Page:Life of Octavia Hill as told in her letters.djvu/239

 v FIRST PURCHASE OF HOUSES 217 I am going there on Tuesday, when he gives a lecture on Sacred Poetry. Mr. Maurice is to be there. I have twice lately heard MacDonald read Chaucer and lecture on it. Ruskin, whose lecture at Manchester you will pro- bably hear, is coming to us on his return. He wrote such a delightful little note about it, and I had such a grand talk with him, quietly, just before he went. April 2nd, 1865. To Miss BAUMGARTNER. Our great event of the term has been the actual purchase for fifty-six years of three houses in a court close to us, which Ruskin has really achieved for us. We buy them full of tenants ; but there is in each house at present a landlord, who comes between us and the weekly lodgers, and of whom we cannot get rid till Midsummer. All we can do, therefore, is to throw our classes open to the tenants, and to do much small personal work among them, so that we may get to know them. But all repairing, and preventing of over-crowding, and authority to exclude thoroughly disreputable lodgers, must wait till Midsummer. At that time we are to begin the alteration of our stables into one large room, which will enable us to get the tenants together for all sorts of purposes, much more easily than at present. I am taking my holidays now, that I may do with short ones after this additional work begins. ... I feel that the work will be invalu- able to my own girls here. They have each chosen one little child to work for. We are hoping to improve all the children's health by taking them to row, when we go into the park, and we are to try to get a play- ground for them. The plan promises to pay ; but of