nt events;
and they have to write dialogues in character, and enjoy it immensely
too. I don't press them to read for themselves very much, and I don't
make ordinary English literature their task-books, because one always
may be boring a boy, and I don't want to run the risk of boring them
with things that I want them to enjoy as much as I did.

"I read to them for an hour or so every evening--novels, plays,
anything that they seem to like. They are at liberty to choose.

"I don't know that they would 'go down' at present--certainly not
among their compeers. They talk quite naturally and straightforwardly
about all kinds of topics of general interest, and they are
tremendously keen about their games, but I think some people might
call them prigs. However, I keep them in a constant and wholesome
contempt of their own abilities, and never let them despise or
criticize anyone unfavourably; not by 'rebuking' it, but by
indicating a point of view--and one can always find one--in which
the person under fire is infinitely their superior.

"And they are as affectionate as they can be--they like one another
and me; and they aren't easily disturbed by circumstances, not having
had their morbid sensibilities developed, their innocent perceptions
dimmed by alcoholic or other dissipations."

I select, rather at random, one or two other passages from his
letters at this time.

"I have just been reading Emerson's Essays. They certainly kindle
one's belief in the greatness of life and the nobility of little
things; but, after all, the great refreshment of such books to me
is--not that they give me new working ideas; I hardly know a book
that has ever done that; the stock of ideas is almost constant in the
world; but because they show that others are on the same track of
admiration and hope as one's self for a goal only hinted at and
conjectured to be glorious--on the same track, and farther advanced
upon it; like older people, they fill in with experience what one has
only guessed at. I find myself saying, 'I expect that life will be
like this and that: it will confirm this and that idea in startling
ways:' and then one of these great souls comes softly to me, and
says, 'It is true.'"

And again:

"There are a great number of conventional ideas which are largely
current, not only conversationally and among ordinary people,
but in books--good and sensible books, written by people of
experience--which are, in my opinion, radical