To think of sparing five or six hours out of twenty-four for oblivion! Would it could be otherwise. For you see “of the making of books there is no end,” and readers must be found for them. None more eager or indefatigable than I. If only the days had more hours, the years more months, and sleep did not claim!
I have “Characteristics.” I am your debtor for all the years to come for having written such a book. “‘T would be but little could I say how much.” I thank you for your publisher’s promptness in sending me the book itself. It is one to have and to hold as a possession forever; to pick up and pore over, lay down and meditate on, and it has this quality of every genuine work: you cannot take much at a time; it forces you to pause and ponder, and once begun you cannot put it away for long; it claims you like a cluster of luscious grapes, one at a time, and, indeed, with pauses between, but no cessation till the bunch is finished. I shall not tell you yet which I like best, but I will tell you which I had already read and read first before your letter came, with its suggestion of what I would most probably prefer, and which you evidently prefer yourself—the last two! I am lending the book around. “The old beauty” has it now, and she quotes from it and uses its anecdotes, by way of illustration, always with due acknowledgment of their source. “That book I am reading of Mrs. Collins’ friend.” I think I never showed such unselfishness. My reward is great, though; she is charmed, and intends to get both it and “Library Notes” as soon as she goes home. I had a letter from Miss B—— since she received her copy, and she is so enthusiastic: “It is a capital book. The article on Burns I like best so far. I can’t tell what re-reading may do for the others. I like the drift of his mind exceedingly, and his Essays—themes, whatever they are—are unique, and the flavor is sharp and wholesome. There is nothing better I have read—that is modern—that reads in his direction.” There! Are those not good words, indeed? May it have half the success it so richly merits!
Well, I must hurry to the finis. But first, such is the vanity of a wise woman, I am going to give you an excerpt from a love-letter that came in the same budget with yours: “I must write to you to-night, because I have been thinking and thinking of you, and wishing with all my heart I was with you, if only for these holidays; for I am sure you are like myself, and feel loneliest at this time, when all are rejoicing; but if we were together, there would be such a glow of affection that the proverbial yule log would fade by comparison, and it would take several families to supply an amount of devotion equal to ours. But let us hope we shall spend many Christmases together. I must and will have you, for I don’t believe there is any one cares half so much for me, and I am sure your place in my affection is simply unapproachable to the rest of woman or mankind either.”
Isn’t she a darling of darlings who wrote that? And it was not Miss B——.
L. G. C.
Paris, January 1, 1884.
PARIS.
