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TO C.T.G.

_Greno House, Grenoside, Sheffield._
Aug. 3, 1880.

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_A propos_ of my affairs ... next year we might do something with some
of my "small gems." Don't _you_ like "Aldegunda" (Blind Man and Talking
Dog)? D. does so much. Do you like the "Kyrkegrim turned Preacher,"
"Ladders to Heaven," and "Dandelion Clocks"?...

... As you know, these _little_ things are the chief favourites with
my more educated friends, whose kindness consoles me for the much
labour I spend on so few words (The "Kyrkegrim turned Preacher" was
"in hand" two years!!!), and I think their only chance would be to be
so dressed and presented as to specially and downrightly appeal to
those who would value the Art of the Illustrator, and perhaps
recognize the refinement of labour with which the letter-press has
been ground down, and clipped, and condensed, and selected--till, as
it would appear to the larger buying-public, there is _wonderfully
little left you for your money_!!...

Poor old Cruikshank! How well--and willingly--he would have done
"Kyrkegrim turned Preacher." He said, when he read my things, "the
Fairies came and danced to him"--which pleased me much.

* * * * *

Yesterday I pulled myself together and wrote straight to the printers,
to the effect that the suffering the erratic and careless printing of
"We and the World" cost me was such that I was obliged to protest
against X. and Sons economizing by using boys and untrained incapables
to print (printing from print being easier, and therefore adapted for
teaching the young P.D. how to set up type), pointing out one sentence
in which (clear type in _A.J.M._) the words "insist on guiding my fate
by lines of their own ruling" was printed to the effect that they
wouldn't insist on _gilding_ my _faith_, etc., _their_ being changed
to _there_. All of which the _reader_ had overlooked--to concern
himself with my Irish brogue--and certain _reiterations of words_
which he mortally hates, and which I regard the chastened use of, as
like that of the _plural of excellence_ in Hebrew!

(He would have put that demoniacal mark [symbol: checkmark]
against one of the summers in "All the fragrance of summer
when summer was gone"!!!)

I sent SUCH a polite message PER X. to his reader,
thanking him much for trying to mend my brogue (which had already
passed through the hands of three or