Here is my library. Every book I ever read is there, and every binding I ever admired. I don't often read them, but I dust them carefully. I've arranged that dust shall fall on them in the usual way to make it real, and remind one of the outer life one is so glad to leave. All has to be taken very seriously here, and one must put one's self to a little trouble. See, here is my father's microscope, and under it a small spider caught on the premises by myself. It is still alive. It seems cruel, doesn't it? but it only exists in our brains.
Look at the dress I've got on—feel it; how every detail is worked out. And you have unconsciously done the same: that's the suit you wore that morning at Cray under the ash-tree—the nicest suit I ever saw. Here is a spot of ink on your sleeve as real as can be (bravo!). And this button is coming off—quite right; I will sew it on with a dream needle, and dream thread, and a dream thimble!
This little door leads to every picture-gallery in Europe. It took me a long time to build and arrange them all by myself—quite a week of nights. It is very pleasant to walk there with a good catalogue, and make it rain cats and dogs outside.
Through this curtain is an opera box—the most comfortable one I've ever been in; it does for theatres as well, and oratorios and concerts and scientific lectures. You shall see from it every performance I've ever been at, in half a dozen languages; you shall hold my hand and understand them all. Every singer that I ever heard, you shall hear. Dear Giulia Grisi shall sing the 'Willow Song' again and again, and you shall hear the applause. Ah, what applause!
Come into this little room—my favorite; out of this window and down these steps we can walk or drive to any place you or I have ever been to, and other places besides. Nothing is far, and we have only to go hand in hand. I don't know yet where my stables and coach-houses are; you must help me to find out. But so far I have never lacked a carriage at the bottom of those steps when I wanted to drive, nor a steam-launch, nor a gondola, nor a lovely place to go to.
Out of this window, from this divan, we can sit and gaze on whatever we like. What shall it be? Just now, you perceive, there is a wild and turbulent sea, with not a ship in sight. Do you hear the waves tumbling and splashing, and see the albatross? I had been reading Keats's 'Ode to the Nightingale,' and was so fascinated by the idea of a lattice opening on the foam
'Of perilous seas by faery lands forlorn'
that I thought it would be nice to have a lattice like that myself. I tried to evolve that sea from my inner consciousness, you know, or rather from seas that I have sailed over. Do you like it? It was done a fortnight ago, and the waves have been tumbling about ever since. How they roar! and hark at the wind! I couldn't manage the 'faery lands.' It wants one lattice for the sea, and one for the land, I'm afraid. You must help me. Mean while, what would you like there tonight—the Yosemite Valley? the Nevski Prospect in the winter, with the sledges? the Rialto? the Bay of Naples after sunset, with Vesuvius in eruption?…
—"Oh Mary—Mimsey—what do I care for Vesuvius, and sunsets, and the
Bay of Naples … just now? … Vesuvius is in my heart!"
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