19 December 1883 • Hartford, Conn. (MS, in pencil: CtHMTH, UCCL 02867)
I hope you will like the Robin Hood. I have been reading it, to see if it still possessed for me the fascination which it had when I was your age—a fascination so great that it paled the interest of all other books & made them tame & colorless. I find, to my utter astonishment & delight, that a very large part of the old charm still remains in the book; it brings back to me the quaint & simple, & fragrant & woodsy England which my imagination knew as a boy, & restores to me, scarcely marred by disillusion, Sherwood forestⒶemendation & its matchless society—rascals, no doubt, but the most darling sweet rascals that ever made crime graceful in this world. I have always regretted that I did not belong to Robin Hood’s gang.
MS, in pencil, CtHMTH.
MicroPUL, reel 2.