TO HIS SISTERS.
Dear Sisters,—You know how much I hate giving good advice to people a thousand miles and fourteen days away, but for once I will do it. It is because I think you are making the same mistake that I did once. I never in my life knew our father write in such an irritable tone as since I have been in Rome, and I want to ask you if you couldn’t find some household medicine to cure this a little? I mean just that sort of concession by which you might put the side of things that father likes to see more in the front than the other;—keep silent on topics which vex him, say “unpleasant” instead of “shameful,” or “pretty good” instead of “delightful.” It’s sometimes a wonderful help, and I should like to whisper to you it might be useful just now. For, apart from the great affairs of politics, his ill-humour seems to me to come from much the same source as it did before, when I began to be a musician on my own account, and father’s temper became very troubled so that he used to rail against Beethoven and fantastical people, often disturbing and setting me in revolt. And just at that time something fresh happened which put him out, and, if I remem-
