An opal, pure flint—in a state of fixed jelly.
I'm in a great passion 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 [Pg 68] 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 assure 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."