A Parish of Two FIRST LETTER DEAR PERCY: New York. I am half-way through Amiel's Diary, the book you were surprised I had not read. I am also half-way through life. They both go slowly. Many people feel what they cannot express, and alas, more express what they could never feel. The charm about the book to you, no doubt, is its allusions and illusions. Any man who can dream of life as included in the fold of one profession, must love such a dreamer as this man. He must help you to make up your mind that dreams have substance after all. You received your finest sensation from the book in your flattered vanity; in the knowledge that you were of the exclusives, who could understand its erudition and follow intelligently its maze. I wonder was it Amiel who said that "London is nothing but a suburb of Hell." Whether it was he or another, the phrase makes me chortle with joy. way I feel about New York. too, smells of Hellish things. That is the New York, In the first place, every one who knows me (and there is none such), knows that I am an overstrung harp, on which Fate plays discords that will, in the fulness of time, drive me crazy; and this city is " Fate," and "Fate is a humourist." It does the cruellest things. It compels me to see daily passing before my sunflower eyes relics of barbarism, called hansom cabs. They are so unbe |