eternal truth about grapes; but I, on the other hand, would watch him doing it with the perfect calm of him who sticks unshakably to his point. What would his cheek, his tongue, and his winking eye be to me? They would leave me wholly unmoved, not a hair's breadth moved from my original point, which is that Joey is not a person you can marry. But certainly it is a good and delightful thing that Vicki thinks he is and thinks it with such conviction. I tell you the top of our mountain is in a perpetual rosy glow nowadays, as though the sun never left it; and the entire phenomenon is due solely to these two joyful young persons. Yours sincerely, ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT. LXVII Galgenberg, Jan. 12th. Dear Mr. Anstruther,--I did a silly thing today: I went and mourned in an empty house. I don't think I'm generally morbid, but today I indulged in a perfect orgy of morbidness. Write and scold me. It is your turn to scold, and by doing it thoroughly you will bring me back to my ordinary cheerful state. The Lindebergs are gone, and I am feeling it absurdly. I didn't realize how much I loved that little dear Vicki, nor in the least the interest Frau von Lindeberg's presence and doings gave life. The last three weeks have been so thrilling, there was so much warmth and brightness going about that it reached even onlookers like myself and warmed and lighted them; and now in the twinkling of an eye it is gone,--gone, wiped out, snuffed out, and Papa and I are alone again, and there is a northeast wind. These are the times when philosophy is so useful; but do explain why it is that one is only a philosopher so long as one is happy. When I am contented, and everything is just as I like it, I can philosophize beautifully, and do it with a hearty sincerity that convinces both myself and the person listening to me; but when the bad days come, the empty days, the disappointing, chilly days, behold Philosophy, that serene and dignified companion so long as the weather was fine, clutching her academic skirts hastily together and indulging in the form of rapid retreat known to the vulgar and the graphic as skedaddling. 'Do not all charms fly,' your Keats inquires, 'at the mere touch of cold Philosophy?' But I have found that nothing flies quite so fast as cold Philosophy herself; she would win in any race when the race is who shall run away quickest; she is of no use whatever--it is my deliberate conclusion--except to sit with in the sun on the south side of a sheltering wall on those calm afternoons of life when you've only got to open your mouth and ripe peaches drop into it. I used to think if I could love her enough she would, in her gratitude, chloroform me safely over all the less pleasant portions of life, see to it that I was unconscious during the passage, never let me be aware of anything but the beautiful and the good; but either she has no gratitude or I have little love, and the years have brought me the one conviction that she