Potsdam is charming, and swarms with palaces and parks.  If it hadn’t been woods I was after I would have explored it with great interest.  Do you remember when you read Carlyle’s Frederick to me that winter you were trying to persuade me to learn to sew?  And, bribing me to sew, you read aloud?  I didn’t learn to sew, but I did learn a great deal about Potsdam and Hohenzollerns, and some Sunday when it isn’t quite so fine I shall go down and visit Sans Souci, and creep back into the past again.  But today I didn’t want walls and roofs, I wanted just to walk and walk.  It was very crowded in the train coming back, full of people who had been out for the day, and weary little children were crying, and we all sat heaped up anyhow.  I know I clutched two babies on my lap, and that they showed every sign of having no self-control.  They were very sweet, though, and I wouldn’t have minded it a bit if I had had lots of skirts; but when you only have two!

Wanda was very kind, and brought me some secret coffee and bread and butter to my room when I told her I had walked at least ten miles and was too tired to go into supper.  She cried out “Herr Je!”—­which I’m afraid is short for Lord Jesus, and is an exclamation dear to her—­and seized the coffee pot at once and started heating it up.  I remembered afterwards that German miles are three times the size of English ones, so no wonder she said Herr Je.  But just think:  I haven’t seen a single boarder for a whole day.  I do feel so much refreshed.

You know I told you in my last letter I was going to lunch with the Koseritzes on Monday, and so I did, and the chief thing that happened there, was that I was shy.  Imagine it.  So shy that I blushed and dropped things.  For years I haven’t thought of what I looked like when I’ve been with other people, because for years other people have been so absorbingly interesting that I forgot I was there too; but at the Koseritzes I suddenly found myself remembering, greatly to my horror, that I have a face, and that it goes about with me wherever I go, and that parts of it are—­well, I don’t like them.  And I remembered that my hair had been done in a hurry, and that the fingers of my left hand have four hard lumps on their tips where they press the strings of my fiddle, and that they’re very ugly, but then one can’t have things both ways, can one.  Also I became aware of my clothes, and we know how fatal that is when they are weak clothes like mine, don’t we, little mother?  You used to exhort me to put them on with care and concentration, and then leave them to God.  Such sound advice!  And I’ve followed it so long that I do completely forget them; but last Monday I didn’t.  They were urged on my notice by Grafin Koseritz’s daughter, whose eyes ran over me from head to foot and then back again when I came in.  She was the neatest thing—­aus dem Ei gegossen, as they express perfect correctness of appearance.