* * * *

VENICE, _18th September_ (1876).

I never knew such a fight as the good and wicked fairies are having
over my poor body and spirit just now. The good fairies have got down
the St. Ursula for me and given her to me all to myself, and sent me
fine weather and nice gondoliers, and a good cook, and a pleasant
waiter; and the bad fairies keep putting everything upside down, and
putting black in my box when I want white, and making me forget all I
want, and find all I don't, and making the hinges come off my boards,
and the leaves out of my books, and driving me as wild as wild can be;
but I'm getting something done in spite of them, only I never _can_
get my letters written.

* * * * *

VENICE, _September 29th_.

I have woeful letters telling me you also were woeful in saying
good-bye. My darling Susie, what _is_ the use of your being so good
and dear if you can't enjoy thinking of heaven, and what fine goings
on we shall all have there?

All the same, even when I'm at my very piousest, it puts me out if my
drawings go wrong. I'm going to draw St. Ursula's blue slippers
to-day, and if I can't do them nicely shall be in great despair. I've
just found a little cunning inscription on her bedpost, 'IN FANNTIA.'
The double N puzzled me at first, but Carpaccio spells anyhow. My head
is not good enough for a bedpost....Oh me, the sweet Grange!--Thwaite,
I mean (bedpost again); to think of it in this mass of weeds and ruin!

* * * * *

ST. URSULA.

VENICE, _13th November_ (1876).

I have to-day your dear little note, and have desired Joan to send you
one just written to her in which I have given some account of myself,
that may partly interest, partly win your pardon for apparent neglect.
Coming here, after practically an interval of twenty-four years,--for
I have not seriously looked at anything during the two hurried visits
with Joan,[18]--my old unfinished work, and the possibilities of its
better completion, rise grievously and beguilingly before me, and I
have been stretching my hands to the shadow of old designs and
striving to fulfill shortcomings, always painful to me, but now, for
the moment, intolerable.

I am also approaching the close of the sixth year of Fors, and have
plans for the Sabbatical year of it, which make my tho