Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/419

10 some of the party to row in and stretch their muscles, and in that way I propose to start this afternoon about 2½ after dining here.

"Rathbone can't come, being too hard at work after all; so our males will consist of Crom, Dick, and Meorgan" (this was a child's mispronunciation of De Morgan's name) "besides self. Yesterday morning, also a very beautiful one, I had qualms about leaving the garden here, which really, as De Morgan said on Sunday, is a very tolerable substitute for a garden: item, after doing a good deal of small necessary work at Queen Square I had qualms about leaving my business; but to-day I have none—I think I know now why I fatten so."

("I really think," he says, however, in another letter, written when he was in much trouble and worry over public work, "that Falstaff's view of sighing and grief blowing men up like a bladder was a sound medical opinion.")

"More and more I think people ought to live in one place—pilgrimages excepted. By the way, I give my third lecture to the Trade Guild of Learning in October; that will be my autumn work, writing it, if I have any quiet time away from home. Also I have promised to lecture next March at the London Institute—subject, the prospects of Architecture in modern civilization. I will be as serious as I can over them, and when I have these two last done, I think of making a book of the lot, as it will be about what I have to say on the subject, which still seems to me the most serious one that a man can think of; for 'tis no less than the chances of a calm, dignified, and therefore happy life for the mass of mankind.

"I shall find my long carpet out of the loom when