lose a day.

It was bitter wind and snow this morning, too bad to send any human
creature to sit idle in. Black enough still, and I more than usual,
because it is just that point of distinction from brutes which I truly
say is our only one,[14] of which I have now so little hold.

The bee Fors[15] will be got quickly into proof, but I must add a good
deal to it. I can't get into good humor for natural history in this
weather.

I've got a good book on wasps which says they are our chief
protectors against flies. In Cumberland the wet cold spring is so bad
for the wasps that I partly think this may be so, and the terrible
plague of flies in August might perhaps be checked by our teaching our
little Agneses to keep wasps' nests instead of bees.

Yes, that is a pretty bit of mine about Hamlet, and I think I must
surely be a little pathetic sometimes, in a doggish way.

"You're so dreadfully faithful!" said Arthur Severn to me, fretting
over the way I was being ill-treated the other day by R.

Oh dear, I wish I were at Brantwood again, now, and could send you my
wasp book! _It_ is pathetic, and yet so dreadful,--the wasp bringing
in the caterpillar for its young wasp, stinging each enough to
paralyze but not to kill, and so laying them up in the cupboard.

I wonder how the clergymen's wives will feel after the next Fors or
two! I've done a bit to-day which I think will go in with a shiver. Do
you recollect the curious _thrill_ there is--the cold _tingle_
of the pang of a nice deep wasp sting?

Well, I'm not in a fit temper to write to Susie to-day, clearly.

[Footnote 14: I've forgotten what it was, and don't feel now as if I
had 'got hold' of _any_ one.--J. R.]

[Footnote 15: See "Fors Clavigera", Letter LI.]

* * * * *

BOLTON STRID.

I stopped here to see the Strid again--not seen these many years. It
is curious that life is embittered to me, now, by its former
pleasantness; while _you_ have of these same places painful
recollections, but you could enjoy them now with your whole heart.

Instead of the drive with the poor over-labored one horse through the
long wet day, here, when I was a youth, my father and mother brought
me,[16] and let me sketch in the Abbey and ramble in the woods as I
chose, only demanding promise that I should not go near the Strid.
Pleasant drives, with, on the whole, well paid and pleased drivers,
never with over-burdened cattle; cheerful dinne