And the rushing of his spirit from its prison-house was
as rapid as a hunted cat passing over a garden fence.




A Christmas Letter

(In answer to a young lady who has sent an invitation to
be present at a children's party)

Madamoiselle,

Allow me very gratefully but firmly to refuse your kind
invitation. You doubtless mean well; but your ideas are
unhappily mistaken.

Let us understand one another once and for all. I cannot
at my mature age participate in the sports of children
with such abandon as I could wish. I entertain, and have
always entertained, the sincerest regard for such games
as Hunt-the-Slipper and Blind-Man's Buff. But I have now
reached a time of life, when, to have my eyes blindfolded
and to have a powerful boy of ten hit me in the back with
a hobby-horse and ask me to guess who hit me, provokes
me to a fit of retaliation which could only culminate in
reckless criminality. Nor can I cover my shoulders with
a drawing-room rug and crawl round on my hands and knees
under the pretence that I am a bear without a sense of
personal insufficiency, which is painful to me.