y, feeling, reality, child-like faith and
trustingness.

And he went to work to paint the rock.

Day after day he painted. When it rained he worked under an umbrella;
when it sun-shone on him he toiled in the heat.

I pitied him. 'Smith,' said I, 'what do you do that for? Why don't you
pick your stone up and take it home with you? Put it in your trunk and
carry it back to London. It isn't a landscape, you know.'

'By Jove!' quoth he, 'I never thought of that. So I will, d'ye know. 'Ow
very hodd! Vell! you Yankees are werry hinwentive, I must hadmit.'

And he did; and the portrait of the rock went into the 'Annual
Exhibish,' and was thought to be the deepest-toned thing 'out.'

And it's _true_.

Yours also,
GALLI VAN T.

* * * * *

It is odd, but after all, the world seldom sees a real original letter.
Letters of business, old letters, love-letters, and letters written for
print, the world sees enough. But the real life-descriptive gossiping
letter is rarely en-typed. More's the pity.

Here is one--from a never-seen friend--which has been lying for months
in THE CONTINENTAL his drawer. Shall we be pardoned for publishing it?
We hope so, for we remember that it pleased us well when we received it,
and what is good for the editor must be good for the reader. Let it go!

_The Hermitage, May_, 1862.

DEAR FRIEND: Appearances--to make a very original remark--are deceitful.
To the traveler who may chance to cast his eyes upon this little brown,
house, a little brown house it will be to him, 'and nothing more.' He
will not even notice the woodbines that are flinging their arms around
the windows, nor will he dwell for an instant upon the thrifty
cotton-woods that guard the door, or bestow more than a casual glance on
the artistically arranged garden-beds, wherein I have anxiously watched
tulips and radishes sprouting into existence. Anxiously--for winter has
been writing a somewhat lengthy postscript to his annual message, and
the modest, gentle-mannered spring retreats in lady-like fright before
his furious blasts.

Now we are having an interval of hazy warmth--the really royal weather
of the year--red sunshine, the hills purple and blue in the distance,
and the still air savory with the smoke of brush-burnings and the wild
breath of new-lifed vegetation. Lovelier than the Indian summer, for
mingled with all things is the consciousness of the flowering and
fruiting _to come