"Mr. ---- goes about asking every one if he has read 'The Story of My Heart,' by Jeffries, which is his latest enthusiasm. After being asked till I was ashamed of saying no, I got the book and read it, finding it the most haunting outcry of pessimism imaginable. When one has read it one feels in the midst of a Godless, hopeless world, where nature is hostile, and the animal kingdom alien, and man alone with his destiny,--a destiny that menaces and appalls him. It is a too powerful book. Jeffries makes one feel, for the moment, that all the happy people are happy only because insensate, and are madly dancing on volcanoes." "Austin Dobson says: 'I have always admired your sonnets,--a thing I can never manage; but how you do take all Gallometry to be your province!! What are we, poor slaves to canzonets and serenades, to do next?' Very pleasant of him." "Last Saturday the Boyle O'Reilly monument was unveiled, and I was chosen to crown it with a laurel wreath. It was a wonderful occasion; and President Capen, of Tufts College, gave the most eloquent eulogy to which I ever listened." "My life is not the beautiful life you think, but it is my soul's steadfast purpose to make it all that you believe it already is. Nothing is of any real consequence save to live up to your very highest ideal. In criticism I made up my mind, long ago, that one should be like Swedenborg's angels, who sought to find the good in everything. Of course, really poor things must be condemned--or what _I_ think is better--boycotted; but I do not like what is harsh, prejudiced, one-sided. I would see my possible soul's brother in every man--which all means that I am an optimist." "Can you tell me what Henry James means by his story, 'The Private Life'? Is it an allegory or what? I never saw anything so impossible to understand." "You speak of the 'close and near friendships' you have made in your few weeks in Florence,--'friendships for a lifetime.' That is delightful, only I can't make friendships with new people easily; so if I went I should not have that pleasure."