“We live in a poor neighbourhood, and I have come to know the history
of many poor working people lately; and I want to understand so much
about it, even more than I used to long to understand the mysterious
life of shells and flowers. Why aren’t there public baths, etc., for
children as much as public schools? They want washing more than
teaching. ‘Hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and bodies washed
in pure water,’ is continually sounding in my ears.” (Well—why don’t
you go and wash some, then?)
“A poor woman, whose father was a West Country carrier,” (very good,
but what is she?—the gist of the story depends on that: at present it’s
like one of those French twisty Bulimi, with no beginning to it,) “was
so delighted the other day to find we knew the ‘West Country;’ and when
I was saying something about our intending to take the children down in
May to pick cowslips, her face gleamed with delight as she said, ‘Oh,
the years since I’ve seen a cowslip!’ We used to make ‘tisties’”
(twisties?) “of them, and it sent a thrill of remembrance through me of
my own birthday treats, and cowslip-ball days.
“But I’m so glad you like the shells. No, there is nothing about
vegetables in the word Bulimus; but ‘empty-bellied’ generally is
hungry, and hungry generally eats a great deal when opportunity offers.
Now these ‘Bulimi’ eat a great deal, (of vegetables, it happens,) so I
suppose some one who named them thought they must be very hungry or
‘empty-bellied.’ That’s the way I read the story.” Well, it’s very
accommodating and ingenious of you to read it that way; but many
snails, thrushes, blackbirds, or old gentlemen of my acquaintance who
‘eat a great deal,’ appear to me more suggestive of the epithet ‘full-’
than ‘empty-’—waist-coated, shall we say?