DEAR BESSIE,--Don't think that this is the first time that my spirit has turned towards you since our departure. Away back in Nauheim I began meaning to write to you, and although that meaning was "fulfilled" long before you were born, in Royce's Absolute, yet there was a hitch about it in the finite which gave me perplexity. I think that the real reason why I kept finding myself able to dictate letters to other persons--not many, 't is true--and yet postponing ever until next time my letter unto you, was that my sense of your value was so much greater than almost anybody else's--though I wouldn't have anything in this construed prejudicial to Fanny Morse. Bowed as I am by the heaviest of matrimonial chains, ever dependent for expression on Alice here, how can my spirit move with perfect spontaneity, or "voice itself" with the careless freedom it would wish for in the channels of its choice? I am sure you understand, and under present conditions of communication anything more explicit might be imprudent. She has told you correctly all the outward facts. I feel within a week past as if I might really be taking a turn for the better, and I know you will be glad. I have, in the last days, gone so far as to read Royce's book[28] from cover to cover, a task made easy by the familiarity of the thought, as well as the flow of the style. It is a charming production--it is odd that the adjectives "charming" and "pretty" emerge so strongly to characterize my impression. R. has got himself much more organically together than he ever did before, the result being, in its _ensemble_, a highly individual and original _Weltanschauung_, well-fitted to be the storm-centre of much discussion, and to form a wellspring of suggestion and education for the next generation of thought in America. But it makes youthful anew the paradox of philosophy--so trivial and so ponderous at once. The book leaves a total effect on you like a picture--a summary impression of charm and grace as light as a breath; yet to bring forth that light nothing less than Royce's enormous organic temperament and technical equipment, and preliminary attempts, were required. The book consolidates an impression which I have never before got except by glimpses, that Royce's system is through and through to be classed as a light production. It is a charming, romantic sketch; and it is only by handling it after the manner of a sketch, keeping it within sketch technique, that R. can make it very impressive. In the few places where he tries to grip and reason close, the effect is rather disastrous, to my mind. But I do think of Royce now in a more or less settled way as primarily a sketcher in philosophy. Of course the sketches of some masters are worth more than the finished pictures of others. But stop! if this was the kind of letter I meant to write to you, it is no wonder that I found myself unable to begin weeks ago. My excuse is that I only finished the book two hours ago, and my mind was