CLAYGATE 96 



hand. Your Californian annuals are up and about. 

 Badger is fat, the grass green. . . . 



' Dec. 3. — Odden will not talk of you, while you 

 are away, having inherited, as I suspect, his father's 

 way of declining to consider a subject which is 

 painful, as your absence is. ... I certainly should 

 hke to learn Greek and I think it would be a capital 

 pastime for the long winter evenings. . . . How 

 things are misrated ! I declare croquet is a noble 

 occupation compared to the pursuits of business 

 men. As for so-called idleness — ^that is, one form 

 of it — I vow it is the noblest aim of man. When 

 idle, one can love, one can be good, feel kindly to 

 all, devote oneself to others, be thankful for exist- 

 ence, educate one's mind, one's heart, one's body. 

 When busy, as I am busy now or have been busy 

 to-day, one feels just as you sometimes felt when 

 you were too busy, owing to want of servants. 



' Dec, 5. — On Sunday I was at Isleworth, chiefly 

 engaged in playing with Odden. We had the most 

 enchanting walk together through the brickfields. 

 It was very muddy, and, as he remarked, not fit 

 for Nanna, but fit for us men. The dreary waste 

 of bared earth, thatched sheds and standing water, 

 was a paradise to him; and when we walked up 

 planks to deserted mixing and crushing mills, and 

 actually saw where the clay was stirred with long 

 iron prongs, and chalk or lime ground with " a tind 

 of a mill," his expression of contentment and 



