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as well as not. I also have your little hymn tune and wish I could get at a less public piano to try it. But I can read the notes a little myself - and it was very dear in you to write, and said it.  I read Miss Conant part of Harrison's essay last evening and she wants me to finish it to her. She cant read you know hardly at all; saves all for the painting.

They were very much pleased with your 'distinguished considerations', are always awfully pleased with a little attention and awfully hurt at a little of the other thing, no matter who administers or neglects.  Mrs Conants poise is not very firm, though she admires this quality above everything and longs to be that kind—  She often says - 'Would your Grandmother 

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have done this or that?"—  She said the other day— 'I can see by you what sort of a person she must be'.  To which great compliment I could only reply— "Alas, you cant"—

Speaking of Amilie Rives, Mrs Conant made us the other day a fearful criticism of her book - which, by the way, I have read.  Miss Haistes knows her well, and has visited at Castle Hill.  The book was sent to her - we were all horrified by it - though it devoured us so to speak while we were reading it—  She is not a pure minded 'little girl' at all.  I dont see how any body who read the book could think so—  Miss Haistes did'nt say she was fast, but she's just [[Barbara?]] herself - a scented, warm-bath, Swinburnian creature - who defies the world 

Transcription Notes:
*Other letters mention both a Miss and a Mrs Conant, and I think that both are mentioned in this letter. * Amélie Rives was an American author of "The Quick or the Dead?" (1888). * Swinburn was British poet and critic who attacked the conventions of Victorian morality.