Oh, dear! I am so thankful about Freshwater Place. I wonder what you will all think of it, and do with it. I hope you do not expect much. It is only when one feels what the narrow courts are, and how the people get maddened with the heat of them in summer, and how the children have no where to play, and how their noise hurts their mothers’ nerves, that one feels what these few square yards of ugly space are.—But, things being as they are in London, that air, that space are quite riches to the poor.
I quite feel what Mr. Shaen says about joint ownership; one never gets the same love for a place, because never the same sense of responsibility.
Brantwood,
May 5th, 1881.
From Ruskin.
I have had great pleasure in hearing, thro’ Mrs. Severn, of the arrangements of Marylebone, etc., and am entirely glad the thing should pass into your hands, and that you are still able to take interest in it, and encourage and advise your helpers. I trust, however, you will not be led back into any anxious or deliberative thought. I find it a very strict law of my present moral being—or being anyway—to be anxious about nothing and to determine on nothing!
Letter to a Mr. Green, who had served on the Battersea C.O.C., but who had afterwards broken down in health, and who had sent some flowers for the children of the tenants:—
HER LOVE OF DAISIES
May 18th, 1881.
To Mr. Green.