Dearest Minnie, You would not reproach me so or feel that I had heated you shabbily about writing, if you knew what a very bad cold I had all the time I was away and that it affected my eyes sufficiently for me to have to spend part of each of Friday, Saturday, and Monday morning with Dr. Noyes or waiting for him which was even worse. For the same reason I did not dare to use them for writing on the train yesterday or you would have had a letter by this morningGÇÖs mail. I donGÇÖt believe you know how much you added to my enjoyment of the operas by your notes and it was very nice also to have had you take so much trouble to send them to me. Thanks absolutely much for the book which unfortunately I could not read them for the same reason, but hope to now in a few days. The Goetter daemmerung I regret to say arrived yesterday morning instead of Monday morning, so that I did not have it. Between you and Mrs. de ForestGÇÖs notes I am going to have a most beautiful annotated set of librettos. I hope you will not mind my having let her use yours too, i.e. letting her supplement her notes from them. She found a good many things she had not noted. Shall I supplement yours for you or would you rather wait to see mine first? How soon do you need yours again, or may I keep them for a little while for this purpose? I am sorry I could not avail of the suggestion to stop at Bryn Mawr this week, but I felt I must be at home on account of a number of things and so could not think of extending the time to Friday. You ask me to tell you the effect of the SeigfriedGÇÖs death scene. We will talk about it when we meet, but it was the most overwhelming thing I have ever heard in music and the most wonderful. It is too painful. I should not like to be [illegible] to the very depths, in such a way often and if I had felt that I could have stayed as they asked me to to hear them all over again, I should have hesitated a good deal, although I suppose in the end I should have both been able to resist. The last act is certainly an anticlimax though, fine as it is and wonderful as is the Bruenhilde music. They are terribly melancholy operas. The sense of resistless fate certainly haunts one from the start and you are never allowed to lose it. It has been one of the greatest pleasures I have ever had, in spite of everything for it is impossible not to be taken out of myself and to forget everything a great deal of the time. I am sorry you like Annie Kilburn and glad to hear your unpleasant associate is to go. Voila! I was interrupted here and now a business man is waiting for an important engagement, so goodbye Yours, Mary E.G. I am so very glad you are less tired.
