have to entertain
them! Sometimes they are a real _terror_ to
me--especially boys: little girls I can now and then get on
with, when they're few enough. They easily become "de trop."
But with little _boys_ I'm out of my element
altogether. I sent "Sylvie and Bruno" to an Oxford friend,
and, in writing his thanks, he added, "I think I must bring
my little boy to see you." So I wrote to say "_don't_,"
or words to that effect: and he wrote again that he could
hardly believe his eyes when he got my note. He thought I
doted on _all_ children. But I'm _not_
omnivorous!--like a pig. I pick and choose....

You are a lucky girl, and I am rather inclined to envy you,
in having the leisure to read Dante--_I_ have never
read a page of him; yet I am sure the "Divina Commedia" is
one of the grandest books in the world--though I am
_not_ sure whether the reading of it would _raise_
one's life and give it a nobler purpose, or simply be a
grand poetical treat. That is a question you are beginning
to be able to answer: I doubt if _I_ shall ever (at
least in this life) have the opportunity of reading it; my
life seems to be all torn into little bits among the host of
things I want to do! It seems hard to settle what to do
_first. One_ piece of work, at any rate, I am clear
ought to be done this year, and it will take months of hard
work: I mean the second volume of "Sylvie and Bruno." I
fully _mean_, if I have life and health till Xmas next,
to bring it out then. When one is close on sixty years old,
it seems presumptuous to count on years and years of work
yet to be done....

She is rather the exception among the hundred or so of
child-friends who have brightened my life. Usually the child
becomes so entirely a different being as she grows into a
woman, that our friendship has to change too: and
_that_ it usually does by gliding down from a loving
intimacy into an acquaintance that merely consists of a
smile and a bow when we meet!...

_January_ 1, 1895.

... You are quite correct in saying it is a long time since
you have heard from me: in fact, I find that I have not
written to you since the 13th of last November. But what of
that? You have access to the daily papers. Surely you can
find out negatively, that I am all right! Go carefully
through the list o