As I was writing to your father I was, of course, strongly impressed with a sense of you; for you are an intrusive kind of creature, coming into one's consciousness in the most lawless way—Phyllis-like. (Phyllis is my "type and example" of lawlessness, albeit I'm devoted to her—a Phyllistine, as it were.)
Leigh sends me a notice (before the event) of your concert. I hope it was successful. Was it?
It rains or snows here all the time, and the mountain struggles in vain to put on its bravery of leaf and flower. When this kind of thing stops I'm going to put in an application for you to come up and get your bad impressions of the place effaced. It is insupportable that my earthly paradise exist in your memory as a "bad eminence," like Satan's primacy.
I'm sending you the New England Magazine—perhaps I have sent it already—and a Harper's Weekly with a story by Mrs. * * *, who is a sort of pupil of mine. She used to do bad work—does now sometimes; but she will do great work by-and-by.
I wish you had not got that notion that you cannot learn to write. You see I'd like you to do some art work that I can understand and enjoy. I wonder why it is that no note or combination of notes can be struck out of a piano that will touch me—give me an emotion of any kind. It is not wholly due to my ignorance and bad ear, for other instruments—the violin, organ, zither, guitar, etc., sometimes affect me profoundly. Come, read me the riddle if you know. What have I done that I should be inaccessible to your music? I know it is good; I can hear that it is, but not feel that it is. Therefore to me it is not.
Now that, you will confess, is a woeful state—"most tolerable and not to be endured." Will you not cultivate some art within the scope of my capacity? Do you think you could learn to walk on a wire (if it lay on the ground)? Can you not ride three horses at once if they are suitably dead? Or swallow swords? Really, you should have some way to entertain your uncle.
True, you can talk, but you never get the chance; I always "have the floor." Clearly you must learn to write, and I mean to get Miller to teach you how to be a poet.
I hope you will write occasionally to me,—letter-writing is an art that you do excel in—as I in "appreciation" of your excellence in it.
Do you see my boy? I hope he is good, and diligent in his work.
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