to-morrow at the Thorntons'. Leave your sombre eyes at home, and don't
expect infinities in tea-gabble. I saw you at the opera last night. For
some moments, while Melba was singing, I wanted you and your confectioner's
love. That Melba might always sing, and the tide always flood the marshes!
On the whole, I like candy. Send me a page of it.

E. A.



NO. VI. AUTOBIOGRAPHIC.

(_Eastlake, disregarding her comments, continues._)

Dear lady, did you ever read some stately bit of prose, which caught in
its glamour of splendid words the vital, throbbing world of affairs and
passions, some crystallization of a rich experience, and then by chance
turn to the "newsy" column of an American newspaper? (Forsooth, these must
be literary letters!) Well, that tells the sensations of going from Europe
to Wabash. I had caught the sound of the greater harmony, or struggle, and
I must accept the squeak of the melodeon. I did not think highly of
myself; had started too far back in the race, and I knew that laborious
years of intense zeal would place me only third class, or even lower, in
any pursuit of the arts. Perhaps if I had felt that I could have made a
good third class, I should have fought it out in Europe. There are some
things man cannot accomplish, however, our optimistic national creed to
the contrary. And there would have been something low in disappointing my
father for such ignoble results, such imperfect satisfaction.

So to Wabash I went. I resolved to adapt myself to the billiards and