MY DEAR GODFATHER,—I have sent back the Orelli. How I should love to come and to wander about the meadows with you by the river or sit in the boat with you under the willows. But I cannot, for I have promised to speak at a Woman’s Temperance Meeting next week, and in the week following I am going to read a paper called “An Educational Experiment,” before our Ethical Society. This, I think, will be interesting. I have placed my pupils in difficult historical positions, and have made them tell me what they would have done, giving the reasons. I am thus enabled to detect any weakness and to strengthen character on that side. Most of the girls are embarrassed by the conflict of motives, and I have to impress upon them the necessity in life of disregarding those which are of less importance and of prompt action on the stronger. I have classified my results in tables, so that it may be seen at a glance what impulses are most generally operative. But to go back to your letter. I will not have you shuffle. You can say so much if you like. Talk to me just as you did when we last sat under the cedar-tree. I _must_ know your mind about theology and metaphysics. Your affectionate godchild, HERMIONE. MY DEAR HERMIONE,—I am sorry you could not come. I am sorry that what people call a “cause” should have kept you away. If any of your friends had been ill; if it had been a dog or a cat, I should not have cared so much. You are dreadful! Theology and metaphysics! I do not understand what they are as formal sciences. Everything seems to me theological and metaphysical. What Shakespeare says now and then carries me further than anything I have read in the system-books into which I have looked. I cannot take up a few propositions, bind them into faggots, and say, “This is theology, and that is metaphysics.” There is much “discourse of God” in a May blossom, and my admiration of it is “beyond nature,” but I am not sure upon this latter point, for I do not know in the least what φυσις or Nature is. We love justice and generosity, and hate injustice and meanness, but the origin of virtue, the life of the soul, is as much beyond me as the origin of life in a plant or animal, and I do not bother myself with trying to find it out. I do feel, however, that justice and generosity have somehow a higher authority than I or any human being can give them, and if I had children of my own this is what I should try, not exactly to teach them, but to breathe into them. I really, my dear child, dare not attempt an essay on the influence which priests and professors have had upon the world, nor am I quite clear that “shadowy” and “uncertain” mean the same thing. All ultimate facts in a sense are shadowy, but they are not uncertain. When you try to pinch them between your fingers they seem unsubstantial, but they are very real. Are you