My dearest Clement,—­You was so good to write me such a sweet little bit of a letter,—­only, dear, you never seem to be in quite so good spirits as you used to be.  I wish your Susie was with you to cheer you up; but no, she must be patient, and you must be patient too, for you are so ambitious!  I have heard you say so many times that nobody could be a great artist without passing years and years at work, and growing pale and lean with thinking so hard.  You won’t grow pale and lean, I hope; for I do so love to see that pretty color in your cheeks you have always had ever since I have known you; and besides, I do not believe you will have to work so very hard to do something great,—­you have so much genius, and people of genius do such beautiful things with so little trouble.  You remember those beautiful lines out of our newspaper I sent you?  Well, Mr. Hopkins told me he wrote those lines in one evening without stopping!  I wish you could see Mr. Hopkins,—­he is a very talented person.  I cut out this little piece about him from the paper on purpose to show you,—­for genius loves genius,—­and you would like to hear him read his own poetry,—­he reads it beautifully.  Please send this piece from the paper back, as I want to put it in my scrapbook, under his autograph:—­

“Our young townsman, Mr. Gifted Hopkins, has proved himself worthy of the name he bears.  His poetical effusions are equally creditable to his head and his heart, displaying the highest order of genius and powers of imagination and fancy hardly second to any writer of the age.  He is destined to make a great sensation in the world of letters.”

Mrs. Hopkins is the same good soul she always was.  She is very proud of her son, as is natural, and keeps a copy of everything he writes.  I believe she cries over them every time she reads them.  You don’t know how I take to little Sossy and Minthy, those two twins I have written to you about before.  Poor little creatures,—­what a cruel thing it was in their father and mother not to take care of them!  What do you think?  Old bachelor Gridley lets them come up into his room, and builds forts and castles for them with his big books!  “The world’s coming to an end,” Mrs. Hopkins said the first time he did so.  He looks so savage with that scowl of his, and talks so gruff when he is scolding at things in general, that nobody would have believed he would have let such little things come anywhere near him.  But he seems to be growing kind to all of us and everybody.  I saw him talking to the Fire-hang-bird the other day.  You know who the Fire-hang-bird is, don’t you?  Myrtle Hazard her name is.  I wish you could see her.  I don’t know as I do, though.  You would want to make a statue of her, or a painting, I know.  She is so handsome that all the young men stand round to see her come out of meeting.  Some say that Lawyer Bradshaw is after her; but my! he is ten years older than she is.