re's to be an international copyright, isn't there?
Something is talked of it in the 'Athenaeum.' Meanwhile the Americans
have already reprinted my husband's new edition. 'Landthieves, I mean
pirates.' I used to take that for a slip of the pen in Shakespeare;
but it was a slip of the pen into prophecy. Sorry I am at Mrs. ----
falling short of your warm-hearted ideas about her! Can you understand
a woman's hating a girl because it is not a boy--her first child too?
I understand it so little that scarcely I can believe it. Some women
_have_, however, undeniably an indifference to children, just as many
men have, though it must be unnatural and morbid in both sexes.
Men often affect it--very foolishly, if they count upon the scenic
effects; affectation never succeeds well, and this sort of affectation
is peculiarly unbecoming, except in old bachelors, for there is a
pathetic side to the question so viewed. For my part and my husband's,
we may be frank and say that we have caught up our parental pleasures
with a sort of passion. But then, Wiedeman is such a darling little
creature; who _could_ help loving the child?... Little darling! So
much mischief was not often put before into so small a body. Fancy
the child's upsetting the water jugs till he is drenched (which charms
him), pulling the brooms to pieces, and having serious designs upon
cutting up his frocks with a pair of scissors. He laughs like an imp
when he can succeed in doing anything wrong. Now, see what you get, in
return for your kindness of 'liking to hear about' him! Almost I have
the grace to be ashamed a little. Just before I had your letter we
sent my new edition to England. I gave much time to the revision, and
did not omit reforming some of the rhymes, although you must consider
that the irregularity of these in a certain degree rather falls in
with my system than falls out through my carelessness. So much the
worse, you will say, when a person is _systematically_ bad. The work
will include the best poems of the 'Seraphim' volume, strengthened and
improved as far as the circumstances admitted of. I had not the heart
to leave out the wretched sonnet to yourself, for your dear sake; but
I rewrote the latter half of it (for really it wasn't a sonnet at all,
and 'Una and her lion' are rococo), and so placed it with my other
poems of the same class. There are some new, verses also.[197] The
Miss Hardings I have seen, and talked with them of _you_, a sure way
o