bout--nor did I want to go into fine-drawn
questions about the cruelties of sport, and when I came to join the
bits into a whole and copy out, I found I had overproved my point and
made Benjy a _fearful_ brute. But there _are_ some hideously cruel
boys, and I do think a certain devilish type of cruelty is generally
combined with a certain _lowness_ and _meanness_ of general
style--even in born gentlemen--and though quite curable, I would like
to hear what the boys think of it, if it would not bore them to read
it. But I certainly shall soften Benjy down--and will attend to all
your hints--and put in the "Mare's Nest" (many thanks!). Tell D. I do
not know how I could alter about Rough--unless I take out his death
altogether--but beg her to observe that he was not the least neglected
as to food, etc.; what he died of was joy after his anxiety....

[Footnote 36: Included in "Lob Lie-by-the-Fire, and other Tales," vol.
vii.]

[_Aldershot._] May Day, 1870.

... I have got some work into my head which has been long seething
there, and will, I think, begin to take shape. It is about
_flowers_--the ancestry of flowers; whether the flowers will tell
their own family records, or what the _plot_ will be I have not yet
planned, and it will take me some time to collect my data, but the
family histories of flowers which came originally from old Mexico in
the days of Montezuma, and the floating gardens, and the warriors who
wore nosegays, and the Indians who paddled the floating gardens on
which they lived up the waters of that gorgeous city with early
vegetables for the chiefs--would be rather weird! And then the strange
fashions and universal prevalence of Japanese gardening. The wistaria
rioting in the hedges, and the great lilies wild over the hills. Ditto
the camellias. With all the queer little thatched Japanese huts that
always have lumps of _iris_ on the top, which the Japanese ladies use
for bandoline. Then the cacti would have queer legends of South
America, where the goats climb the steep rocks and dig them up with
their horns and roll them down into the valley, and kick and play with
them till the _spines_ get rubbed off, and then devour them at
leisure. I give you these instances in case anything notable about
flowers comes in your way, "when found to make a note of" for me....

TO MRS. ELDER.

_Ecclesfield_, October 25, 1871.

MY DEAREST AUNT HORATIA,

Your letter _was_ shown to me, and I cannot tell you