tes were written in it,
and on her next birthday I presented it to her; she thanked me profusely
in the customary manner, and when my turn came I received the brass
candlestick. Since then we alternately enjoy the possession of each of
these articles, and the present question is comfortably settled once
and for all, at a minimum of trouble and expense. We never mention this
little arrangement except at the proper time, when we send a letter of
fervid thanks.

This radiant weather, when mere living is a joy, and sitting still over
the fire out of the question, has been going on for more than a week.
Sleighing and skating have been our chief occupation, especially
skating, which is more than usually fascinating here, because the place
is intersected by small canals communicating with a lake and the river
belonging to the lake, and as everything is frozen black and hard, we
can skate for miles straight ahead without being obliged to turn round
and come back again,--at all times an annoying, and even mortifying,
proceeding. Irais skates beautifully: modesty is the only obstacle to my
saying the same of myself; but I may remark that all Germans skate well,
for the simple reason that every year of their lives, for three or four
months, they may do it as much as they like. Minora was astonished and
disconcerted by finding herself left behind, and arriving at the place
where tea meets us half an hour after we had finished. In some places
the banks of the canals are so high that only our heads appear level
with the fields, and it is, as Minora noted in her book, a curious sight
to see three female heads skimming along apparently by themselves,
and enjoying it tremendously. When the banks are low, we appear to be
gliding deliciously over the roughest ploughed fields, with or without
legs according to circumstances. Before we start, I fix on the place
where tea and a sleigh are to meet us, and we drive home again;
because skating against the wind is as detestable as skating with it
is delightful, and an unkind Nature arranges its blowing without the
smallest regard for our convenience. Yesterday, by way of a change, we
went for a picnic to the shores of the Baltic, ice-bound at this
season, and utterly desolate at our nearest point. I have a weakness for
picnics, especially in winter, when the mosquitoes cease from troubling
and the ant-hills are at rest; and of all my many favourite picnic
spots this one on the Baltic is the love