6 Canberra Grove,
Malvern, Vic.,
6.5.18.

My dear Bronjo,

No news from you by this mail. But Elsie told me that you are alright and sailing about in the Amphletts. I suppose such sailing expeditions are not all pleasure. I still have a lively recollection of my nine days' sailing along the coast of New Britain in a small cutter, four years ago; of the days we had to lay still in small bays because the sea was either too rough or too calm to sail on; and of the nights when the wind seemed to be always right and we ventured out, to be thoroughly drenched by the waves, the niAGERS getting seasick on my trousers and on the provisions. I hope you had a better time on your expedition. Not much to report from here. Jessie went to Sydney last week. She is going to give a recital on her own on the 10th. Verbrugghen is giving her his patronage; and as he is considered now the highest authority on music in Australia (next to Melba), this may be of some help. - Henry decided not to go to America for the present. Hede went to Geelong to stay with them for three days. When we were in Geelong a few weeks ago, they introduced us to Rathauskys (he is no -owski, nor is he a doctor, but he is quite a nice fellow). They are a peculiar couple, interesting in a way, I quite liked them, but I have my doubts whether I could get on with them on the long run. Anyhow, they lent me two Bruckner scores, that would make up for many shortcomings. I am trying to popularize Bruckner among my friends here, I played the 4th Symphony with Olga and with Elsie. With Mlle Elsie I play duets nearly every week. We began with Mozart and Mendelssohn, and now we are already at Bruckner and Brahms. She doesn't play badly, considering that she didn't play at all for several years. She has a good sense for rythm and, which is important in playing

duets, the "flair" for what is essential and what she may safely leave out when her part is technically too difficult for her. - It is a great mistake, IM the way they teach the piano here, that the pupils are not encouraged to play duets. The consequence is that they know nothing of orchestral and chamber music literature, and that they can't keep measure properly. They just learn the technique of their own instrument, and the result are musicians like Amadio, Carman, &c. - Mim's and my séminaire" is thriving, I hope you will be content with us when you return. The day before yesterday Mim, Hede and I went for a day excursion to Whittlesea. Very fine forest country, similar to Sherbrooke, but denser bush and finer views. We walked for miles along the "aquedog", as the local people call it, then up the mountains, and returned to Melbourne at 11 at night, dog-tired. - I send you in another envelope a cutting from the New York Musical Courier, "A Publisher with Ideals". It is worth while reading because it is so characteristic of the new style American businessman. The Musical Courier poses as a very serious paper; the same number contains a very learned article on Bach by a professor of music at an American University. - I haven't seen much of Bob since I wrote you last. When I rang him up last week he told me that he has rented a house near Glenferry Rd. and is going to move shortly from his flat. - I think I had better close, I am not in a writing mood to-day. Hede told me that she will write to you from Geelong. Good-bye for to-day

6 Canberra Grove,
Malvern,

29.5.18.

My dear Bronio,

Thanks for your letters of the beginning of April. Elsie
told us of your sailing experiences in the Amphletts only in a general
way, and I didn't know that you were in actual danger of being shipwreck-
ed. I hope in future you will be more careful about numbers; if you have
any doubts I'll send you Kozminsky's book on this subject. As far as I am
concerned, I have the right to chaff you about "13", because for Jews this
is a lucky number, and I would just choose a 13th for a risky enterprise.

I am still working hard at Pol.Econ. Sometimes I am surprised at my constancy, because I have the experience that my enthusiasm always gives way when I try to get deeper into a subject I am interested in. As a matter of fact, I have to force myself also now to go on studying certain intricacies of Pol.Econ., especially the teachings of the so-called Austrian school (Boehm-Bawerk, Wieser, Menger). I never could appreciate metaphysics, and it seems to me especially futile to indulge in metaphysical speculations on conceptions like "value", "price", etc. I haven't found out yet what they are driving at, it all seems to me like a treatise with the object of proving that two is more than one, though I recognise that they have done very valuable work in defining more clearly most of the terms used in economics. Mim's cooperation is of great value to me, we discuss every week the notes she takes at her lectures, and this helps me to fill many gaps which otherwise I shouldn't be aware of. As to the metaphysical strain in some parts of economics, I rely on your help later on. On the whole, I think there are few branches of science that are so much in

need of reform as economics. Quite apart from the faulty terminology, one
constantly comes across that craze of formulating "laws", which of course
scarcely ever hold good for more than a generation in a science that con-
cerns itself mainly with man-made, artificial conditions. To my mind, Pol.
Econ. should be mainly descriptive, showing the conditions, especially the
psychological conditions, on which the present working of the machinery de-
pends, and forecasting the changes which a change of the conditions would
bring about. This, of course, includes also schemes of reforms to improve
the working of the machine. Many modern writers work on this basis, but I
haven't found a textbook yet that would take this into consideration. The
textbooks recommended by Mim's lecturer are downright rotten, registering
indiscriminately every "law" that has been formulated during the last 200
years. - Last week, when I saw Bob, "the bloody swine", he complained in
most abusive terms that you never write to him. So, which one of the two
of you is right? "Es will mich schier beduenken, dass sie alle beide stin-
ken." - I was surprised at what you write about Brudo. In a previous
letter you described him as a dirty, greedy Jew who constantly informs the
magistrate against his competitors. That's how my co-religionists are con-
stantly misjudged, poor souls. - Mim is on a walking tour this week with
two fellow students of hers and two knapsacks of mine. She still is awful-
ly shy in asking for such things, she isn't used yet to the communism of
our circle. They won't have a very good time, it is terribly cold and rai-
ny. - Elsie was here last night, we played Brahms together surprisingly
well. Her health seems to be much better now, she doesn't look so tired as
some months ago. But next week her "theatre month" will begin, an awful
cruelty which no unionist in this country would put up with. Immediately
afterwards she will take a three weeks' holiday. I am sending you several

