"Dear Pagan: I am on page 238 of 'The Puritans,' and I pause to say how piteously cruel is your portrait of ——. Sargent, at his best, was never so relentlessly realistic. I pity Fenton so desperately I can hardly bear it. Why do I sympathize so with him when he is so little worthy? Is it your fault, or mine? I believe I am not pitiless enough to write novels, even if I had every other qualification.
"Your character of Fenton is admirably studied. It is worthy of the author of 'The Pagans' and 'A Wheel of Fire.'"
"... I have finished reading 'The Puritans,'—all the duties of life neglected till I came to the end. I have not been so interested in a book for ages. I am especially interested in the conflict of the souls between degrees of agnosticism. It is the keenest longing of my life to know what is truth."
"I have reason to be grateful for your birthday, since I find you one of the most interesting persons I have ever had the happiness to know."
"I have just finished reading 'The Diary of a Saint,' and I cannot wait an hour to tell you how very greatly I admire it. It has been said that all the stories were told. You prove how untrue is this statement,—for your story, or anything like it, has never been told before. It is absolutely unique and original.... I am so interested in every page of the book that I have an impatient desire to know all the spiritual experiences that lead to it."
"Just now at Les Voirons (Haute Savoie) I have found a sort of hilltop paradise. Four thousand and more feet above the sea level, the air is like balm, and the views indescribably lovely. I have never seen Mont Blanc half so well. It is far more wonderful than the view from Chamounix. And just now at night the white ghost of a young moon hangs above it, in a pale, clear sky, and the lesser peaks all around shimmer in the moonlight. This hotel is ten climbing miles from any railroad station. You can buy nothing here but postage stamps."
In a characteristic letter from Rome, Richard Greenough, the sculptor, says:
Mr. Greenough to Mrs. Moulton