Part 14 (1/2)
Here's your lovely note just come. I am very thankful that the ”Venice” gives you so much pleasure.
I _have_, at least, one certainty, which few authors could hold so surely, that no one was ever harmed by a book of mine; they may have been offended, but have never been discouraged or discomforted, still less corrupted.
_There's_ a saucy speech for Susie's friend. You won't like me any more if I begin to talk like that.
A sapphire is the same stone as a ruby; both are the pure earth of clay crystallized. No one knows why one is red and the other blue.
A diamond is pure _coal_ crystallized.
An opal, pure flint--in a state of fixed _jelly_.
I'm in a great pa.s.sion with the horrid people who write letters to tease my good little Susie. _I won't have it._ She shall have some more stones to-morrow.
I must have a walk to-day, and can't give account of them, but I've looked them out. It's so very nice that you like stones. If my father, when I was a little boy, would only have given me stones for bread, how I should have thanked him.
What infinite power and treasure you have in being able thus to enjoy the least things, yet having at the same time all the fastidiousness of taste and imagination which lays hold of what is greatest in the least, and best in all things!
Never hurt your eyes by writing; keep them wholly for admiration and wonder. I hope to write little more myself of books, and to join with you in joy over crystals and flowers in the way we used to do when we were both more children than we are.
TO MISS BEEVER.
I am ashamed not to have sent you a word of expression of my real and very deep feelings of regard and respect for you, and of my not _fervent_ (in the usual phrase, which means only hasty and ebullient), but serenely _warm_, hope that you may keep your present power of benevolent happiness to length of many days to come. But I hope you will sometimes take the simpler view of the little agate box than that of birthday token, and that you will wonder sometimes at its labyrinth of mineral vegetable! I a.s.sure you there is nothing in all my collection of agates in its way quite so perfect as the little fiery forests of dotty trees in the corner of the piece which forms the bottom. I ought to have set it in silver, but was always afraid to trust it to a lapidary.
What you say of the Greek want of violets is also very interesting to me, for it is one of my little pet discoveries that Homer means the blue iris by the word translated ”violet.”
_Thursday morning._
I'm ever so much better, and the jackdaw has come. But why wasn't I there to meet his pathetic desire for art knowledge? To think of that poor bird's genius and love of scarlet ribbons, shut up in a cage!
What it might have come to!
If ever my St. George's schools come to any perfection, they shall have every one a jackdaw to give the children their first lessons in arithmetic. I'm sure he could do it perfectly. ”Now, Jack, take two from four, and show them how many are left.” ”Now, Jack, if you take the teaspoon out of this saucer, and put it into _that_, and then if you take two teaspoons out of two saucers, and put them into this, and then if you take one teaspoon out of this, and put it into that, how many spoons are there in this, and how many in that?”--and so on.
Oh, Susie, when we _do_ get old, you and I, won't we have nice schools for the birds first, and then for the children?
That photograph is indeed like a visit; how thankful I am that it is still my hope to get the real visit some day!
I was yesterday and am always, certainly at present, very unwell, and a mere trouble to my Joanies and Susies and all who care for me. But I'm painting another bit of moss which I think Susie will enjoy, and hope for better times.
Did you see the white cloud that stayed quiet for three hours this morning over the Old Man's summit? It was one of the few remains of the heaven one used to see. The heaven one had a Father in, not a raging enemy.