Ecclesfield. Dec. 23, 1881.

...  I cannot tell you the pleasure it gives me that you say what you do of “Daddy Darwin.”  No; it will not make me overwork.  I think, I hope, nothing ever will again.  Rather make me doubly careful that I may not lose the gift you help me to believe I have.  I have had very kind letters about it, and Mrs. L. sent me a sweet little girl dressed in pink—­a bit of Worcester China!—­as “Phoebe Shaw."...

Aunt M. sent “Daddy Darwin” to T. Kingdon (he is now Suffragan Bishop to Bishop Medley), and she sent us his letter.  I will copy what he says:  “‘Daddy Darwin’ is very charming—­directly I read it I took it off to the Bishop—­and he read it and cried over it with joy, and then read it again, and it has gone round Fredericton by this time.  The story is beautifully told, and the picture is quite what it should be.  When I look at the picture I think nothing could beat it, and then when I read the story I think the story is best—­till I look again at the picture, and I can only say that together I don’t think they could be beaten at all in their line.  I have enjoyed them much.  There is such a wonderful fragrance of the Old Country about them.”

I thought you would like to realize the picture of our own dear old Bishop crying with joy over it!  What a young heart! tenderer than many in their teens; and what unfailing affection and sympathy....

January 17, 1882.

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Mrs. O’M. is delighted with “Daddy Darwin.”  I had a most curious letter about it from Mrs. S., a very clever one and very flattering!  F.S. too wrote to D., and said things almost exactly similar.  It seems odd that people should express such a sense of “purity” with the “wit and wisdom” of one’s writing!  It seems such an odd reflection on the tone of other people’s writings!!!  But the minor writers of the “Fleshly school” are perhaps producing a reaction!  Though it’s marvellous what people will read, and think “so clever!” Some novels lately—­Sophy and Mehalah, deeply recommended to me, have made me aghast.  I’m not very young, nor I think very priggish; but I do decline to look at life and its complexities solely and entirely from a point of view that (bar Christian names and the English language) would do equally well for a pig or a monkey.  If I am no more than a Pig, I’m a fairly “learned” pig, and will back myself to get some small piggish pleasures out of this mortal stye, before I go to the Butcher!!  But—­IF—­I am something very different, and very much higher, I won’t ignore my birthright, or sell it for Hog’swash, because it involves the endurance of some pain, and the exercise of some faith and hope and charity! Mehalah is a well-written book, with a delicious sense of local colour in nature.  And it is (pardon the sacrilege!) a LOVE story!  The focus point of the hero’s (!) desire would