madness lies.” SHE York, June 26 High Petersgate Street. York My taste is so bad! I just begin to realize it, and I am feeling my “growing pains,” like Gwendolen in “Daniel Deronda.” I admired the stained glass in the Lincoln Cathedral, especially the Nuremberg window. I thought Mr. Copley looked pained, but he said nothing. When I went to my room, I looked in a book and found that all the glass in that cathedral is very modern and very bad, and the Nuremberg window is the worst of all. Aunt Celia says she hopes that it will be a warning to me to read before I speak; but Mr. Copley says no, that the world would lose more in one way than it would gain in the other. I tried my quotations this morning, and stuck fast in the middle of the first. Mr. Copley says that aunt Celia has been feeing the vergers altogether too much, and I wrote a song about it called “The Ballad of the Vergers and the Foolish Virgin,” which I sang to my guitar. Mr. Copley says it is cleverer than anything he ever did with his pencil, but of course he says that only to be agreeable. We all went to an evening service last night. Coming home, aunt Celia walked ahead with Mrs. Benedict, who keeps turning up at the most unexpected moments. She’s going to build a Gothicky memorial chapel somewhere. I don’t know for whom, unless it’s for Benedict Arnold. I don’t like her in the least, but four is certainly a more comfortable number than three. I scarcely ever have a moment alone with Mr. Copley; for go where I will and do what I please, aunt Celia has the most perfect confidence in my indiscretion, so she is always en évidence. Just as we were turning into the quiet little street where we are lodging I said, “Oh dear, I wish that I knew something about architecture!” “If you don’t know anything about it, you are certainly responsible for a good deal of it,” said Mr. Copley. “I? How do you mean?” I asked quite innocently, because I couldn’t see how he could twist such a remark as that into anything like sentiment. “I have never built so many castles in my life as since I’ve known you, Miss Schuyler,” he said. “Oh,” I answered as lightly as I could, “air-castles don’t count.” “The building of air-castles is an innocent amusement enough, I suppose,” he said, “but I’m
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