n from London (four hours from Waterloo, main line) and
stay a day or two with us among the pines. If not, I hope it will be
only a pleasure deferred till you can join her.

My Children's Verses will be published here in a volume called _A
Child's Garden_. The sheets are in hand; I will see if I cannot send you
the lot, so that you might have a bit of a start. In that case I would
do nothing to publish in the States, and you might try an illustrated
edition there; which, if the book went fairly over here, might, when
ready, be imported. But of this more fully ere long. You will see some
verses of mine in the last Magazine of Art, with pictures by a young
lady; rather pretty, I think. If we find a market for _Phasellulus
loquitur_, we can try another. I hope it isn't necessary to put the
verse into that rustic printing. I am Philistine enough to prefer clean
printer's type; indeed, I can form no idea of the verses thus
transcribed by the incult and tottering hand of the draughtsman, nor
gather any impression beyond one of weariness to the eyes. Yet the other
day, in the Century, I saw it imputed as a crime to Vedder that he had
not thus travestied Omar Khayyam. We live in a rum age of music without
airs, stories without incident, pictures without beauty, American wood
engravings that should have been etchings, and dry-point etchings that
ought to have been mezzotints. I think of giving 'em literature without
words; and I believe if you were to try invisible illustration, it would
enjoy a considerable vogue. So long as an artist is on his head, is
painting with a flute, or writes with an etcher's needle, or conducts
the orchestra with a meat-axe, all is well; and plaudits shower along
with roses. But any plain man who tries to follow the obtrusive canons
of his art, is but a commonplace figure. To hell with him is the motto,
or at least not that; for he will have his reward, but he will never be
thought a person of parts.

_January 3, 1885._--And here has this been lying near two months. I have
failed to get together a preliminary copy of the Child's Verses for you,
in spite of doughty efforts; but yesterday I sent you the first sheet of
the definitive edition, and shall continue to send the others as they
come. If you can, and care to, work them--why so, well. If not, I send
you fodder. But the time presses; for though I will delay a little over
the proofs, and though it is even possible they may delay the English
issue