Twice a week we used to eat in the villa on which they were working, and after dinner, at which, in contrast to the forenoon’s workaday garb, all appeared in evening dress, the evenings were spent in chatting, music, and chess-playing. Great amusement was afforded also by the caricatures which my husband made and brought with him; they presented a complete chronicle of the calamities which had attended the building operations and a whole portrait gallery of exaggerated but speaking likenesses of the various persons involved. Among the many talents with which My Own was endowed was that of wielding an extraordinarily witty pencil. Once he sent to the _Fliegende Blätter_ a series of illustrations to the examples given in the Ollendorf grammars, such as “The candelabra of thy uncle is larger than the cat of my aunt,” “The industrious apprentice of the baker has seen the melancholy captain,” “The French gentleman has a long walking-stick and the poor Russian is cold,” and the like, which were accepted and made a great hit. In the winter, when we stayed at Zugdidi with the Dedopali, Sunday was the day on which her children and we were regularly invited to dinner. In the summer, however, we were left at Zugdidi quite alone, and we enjoyed this life the most. My husband devoted a few hours in the morning to superintending the work on the Murat estate, and the rest of the time belonged wholly to me; and then both of us could write diligently. At this time were produced the novels _Ein schlechter Mensch_, _Hanna_, and the book entitled _Inventarium einer Seele_, by B. Oulot; and _Daredjan_, _Ein Aznaour_, and _Kinder des Kaukasus_, by A. G. von Suttner. Time also was ours for reading together, for studying together, for long conversations about everything between heaven and earth, and we evolved a philosophy of life, a view of the universe, which we should never have reached under other circumstances, nor either of us without the other; we had won for ourselves a genuine Eden of harmony, with new, wide, bright horizons. But one cannot revel forever on the heights of thought; one must have one’s little corner of the earth, one’s humble everyday home; and the reason why we felt so utterly contented in ours was that we had quite unintentionally fulfilled that command of the Saviour which says, “Be ye therefore as little children.”