Page:Tex; a chapter in the life of Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (IA texchapterinlife00mcke).pdf/185

 The acknowledgement of the birthday present had to be delayed while Teixeira described his effort to observe an eclipse:

''I ordered a pail and some water ("and let the water be inside the pail") to be placed on the lawn this morning, so that I might observe the eclipse of the sun. The eclipse was over before I got down; as the pail was bright white that made no difference. Things looked very uncanny from my bedroom window and I tried to tremble like a Red Indian: they tremble, as you know, like Red Indianything''

It was written on the morrow of his birthday, 10. 4. 21:

Many thanks for your letter of the 8th, for your good wishes and for a noble Catholic Dictionary'', with which I was mightily pleased. It will be of great value to me if I live (a) to edit The Autumn of the Middle Ages, by Huisinga and (b) to translate The Land of Rembrand, by Busken Huet, two monumental tasks which I have been discussing with Dodd''

You have presumably bought Queen Victoria'', by the side of which Eminent Victorians is quite a dull book. And I read that, on Friday last,''