss of comfort in morning and evening sky, the most difficult to resist of all spiritual hostility.

_22d May, 1886._

Of course the little pyramid in crystal is a present. With that enjoyment of Pinkerton,[40] you will have quite a new indoors interest, whatever the rain may say.

How very lucky you asked me what basalt was! How much has come out of it (written in falling asleep)! I've been out all the morning and am _so_ sleepy.

But I've written a nice little bit of ”Praeterita” before I went out, trying to describe the Rhone at Geneva. I think Susie will like it, if n.o.body else.

That ”not enjoying the beauty of things” goes ever so much deeper than mere blindness. It is a form of antagonism, and is essentially Satanic. A most strange form of demonology in otherwise good people, or shall we say in ”good people”? You know _we_ are not good at all, are we now?

I don't think you've got any green in your mica. I've sent you a bit inclosed with some jealous spots in.

[Footnote 40: Pinkerton on ”Petralogy.”]