Series 03: John Brady Nash letters, January 1914-December 1915 - Page 153
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[Page 153]
The letter to you was in promise to be but a few lines, yet this pen, has such tendency to run away from my mind's intent, that it has already wandered over three sheets and the piece that I added to page 2. The pleasure is mine to write, while your letters have shown appreciation of my mental output, doubly pleasing are the moments devoted to the caligraphy. Sometimes methings [methinks] Mother M. Joseph or some other critic may deem me a nuisance and say of me: "Oh, he has a disease known as Cacoethes Scribendi" [incurable desire or itch to write]. Si, pardonnez moi?
This reminds me, (We are in the country whence came the stories of the one thousand and one nights), that we may be in the fair land of France ere long, and that, more time should be given by me to studying French grammar and words (which may be of use amongst the people of that country. Of Her Shakespeare made the Duke of Burgundy say, when Hy. V of England visited the French King & Queen in A.D. 1420, to pay court to Katherine and ask for her hand in marriage:
[Act V, Scene 2; Lines 33-40 and 54-56:]
"What rub or what impediment there is,
Why that the naked, poor & mangled Peace,
Dear nurse of arts, plenties & joyful births,
Should not in this best garden of the world,
Our fertile France, put up her lovely visage?
Alas, she hath from France too long been chased,
And all her husbandry doth lie on heaps
Corrupting in its own fertility.
And as our vineyards, fallows, meads & hedges,
Defective in their natures, grow to wildness,
Even so our houses and ourselves & children