To the Same.
SHEFFIELD, Sept. 20, 1867.
DEAR MARY,—"Live and learn." Next time, if it ever come, I shall put up peaches in a little box by themselves. But the fact is, peaches can't travel, unless they are plucked so early as nearly to spoil them of all their "deliciarunz,"—which we are enjoying in those we eat here. And Bryant with us,—fruity fellow that he is!—I am glad we have some good fruit to give him. Yesterday we had a very good cantelope, and pears are on hand all the while. I am sorry that I could not get the pears to you just in eating condition, and the Hurlbut apples too; but they'll all come right.
Yes, fruity,—that 's what Bryant is; but rather of the quality of dried fruits,—not juicy, still less gushing, but [299] with a good deal of concentrated essence in him (rather "frosty, but kindly "), exuding often in little bits of poetical quotations, fitly brought in from everywhere, and of which there seems to be no end in his memory.
The woods are beginning to show lovely bits of color, but the great burden of leaves remains untouched. Bryant and I walked out to the Pine Grove, and on to Sugar-Maple Hill. Your mother admires him for his much walking; but I insist that he is possessed and driven about by a demon. . . . By the bye, just keep that "article" for me; I have no other copy. Bryant commended it, and said he thought the argument against the Incomprehensible's being totally unintelligible, was new.
To his Daughter, Mrs. C.
ST. DAVID'S, July 22, 1868.
DEAR KATE,—I am going to have no more to do with the weather. You need n't expostulate with me. It 's no use talking. My mind is made up. You may tell M. so. It will be hardest for her to believe it. She has partaken with me in that infirmity of noble minds,—a desire to look through the haze of this mundane atmospheric environment, and predict the future. But, alas I there is an infirmity of vision; we see through a glass darkly. We can't see through a millstone. The firmament has been very like that, for some days,—all compact with clouds. We thought something was grinding for us. "Now it is coming!" we said last evening. But no. It was no go,—or no come, rather. And this morning, at the breakfast table, sitting up [300] there, clothed, and in my right mind, I said to my sister, "I am not a-going to predict about the weather any more!"
Ask my dear M., pray her, to try to come up to the height of that great resolution. I know the difficulty,-the strain to which it will put all her faculties; but ask her, implore her, to try.
To his Daughters, then living in London Terrace, New York.