The Kempton-Wace Letters

He opened windows for them upon the splendour and the savagery, the pomp and the pitifulness that he had found in many corners of the earth. He saw that in every scene, in every human activity there was an element which lifted it into the region of the beautiful, and he made all his readers see it, whether he was learned or ignorant; cultivated or only just able to read. Full justice has never been done to him. There was no silver in his purse, only gold. —Hamilton Fyfe in The Daily Mail.
And of naught else than Love would we discourse. —Dante, Sonnet II.
Copyright in the United States of America, 1903, by the Macmillan Company Printed in Great Britain by Love & Malcomson Ltd. London and Redhill.

London, 3 a Queen's Road, Chelsea, S.W. August 14, 19—.
Yesterday I wrote formally, rising to the occasion like the conventional happy father rather than the man who believes in the miracle and lives for it. Yesterday I stinted myself. I took you in my arms, glad of what is and stately with respect for the fulness of your manhood. It is to-day that I let myself leap into yours in a passion of joy. I dwell on what has come to pass and inflate myself with pride in your fulfilment, more as a mother would, I think, and she your mother.
But why did you not write before? After all, the great event was not when you found your offer of marriage accepted, but when you found you had fallen in love. Then was your hour. Then was the time for congratulation, when the call was first sounded and the reveille of Time and About fell upon your soul and the march to another's destiny was begun. It is always more important to love than to be loved. I wish it had been vouchsafed me to be by when your spirit of a sudden grew willing to bestow itself without question or let or hope of return, when the self broke up and you grew fain to beat out your strength in praise and service for the woman who was soaring high in the blue wastes. You have known her long, and you must have been hers long, yet no word of her and of your love reached me. It was not kind to be silent.