I have been out sketching daily. The
Captain carries me to a certain point on the shore of the harbor, I
disembark and strike across the fields to a spot where I have
established a kind of _rendezvous_ with a particular effect of rock and
shadow, which has been tolerably faithful to its appointment. Here I set
up my easel, and paint till sunset. Then I retrace my steps and meet the
boat. I am in every way much encouraged. The horizon of my work grows
perceptibly wider. And then I am inexpressibly happy in the conviction
that I am not wholly unfit for a life of (moderate) labor and
(comparative) privation. I am quite in love with my poverty, if I may
call it so. As why should I not? At this rate I don't spend eight
hundred a year.

* * * * *

_July 12th._--We have been having a week of bad weather: constant rain,
night and day. This is certainly at once the brightest and the blackest
spot in New England. The skies can smile, assuredly; but how they can
frown! I have been painting rather languidly, and at a great
disadvantage, at my window.... Through all this pouring and pattering,
Miss Blunt sallies forth to her pupils. She envelops her beautiful head
in a great woollen hood, her beautiful figure in a kind of feminine
Mackintosh; her feet she puts into heavy clogs, and over the whole she
balances a cotton umbrella. When she comes home, with the rain-drops
glistening on her red cheeks and her dark lashes, her cloak bespattered
with mud, and her hands red with the cool damp, she is a profoundly
wholesome spectacle. I never fail to make her a very low bow, for which
she repays me with an extraordinary smile. This working-day side of her
character is what especially pleases me in Miss Blunt. This holy
working-dress of loveliness and dignity sits upon her with the
simplicity of an antique drapery. Little use has she for whalebones and
furbelows. What a poetry there is, after all, in red hands! I kiss
yours, Mademoiselle. I do so because you are self-helpful; because you
earn your living; because you are honest, simple, and ignorant (for a
sensible woman, that is); because you speak and act to the point;
because, in short, you are so unlike--certain of your sisters.

* * * * *

_July 16th._--On Monday it cleared up generously. When I went to my
window, on rising, I found sky and sea looking, for their brightness and
freshness, like a clever English water-color