Dearest Mary, I do not know whether you discovered my theft, but on my way down stairs I stopped to look for PerkinGペs books (who by the way has published a new one GェGhiberti et son EcoleGォ this time in French); and found not them but two others - La petite Fadette and the first volume of TolstoiGペs La Guerre et la Paix. The desire to renew an old acquaintance and to make a new one was too strong to be resisted. I will return them at Easter. After I reached home I had only time time [sic] to count the money in the envelope and sink on the back parlor sofa helpless in the clutches of a fresh paroxysm of headache when Miss Andrews was announced before I could excuse myself and as she had given up church I had to see her. She stayed one hour and a half and I agreed to everything she said without knowing what it was. I trust I have sanctioned no suicidal school policy. After she went I lay there until 10 P.M. without venturing to move and mother put so much cologne on my head that my hair has not yet recovered; so you see all the trouble I gave you was at least not wholly without cause. I do not believe your ordinary headaches can be quite like my extraordinary ones or it would be impossible for you to rise above them. On Monday I tried to go to the school but was only able to get to the 12 oGペclock train and my demon and I did not part company until Thursday afternoon, when I had such an accumulation on my hands that I could not get a moment in which to break my resolution and tell you what seems to me the best form to give to your donation to the English library. It is so near the close of the year that I think that I can get the majority of the books more cheaply, apart from finding many others that no dealer will take the trouble to get for us, in London. Mr. Beran Braithwaite knows all the best antiquaries. Then it seems to me nicer to speak of it as a donation of books. I have told Uncle James about the anonomous [sic] donation and he agrees with me about it. It will then be kept wholly out of the hands of the book committee which are only a cipher but even a cipher requires a little red tape to efface it. So you must prepare yourself to share the laurels, whatever laurels there may be, in the English department for its success will certainly come five years sooner because of the books; with its deficiencies you will have nothing to do except in so far as the pleasure of your society draws its professor away from her studies. The insistent glory of the Spring was guilty today - it cried to me through the throats of the birds, redbreasts and blue birds and wrens, that throng our grounds, through every bud and bit of grass - everything seems rioting in the sunshine, so I asked Bessy McCall to ride with me and our horses rode through mountain clefts (good imitations Bessy McCall called them) by stream and farmyard past silvery hills covered with swelling tree boughs, Corot after Corot composing itself by stream after stream fringed by faint willows and blending into many millets of ploughed ground with its sweet earth smell, past at least one Van Marcke cow scene with its dewey gleamy shimmer of light and shadow on the adorable alternations of tender browns and creams of backs of cows to Valley Forge, 24 miles there and back. A ride worthy to lead us to Rincevalles or Aliscans (how well I remember the Sunday Mamie and I spent among the immense trees and sarcophagi but without the associations of Vivien and Guillarime dGペOrange that would now give a medieval coloring to post Augustan classicism) not merely to somewhat meagre memories of WashingtonGペs privations. I was thinking this evening that I had never had the pleasure of doing or seeing one wholly charming thing with you under entirely favorable circumstances - like this ride for instance or WagnerGペs Valkyrie - perhaps, yes quite certainly, the Moses of Michael Angelo, and the glacier in the Engadine, whose revelations of transparent colors was lovelier than any other wintry chromatic scale I had ever seen, may perhaps counts as a partial exception in spite of its fatal termination; whereas with every other friend I have it is so different. We may wait until it may be no longer so desirable as it seems and after all perhaps even now it seems nicer than it would be, contrary to my experience as that would be - by which little cynic bravado you may trace my seven hour companion. I enclose BessieGペs letter please read and return. As I had told you about the difference our difference of opinion had made I thought I should like you to see for yourself how very desolate Bessie is (I do not believe she would mind my showing it to you if she knew the circumstances) and how important it is to let anything really matter. How I wish she were strong enough to go abroad this summer to break up that lethargy of discouragement. It is too bad to offer any consolation and I think Bessie feels as she would have to be less nice not to feel. I do not think that I ever, even in the numerous letters that I have been showering upon her, asked the brutal question whether she was GェgoodGォ. Imagine holiness in an American hotel taking walks with a Mr. Cramp and sitting in Mrs. McCartyGペs sitting room. Goodness is a solitary virtue an hermit an anchorite until it is full statured. Do you know your friend StillmanGペs victorious explanation of the Fates - Earth lying in the lap of the Sea and Theseus as Olympus. I intend to read his book to prepare for the few hours of righteousness. I hope to experience en route for the books of the British Museum. I hope to hear classes all Wednesday morning. The teachers have showered letters on me like the Egyptian locusts. I shall answer the last today. Our school does not grow like the flowers of the field without assistance - does it? Yours lovingly Minnie C. Th Will you accept the first fruits of my garden - of their symbolic realities you already possess a fair share from my Gェgarden gasliGォ as Richard Rolle of Hampole would express it.