This is suggestive of the nasty definition of gratitude that it is a keen sense of favours to come!

I have been meaning to write to you to express something of our delight with the “Songs of Old Ireland.”

Major Ewing is charmed by the melodies, on which his opinion is worth something and mine is not! and I can’t “read them out of a printed book” without an instrument.  But—­we are equally charmed by the words!!

It is a very rare pleasure to be able to give way to unmitigated enjoyment of modern verse by one’s friends.  Don’t you know?  But we have fairly raved over one after the other of these charming songs!

I do hope Mr. Graves does not consider that friendly criticisms come under the head of “personal remarks” and are offensive!

I cannot say how truly I appreciate them.  Anything absolutely first-rately done of its kind is always very refreshing, and I do not see how such national songs could be done much better.  They are Irish to the core!

Irish in local colour—­in wealth of word variety—­in poetry of the earliest and freshest type—­in shallow passion like a pebbly brook!—­and in a certain comicality and shrewdness.  Irish—­I was going to say in refinement, but that is not the word—­modern literature is full of refinements—­but Irish in the surpassingly Irish grace of purity, so rare a quality in modern verse!

How we have laughed over Father O’Flynn!  Kitty Bawn is perfect of its kind—­and No. 1 and No. 2.

It is a most graceful collection.  Will it be published soon?  My husband says this copy is only a proof.

I am unjustifiably curious to know if Mr. Graves has given much labour and polishing to these fresh impetuous things.  It is against all my experiences if he has not!—­but then it would be an addition to my experiences to find they were “tossed off”!

They have been a pleasant interlude amid the sordid cares of driving the workmen along!  I am getting terribly tired of it!

Yours very sincerely,
JULIANA HORATIA EWING.

TO MRS. GOING.

Villa Ponente, Taunton. July 11, 1883.

DEAR MADAM,

Your letter was forwarded to me last month, when I was (and to some extent am still) very very busy in the details of setting up a new home—­of the temporary nature of military homes!—­as Major Ewing has been posted to Taunton.

As yet there are many things on which I cannot “lay my hand,” and a copy of the Tug of War Hymn is among them!

When I can find it—­I will lend it to you.  Should I omit to do so—­please be good enough to jog my memory!

It is a rather “ranting” tune-but has tender associations for my ears.

The soldiers of the Iron Church, South Camp, Aldershot, used to “bolt” with it in the manner described, and some dear little sons of an R.E. officer always called it the “Tug of War Hymn.”