It is very late. The winds are howling, the rain is pouring down, I have just read Wordsworth's poem, To Duty, and a description in a N.Z. letter of how to grow that neglected vegetable, the Kohl-rabi. I never heard a wilder, fiercer night: but it can't quench my desire—my burning desire to grow this angenehme vegetable, with its fringe of outside leathery leaves, and its heart which is shaped and formed and of the same size as the heart of a turnip. It is of a reddish purple colour, will grow where there have been carrots or peas. Of course, I can see our Kohl-rabi—the most extraordinary looking thing—and W. and J. staring at it.

Do you think it ought to look like that?

No. Do you?

No. I think it's done it on purpose.

Shall I show it to somebody and ask?

No, they'll laugh.

And as they turn away the Kohl-rabi wags and flaps its outside leathery leaves at them….

Tuesday. Thunderstorms all night and to-day torrents of rain and wind and iciness. It is impossible to keep warm—with fires, woollies, food or anything, and one is a succession of shivers. The Draughts are really infernal. How I despise them for not being able to fit a window! Or a door! And how my passion for solidity and honesty in all things grows! Our house must be honest and solid like our work. Everything we buy must be the same. Everything we wear, even. I can't stand anything false. Everything must ring like Elizabethan English and like those gentlemen I always seem to be mentioning “The Poets.” There is a light upon them, especially upon the Elizabethans and our ‘special’ set— page 143 Keats, W. W., Coleridge, Shelley, De Quincey and Co., which I feel is like the bright shining star which must hang in the sky above the Heron as we drive home. Those are the people with whom I want to live, those are the men I feel are our brothers, and the queer thing is that I feel there is a great golden loop linking them to Shakespeare's time…. If you knew what a queer feeling I have about all this as I write. Is it just because I am so steeped in Shakespeare? I can't think of jam-making even, without

And if you come hether
When Damsines I gether
I will part them all you among.

And you know, if ever I read anything about our men, you should see how arrogant I feel, and how inclined to say, ‘Child, child!’ And dreadfully inclined to say to the poor creature who makes a mild observation about my S. T. C. “You really must not expect to understand!” Yes, I am a funny woman—and a year or two at the Heron will make me a great deal funnier, I expect.

I do long to see you again and talk Books. For your Worm is the greatest bookworm unturned. It grows on me. I always was a bit that way, but now—and with the Heron before us—well—Do you feel the same? My Shakespeare is full of notes for my children to light on. Likewise the Oxford Book. I feel they will like to find these remarks, just as I would have….