FLORENCE, _March 18, 1901_. Thus far towards home, thank Heaven! after a week at Perugia and Assisi. Glorious air, memorable scenes. Made acquaintance of Sabatier, author of St. Francis's life--very jolly. Best of all, made acquaintance with Francis's retreat in the mountain. _Navrant!_--it makes one see medieval Christianity face to face. The lair of the individual wild animal, and that animal the saint! I hope you saw it. Thanks for your last letter to Alice. Lots of love. W. J. _To F. C. S. Schiller._ RYE, _April 13, 1901_. DEAR SCHILLER,--You are showering benedictions on me. I return the bulky ones, keeping the lighter weights. I think the parody on Bradley amazingly good--if I had his book here I would probably revive my memory of his discouraged style and scribble a marginal contribution of my own. He is, really, an extra humble-minded man, I think, but even more humble-minded about his reader than about himself, which gives him that false air of arrogance. How you concocted those epigrams, _à la_ preface of B., I don't see. In general I don't see how an epigram, being a pure bolt from the blue, with no introduction or cue, ever gets itself writ. On the Limericks, as you call them, I set less store, much less. If everybody is to come in for a share of allusion, I am willing, but I don't want my name to figure in the ghostly ballet with but few companions. Royce wrote a _very_ funny thing in pedantic German some years ago, purporting to be the proof by a distant-future professor that I was an habitual drunkard, based on passages culled from my writings. He may have it yet. If I ever get any animal spirits again, I may get warmed up, by your example, into making jokes, and may then contribute. But I beg you let this thing mull till you get a _lot_ of matter--and then _sift_. It's the only way. But Oxford seems a better climate for epigram than is the rest of the world. I shall stay here--I find myself much more comfortable thoracically already than when I came--until my Edinburgh lectures begin on May 16th, though I shall have to run up to London towards the end of the month to get some clothes made, and to meet my son who arrives from home. I much regret that it will be quite impossible for me to go either to Oxford or Cambridge--though, if things took an unexpectedly good turn, I might indeed do so after June 18th, when my lecture course ends. Do you meanwhile keep hearty and "funny"! I stopped at Gersau half a day and found it a sweet little place. Fondly yours, W. J. _To Miss Frances R. Morse._ ROXBURGHE HOTEL, EDINBURGH, _May 15, 1901_.