There can be no doubt that in this world nothing is so indispensable as
love. I observe that Charlotte could not lose me without a pang, and the
very children have but one wish; that is, that I should visit them again
to-morrow. I went this afternoon to tune Charlotte's piano. But I could
not do it, for the little ones insisted on my telling them a story; and
Charlotte herself urged me to satisfy them. I waited upon them at tea,
and they are now as fully contented with me as with Charlotte; and
I told them my very best tale of the princess who was waited upon by
dwarfs. I improve myself by this exercise, and am quite surprised at the
impression my stories create. If I sometimes invent an incident which I
forget upon the next narration, they remind one directly that the story
was different before; so that I now endeavour to relate with exactness
the same anecdote in the same monotonous tone, which never changes. I
find by this, how much an author injures his works by altering them,
even though they be improved in a poetical point of view. The first
impression is readily received. We are so constituted that we believe
the most incredible things; and, once they are engraved upon the memory,
woe to him who would endeavour to efface them.