east, and best in all things!

Never hurt your eyes by writing; keep them wholly for admiration and
wonder. I hope to write little more myself of books, and to join with
you in joy over crystals and flowers in the way we used to do when we
were both more children than we are.

* * * * *

TO MISS BEEVER.

I am ashamed not to have sent you a word of expression of my real and
very deep feelings of regard and respect for you, and of my not
_fervent_ (in the usual phrase, which means only hasty and ebullient),
but serenely _warm_, hope that you may keep your present power of
benevolent happiness to length of many days to come. But I hope you
will sometimes take the simpler view of the little agate box than
that of birthday token, and that you will wonder sometimes at its
labyrinth of mineral vegetable! I assure you there is nothing in all
my collection of agates in its way quite so perfect as the little
fiery forests of dotty trees in the corner of the piece which forms
the bottom. I ought to have set it in silver, but was always afraid to
trust it to a lapidary.

What you say of the Greek want of violets is also very interesting to
me, for it is one of my little pet discoveries that Homer means the
blue iris by the word translated "violet."

* * * * *

_Thursday morning._

I'm ever so much better, and the jackdaw has come. But why wasn't I
there to meet his pathetic desire for art knowledge? To think of that
poor bird's genius and love of scarlet ribbons, shut up in a cage!
What it might have come to!

If ever my St. George's schools come to any perfection, they shall
have every one a jackdaw to give the children their first lessons in
arithmetic. I'm sure he could do it perfectly. "Now, Jack, take two
from four, and show them how many are left." "Now, Jack, if you take
the teaspoon out of this saucer, and put it into _that_, and then if
you take two teaspoons out of two saucers, and put them into this, and
then if you take one teaspoon out of this, and put it into that, how
many spoons are there in this, and how many in that?"--and so on.

Oh, Susie, when we _do_ get old, you and I, won't we have nice schools
for the birds first, and then for the children?

That photograph is indeed like a visit; how thankful I am that it is
still my hope to get the real visit some day!

I was yesterday and am always, ce