an as pusley, cruel
and cunning, besides bein' jest devoted to the Council of Ten. Queer
works them Ten--made and cut a great swath that won't be forgot and
they needn't expect it. The page of history is sticky and bloody with
their doin's. But they move along in front of you, the Doges, the Ten
and the Three. And any number of conquerors and any number of Popes
and Kings down to Victor Emanuel.

And I d'no as I thought of anybody or anything there in Venice so much
as I did of John Ruskin, who give even the stuns of Venice a language
that will go on speakin' long after the stuns have mouldered back into
dust. And then the dust will keep his memory green, and folks will
ponder the "Ethics of the Dust" long after that dust has passed into
other changing forms and disappeared.

Great mind, great lovin' heart, who had but one thought, to make the
world more full of beauty, knowledge, sincerity and goodness. His
pure, bright intellect, his life white as the lilies, his living
thoughts and noble idees they rap at the human heart, as well as mind,
with their powerful sesame, and you have to open your heart's door and
take them in. Prophet of earth and heaven, the air, the clouds, the
birds and trees, the rocks and waters, translatin' the marvellous
words so our duller eyes and ears can see and hear.

As I walked along over them stones of Venice, and in the Galleries of
Modern Painters and ancient ones, my heart kep' sayin' onbeknown to
myself and them round me, "John Ruskin, noble soul, great teacher,
childlike, wise interpreter of the beauty and ministry of common
things, hail and farewell!" For he had gone--it wuz true that he who
had loved the flowers so and said to a friend who had sent him some:
"I am trying to find out if there are flowers that do not fade." He
had found out now, wreathes of heavenly immortelles are laid on his
tired forward, not tired now, and he has his chance to talk to Moses
and Plato, as he said he wanted to, and he is satisfied. Love and
Sympathy that he longed for comforts and consoles him, and Beauty and
Goodness wait on him.

Robert Strong felt just as I did about Ruskin, their idees about
helpin' the poor, and the brotherhood of man, and fatherhood of God,
wuz as congenial and blent together like sun and dew on a May morning.
Robert Strong said no other writer had done him the good Ruskin had.

And I guess Dorothy thought so too; she almost always thought jest as
Robert did.

In wander