Tell me more about your daily life in Berlin, the people you see, the houses you go to, the attitude, kind or otherwise, of your chief. Tell me these things, instead of swamping me with subtleties of sentiment. I don't understand subtleties, and I fear and despise sentiment as a certain spoiler of plain bread-and-butter happiness. There should be no sentiment between friends. The moment there is they leave off being just friends; and is not that what we both most want to be? LXII Galgenberg, Dec. 19th. Oh, I can do nothing with you. You are bent, I'm afraid, on losing your friend. Don't write me such letters--don't, don't, don't! My heart sinks when I see you deliberately setting about strangling our friendship. Am I to lose it then, that too? Your last letters are like bad dreams, so strange and unreasonable, so without the least order or self-control. I read them with my fingers in my ears,--an instinctive foolish movement of protection against words I do not want to hear. Dear friend, do not take your friendship from me. Give yourself a shake; come out from those vain imaginings your soul has gone to dwell among. What shall I talk to you about this bright winter's morning? Yes, I will write you longer letters; you needn't beg so hard, as though the stars couldn't get along in their courses if I didn't. See, I am willing to do anything to keep my friend. You are my only one, the only person in the world to whom I tell the silly thoughts that come into my head and so get rid of them. You listen, and you are the only person in the world who does. You help me, and I in my turn want to be allowed to go on helping you. Do not put an end to what is precious,--believe me it will grow more and more precious with years. Do not, in the heat and impatience of youth, kill the poor goose who, if left alone, will lay the most beautiful golden eggs. What shall I talk to you about to turn your attention somewhere else, somewhere far removed from that unhappy bird? Shall I tell you about Papa's book, finally refused by every single publisher, come back battered and draggled to be galvanized by me into fresh life in an English translation? Shall I tell you how I sit for three hours daily doing it, pen in hand, ink on fingers, hair pushed back from an anxious brow, Papa hovering behind with a dictionary in which, full of distrust, he searches as I write to see if it contains the words I have used? Shall I tell you about Joey, whose first disgust at finding himself once more with us has given place by degrees that grow visibly wider to a rollicking enjoyment. Less and less does he come up here. More and more does he stay down there. He hurries through his lessons with a speed that leaves Papa speechless, and is off and hauling the sled up past our gate with Vicki walking demurely beside him and is whizzing down again past our gate with Vicki sitting demurely in front of him before Papa is well through the list of adjectives he applies to him once at least