ves!

But I am so very glad you think it endurable, and it is so nice to be
able to give you a moment's pleasure by such a thing. I'm better
to-day, but still extremely languid. I believe that there is often
something in the spring which weakens one by its very tenderness; the
violets in the wood send one home sorrowful that one isn't worthy to
see them, or else, that one isn't one of them.

It is mere Midsummer dream in the wood to-day.

You could not possibly have sent me a more delightful present than
this Lychnis; it is the kind of flower that gives me pleasure and
health and memory and hope and everything that Alpine meadows and air
can. I'm getting better generally, too. The sun _did_ take one by
surprise at first.

How blessedly happy Joanie and the children were yesterday at the
Thwaite! I'm coming to be happy myself there to-morrow (D.V.).

Here are the two bits of study I did in Malham Cove; the small couples
of leaves are different portraits of the first shoots of the two
geraniums. I don't find in any botany an account of their little round
side leaves, or of the definite central one above the branching of
them.

Here's your lovely note just come. I am very thankful that the
"Venice" gives you so much pleasure.

I _have_, at least, one certainty, which few authors could hold so
surely, that no one was ever harmed by a book of mine; they may have
been offended, but have never been discouraged or discomforted, still
less corrupted.

_There's_ a saucy speech for Susie's friend. You won't like me any
more if I begin to talk like that.

* * * * *

A sapphire is the same stone as a ruby; both are the pure earth of
clay crystallized. No one knows why one is red and the other blue.

A diamond is pure _coal_ crystallized.

An opal, pure flint--in a state of fixed _jelly_.

I'm in a great passion with the horrid people who write letters to
tease my good little Susie. _I won't have it._ She shall have some
more stones to-morrow.

I must have a walk to-day, and can't give account of them, but I've
looked them out. It's so very nice that you like stones. If my father,
when I was a little boy, would only have given me stones for bread,
how I should have thanked him.

What infinite power and treasure you have in being able thus to enjoy
the least things, yet having at the same time all the fastidiousness
of taste and imagination which lays hold of what is greatest in the
l