es are in a saucer before me at this
moment. Everything smelt so good,--so warm, and sweet, and young, with
the leaves on the oaks still little and delicate. Life is an admirable
arrangement, isn't it, little mother. It is so clever of it to have a
June in every year and a morning in every day, let alone things like
birds, and Shakespeare, and one's work. You've sometimes told me, when
I was being particularly happy, that there were even greater happiness
ahead for me,--when I have a lover, you said; when I have a husband;
when I have a child. I suppose you know, my wise, beloved mother; but
the delight of work, of doing the work well that one is best fitted
for, will be very hard to beat. It is an exultation, a rapture, that
manifest progress to better and better results through one's own
effort. After all, being obliged on Sundays to do nothing isn't so
bad, because then I have time to think, to step back a little and look
at life.

See what a quiet afternoon sunning myself among daisies has done for
me. A week ago I was measuring the months to be got through before
being with you again, in dismay. Now I feel as if I were very happily
climbing up a pleasant hill, just steep enough to make me glad I can
climb well, and all the way is beautiful and safe, and on the top there
is you. To get to the top will be perfect joy, but the getting there
is very wonderful too. You'll judge, from all this that I've had a
happy week, that work is going well, and that I'm hopeful and
confident. I mustn't be too confident, I know, but confidence is a
great thing to work on. I've never done anything good on days of
dejection.

Goodnight, dear mother. I feel so close to you tonight, just as if you
were here in the room with me, and I had only to put out my finger and
touch Love. I don't believe there's much in this body business. It is
only spirit that matters really; and nothing can stop your spirit and
mine being together.

Your Chris.

Still, a body is a great comfort when it comes to wanting to kiss one's
darling mother.

_Berlin, Sunday, June 2lst, 1914_.

My precious mother,

The weeks fly by, full of work and _Weltpolitik_. They talk of nothing
here at meals but this _Weltpolitik_. I've just been having a dose of
it at breakfast. To say that the boarders are interested in it is to
speak feebly: they blaze with interest, they explode with it, they
scorch and sizzle. And they are so pugnacious