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August 9, 1879.

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I was reading again at Robert Falconer the other day.  What grand bits there are in it?  With such bosh close by.  So like Ruskin in that, who is ever to me a Giant, half of gold and half of clay!

When G, Macdonald announces (by way of helping one to help the problems of life!) that the Gospel denounces the sins of the rich, but nowhere the sins of the poor, one wonders if he “has his senses,” or knows anything about “the poor.”  “The Gospel” is pretty plain about drunkards, extortioners, thieves, murderers, cursers, and revilers, false swearers, whoremongers, and “all liars”—­I wonder whether these trifling vices are confined to the Upper Ten Thousand!

But oh, that description to the son of what it sounded like when his father played the Flowers of the Forest on his fiddle, isn’t to be beaten in any language I believe!  All the Scotch lasses after Flodden doing the work of an agricultural people in the stead of the men who lay on Flodden Field!—­“Lasses to reap and lasses to bind—­Lasses to stook.” etc., etc., and “no a word I’ll warrant ye, to the orra lad that didna gang wi’ the lave"!!!![40] and the lad’s outburst in reply, “I’d raither be gratten for nor kissed!”

[Footnote 40:  Robert Falconer, chap. xix.]

Poor Z——!  They don’t teach that at Academies and Staff Colleges, nor in the Penny-a-line of newspaper correspondents and the like—­but he should get some woman to soak it into his brains that the men women will love are men who would rather be “gratten for” in honour than be kissed in shame.

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Ecclesfield. August 23, 1879.

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Talking of drawings, what do you think?  Caldecott has done me the most lovely coloured thing to write a short tale to for October A.J.M. It is very good of him.  He has simply drawn what I asked, but it is quite lovely!

A village Green, sweet little old Church, and house and oak tree, etc., etc. in distance, a small boy with aureole of fair hair on a red-haired pony, coming full tilt across it blowing a penny trumpet and scattering pretty ladies, geese, cocks and hens from his path.  His dog running beside him!  You will be delighted!

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September 1, 1879.

I have done my little story to Caldecott’s picture, and I have a strong notion that it will please you.  It is called “Jackanapes."...  I shall be so disappointed if you don’t like “Jackanapes.”  But I think it is just what you will like!!  I think you will cry over him!

September 19, 1879.

Isn’t it a great comfort that I have finished the serial story, and “Jackanapes"?—­so that I am now quite free, and never mean to write against time again.  I know you never cared for the serial; however, it is done, and tolerably satisfactory I think.  “Jackanapes” I do hope you will like, picture and all.  C——­ sent Mr. Ruskin “Our Field,” and I am proud to hear he says it is not a mere story—­it’s a poem!  Great praise from a great man!