tay a little while longer.

* * * * *

SALLANCHES, SAVOY, _13th September_ (1882).

I saw Mont Blanc again to-day, unseen since 1877; and was very
thankful. It is a sight that always redeems me to what I am capable of
at my poor little best, and to what loves and memories are most
precious to me. So I write to _you_, one of the few true loves left.
The snow has fallen fresh on the hills, and it makes me feel that I
must soon be seeking shelter at Brantwood and the Thwaite.

* * * * *

GENOA, _Sunday, 24th September_ (1882).

I got your delightful note yesterday at Turin, and it made me wish to
run back through the tunnel directly instead of coming on here. But I
had a wonderful day, the Alps clear all the morning all round
Italy--two hundred miles of them; and then in the afternoon blue waves
of the Gulf of Genoa breaking like blue clouds, thunderclouds, under
groves of olive and palm. But I wished they were my sparkling waves of
Coniston instead, when I read your letter again.

What a gay Susie, receiving all the world, like a Queen Susan (how odd
one has never heard of a Queen Susan!), only you _are_ so naughty, and
you never do tell me of any of those nice girls when they're _coming_,
but only when they're gone, and I never shall get glimpse of them as
long as I live.

But you know you really represent the entire Ruskin school of the Lake
Country, and I think these _levees_ of yours must be very amusing and
enchanting; but it's very dear and good of you to let the people come
and enjoy themselves, and how really well and strong you must be to be
able for it.

I am very glad to hear of those sweet, shy girls, poor things.[36] I
suppose the sister they are now anxious about is the one that would
live by herself on the other side of the Lake, and study Emerson and
aspire to Buddhism.

I'm trying to put my own poor little fragmentary Ism into a rather
more connected form of imagery. I've never quite set myself up enough
to impress _some_ people; and I've written so much that I can't quite
make out what I am myself, nor what it all comes to.

[Footnote 36: Florence, Alice, and May Bennett. Florence is gone. Alice
and May still sometimes at Coniston, D.G. (March 1887).--J. R.

"One Companion, ours no more, sends you I doubt not Christmas greeting
from her Home,--Florence Bennett. Of her help