TO HIS MOTHER.
Dear Mother,—A thousand thanks for the dear letter I received yesterday, which delighted me, except for that little—well-deserved—thrust at the beginning of it. Indeed, I ought to have written long ago, but you cannot conceive how much I have to be Jack-of-all-work in every corner these winter months. The trifling imperceptible fragments of business, notes, and so forth, that arise every day, and seem to me so burthensome, and such useless lumber in one’s existence, like the dust upon one’s books persist in accumulating and become unmanageable if one does not make a clear sweep of them daily. And then there is the strong pressure I feel on me, whenever my spirits are right, to make my regular work result in something, so altogether my weeks and months fleet by like the wind.
You will have seen in the newspapers that we arranged a special concert for the visit of the King of Saxony, and gave a second performance of the hymn in his honour, which went off admirably. All the music went so well that it was a delight to listen. During the interval the king sent to fetch me, and I was obliged to make my way somehow through
