We are only about twelve in the laboratory, so that we have a very cosy time. I expect to have a winter of "crowded" life. I can be as independent as I please, and want to live regardless of the good or bad opinion of everyone. I shall have a splendid chance to try, I know, and I know too that the "native hue of resolution" has never been of very great shade in me hitherto. But I am sure that that feeling is a right one, and I mean to live according to it if I can. If I do, I think I shall turn out all right. I stopped this letter before tea, when Wilk the rosy-gilled and Higginson came in. I now resume it after tea by the light of a taper and that of the moon. This room is without gas and I must get some of the jovial Harry's abhorred kerosene tomorrow. Wilk read Harry's letter and amused me "metch" by his naïve interpretation of mother's most rational request "that I should keep a memorandum of all monies I receive from Father." He thought it was that she might know exactly what sums the prodigal philosopher really gave out, and that mistrust of his generosity caused it. The phrase has a little sound that way, as Harry framed it, I confess.... * * * * * "Kitty" Temple, next addressed, was the eldest of four Temple cousins, who were daughters of Henry James, Senior's, favorite sister. Having lost both their parents the Temple children had come to live in Newport under the care of their paternal aunt, Mrs. Edmund Tweedie. The fast friendship between the elder Jameses and the Tweedies, the relationship between the two groups of children and the parity of their ages resulted in the Jameses, Temples and Tweedies all living almost as one family. "Minny," Kitty's younger sister, was about seventeen years old and was the enchanting and most adored of all the charming and freely circulating young relatives with whom William had more or less grown up. Henry James drew two of his most appealing heroines from her image,--Minny Theale in the "Wings of the Dove" and Isabel Archer in "The Portrait of a Lady,"--and she is still more authentically revealed by references that recur in "Notes of a Son and Brother" and in the bundle of her own letters with which that volume beautifully closes. In a long-after year William, who was fondly devoted to her, received an early letter of hers containing an affectionate reference to himself and wrote to the friend who had sent it: "I am deeply thankful to you for sending me this letter, which revives all sorts of poignant memories and makes her live again in all her lightness and freedom. Few spirits have been more free than hers. I find myself wishing so that she could know me as I am now. As for knowing her as _she_ is now??!! I find that she means as much in the way of human character for me now as she ever did, being unique and with no analogue in all my subsequent experience of people. Thank you once more for what you have done." At the time of