JET. 30.] TO R. W. EMERSON. 183
and are going through a regular course of pic ture-seeing, with commentary by me, every even ing, for Eddy s behoof. All the Annuals and " Diadems " are in requisition, and Eddy is for ward to exclaim, when the hour arrives, " Now for the demdems ! " I overheard this dialogue when Frank [Brown] came down to breakfast the other morning.
Eddy. " Why, Frank, I am astonished that you should leave your boots in the dining-room."
Frank. " I guess you mean surprised, don t you?"
Eddy. " No, boots ! "
" If Waldo were here," said he, the other night, at bedtime, " we d be four going up stairs." Would he like to tell papa anything ? No, not anything; but finally, yes, he would, that one of the white horses in his new ba rouche is broken ! Ellen and Edith will per haps speak for themselves, as I hear something about letters to be written by them.
Mr. Alcott seems to be reading well this win ter : Plato, Montaigne, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Sir Thomas Browne, etc., etc. " I believe I have read them all now, or nearly all," those English authors. He is rallying for another foray with his pen, in his latter years, not discouraged by the past, into that crowd of unexpressed ideas of his, that undis-
