A.W., a nice lad training for schoolmaster, was walking to Chapeltown with several rolls of wall paper and a big wall paste-brush, when he was met by “Ould K.” (a cynical old beggar, and vainer than any girl, who has been affronted because I put Master D. into my foreground, and not him), who said to him—­“Well, lad!  I see thou’s going out mapping, like t’ rest on ’em.”  This evening Mr. S——­ tells me his landlord told him that some men who work for a very clever file-cutter here, who is facile princeps at his trade, but mean, and keeps “the shop” cold and uncomfortable for his workmen—­devised yesterday the happy thought of going to their Gaffer and telling him that I had been sketching down below (true) and was coming up their way, and that I was sure to expect a glint of fire in the shop, which ought to look its best.  According to N. he took the bait completely, piled a roaring fire, and as the day wore on kept wandering restlessly out and peering about for me!  When they closed for the night he said it was strange I hadn’t been, but he reckoned I was sure to be there next day, and he could wish I would “tak him wi’ his arm uplifted to strike.” (He is a very powerful smith.) I think I must go if the shop is at all picturesque....

Nov. 25, 1881.

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Be happy in a small round.  But, none the less, all the more does it refresh me to get the wave of all your wider experience to flood my narrow ones—­and to enjoy all the calm bits of your language study and the like.  And oh, I am very glad about the Musical Society!  Though I dare say you’ll have some mauvais quarts d’heure with the strings in damp weather!...

I have really got some pretty sketches done the last few days.  Not finished ones, the weather is not fit for long sitting; but H.H. has given me some “Cox” paper, a rough kind of stuff something like what sugar is wrapped up in, and with a very soft black pencil I have been getting in quick outlines—­and then tinting them with thin pure washes of colour.  I have been doing one of the Clog-shop.  This quaint yard has doors—­old doors—­which long since have been painted a most charming red.  Then the old shop is red-tiled, and an old stone-chimney from which the pale blue smoke of the wood-fire floats softly off against the tender tints of the wood, on the edge of which lie fallen logs with yellow ends, ready for the clog-making, and all the bare brown trees, and the green and yellow sandstone walls, and Jack the Daw hopping about.  The old man at the clog-yard was very polite to me to-day.  He said, “It’s a pratty bit of colour,” and “It makes a nicet sketch now you’re getting in the dittails.”  He went some distance yesterday to get me some india-rubber, and then wanted me to keep it!  He’s a perfect “picter card” himself.  I must try and get his portrait.

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