To
ROSAMOND VENNING.
My dear Miss Venning,
Will you, when you read this little book of mine, find fault with my unmeasured Hibernian enthusiasms and antipathies, and quote your favourite Greek advice—μηδὲν ἄγαν? So that you bring to the reading of it some surrender of your reserve and a break in that classic moderation that we poor barbarians do not quite understand—violently tinctured as we are by nature—it will be a fresh debt added to the life-long debt I gladly owe destiny for that memorable first meeting in Athena’s charming little city.
The thought of it waves memory back into broad sunshine untravelled by clouds, among sun-stained marble pillars and rose and mauve tinted hills, girdling purple waters, and the long silver olive plain of Attica. Do you remember still our first walk along the cactus-bordered path to the Acropolis? Was it not of ‘Tragic Comedians’ that we talked?
So now, years after, I offer you in grateful remembrance this little gathering of ideas you may not wholly share, but will not wholly reject, through affection for your friend, to whom so wide a difference would be nothing less than a real misfortune.
HANNAH LYNCH.
Paris, February, 1891.