numbers of "The New Europe" which Elsie gave me, I marked those articles which may interest you. I also include, as a curio, the "10 Story Book, America's Most Daring Sex Story Magazine", quite an interesting and, in a way, representative Americanism. Of course it is a fraud, it is neither daring nor do the stories contain more Sex than ordinary magazine stories, they are only exceptionally badly written and disgustingly vulgar. Don't read the text, just read the title page with the sub-headings. The characteristic point is, that in Europe such publications have a more or less innocent, or"scientific", exterior, and only the connoisseur scents out the stuff they contain; while in America they blaze forth their naughtiness, but they mustn't be really naughty on account of the churches and the police, so they are only vulgar, and the poor youngster who invests his quarter is disappointed.
- Something else from America: "Next week", writes Max, "I am going to try my lock in Kawaipo under the aspises of Mrs. Eisenberg."
- Olga comes pretty frequently to our place, I like her much better now than I used to. I misjudged her, she isn't gossipy at all and quite alright as far as character goes, it is only her general outlook on things that irritates me from time to time. Her husband will return to Melbourne in August. I'm not looking forward to this event, I don't think that I'll ever like the fellow.
- To-morrow I am going to put on your pumps for the first time. Which shows you what a retired life we are leading. I haven't been in evening dress since you left. Well, to-morrow we are invited to the Pierre's. He knows my plebeian habits, so he added to his invitation that he "usually sticks on his dinner jacket in the evening, though it will be quite informal". They are living in some expensive flat mansion in Dandenong Road.
- No news from the Grebins since I wrote you last.
- That's all.

Love from
the other side
and so on
Paul
Hede wrote for a separate letter. She doesn't

6 Canberra Grove,
Malvern, Vic.,
9.7.18.

My dear Bronio,

about

I was just about to write you in abusive terms about the one-sidedness of our correspondence when your letter of 14./5. arrived. I do hope you won't extend your stay in that hole beyond September, and will be safely back here in October. I thought you would not have any more attacks of fever in the dry season, but it seems it would be best for you to get out of the tropics as soon as possible. By the way, did you get a reply to the letter I typed for you to S., and is Mond going to "dis-gorge" his subsidy for 1919? There was a cable in papers some time ago about the disgracefully high profits that Brunner, Mond & Co. are making. So you needn't have any qualms to give him another gentle nudge. As to your friend Brudo's freemasonry: all I know about it is a circumstantial and rather appreciative description of their ethics, rites and beliefs in Tolstoy's "War and Peace", and a bulky volume on Freemasonry, written by an ardent freemason, which I once glanced through in the Publ. Library. Their ethics are all-right, about the same sort of thing as the ethics of any blooming religion, as you can find them expounded in certain small volumes on the Ethics of Buddhism, Confucianism, Mohametanism, Christianity, &c. (the things Henry dotes on). But it is all enwrapped in a shroud of mysticism, Cabbala, Astrology, Alchemy, beliefs of the Chaldaeans, Book of Revelations. They try to solve the Riddles of the Universe by adding up the numbers assigned to the letters composing certain words and juggling with the resulting figures. They talk of the Transmutation of Metals as if they were used to "transmuting" iron into gold every morning. There is a mouldy mediaeval smell about the whole thing. I have no time

for Bible Exegesis, but at least one knows that there are limits to it;
but when it comes to an exegesis of Paracelsus, the Cabbala, the Talmud,
and what not, then you really don't know what next, it all becomes a
boundless sea of the most hopeless nonsense. At the bottom of it all lies
the belief that once, long ago, all the Great Secrets have been known to
man, and by rightly explaining the old books we can get at them again.

I personally prefer any nice little Catholic legend, or even a miracu-
lous saint story, to that tortuous, scholastic wordspinning. Besides,
the semi-rationalistic cloak of their crude superstitions seems very at-
tractive to uneducated people who feel superior to the established chur-
ches and are too lazy or ignorant to do some hard scientific thinking.

This, to my mind, makes Freemasonry (and its younger brother Theosophy)
very dangerous. The old churches have had their sad experiences during
the last 200 years, and are pretty careful now not to interfere too
much with science and modern life. The new superstitions have to go
through all these experiences over again, and if they can get many ad-
herers they may prove very obnoxious. They would join the anti-vaccina-
nist, anti-vivisectionist, &c. leagues on "philosophical" grounds and be-
cause they know the futility of science. I don't want to be unjust to
the bulk of freemasons (I know a good number at home). They are honest,
not at all superstitious businessmen, insurance agents, politicians,
bank managers, who don't care a hang for Paracelsus, but who don't quite
trust the general brotherhood of mankind and prefer the snug, warm bro-
therhood of a lodge and the secure feeling that their brothers will buy
their goods, insure their lives and property with them, vote for them,
etc. Their mixing into politics, which is especially the case in Hungary
and France, is of course at least as objectionable as that of the Church.

x (the lodgers')

3

I hope you don't mind this long Erfuss meiner Gefuehle; I constantly bumped against this sort of things lately, and a lot of wrath has been accumulating within me. There are for instance the two Reverends who are lecturing on Philosophy at Melb. University, Prof. Gibson and Dr. Stuart. They are trying hard to make Mim feel the presence of God (the old dodge: "I feel it; if you don't, I talk to you as one who can see to somebody who is born blind"). Dr. Stuart is giving a series of lectures on Direct Spiritual Evidence in the Students' Christian Union, at which Mim attends. Mim is very reasonable, but in her humility she argues that she has no right to criticize such learned men as G. and S., before she knows as much as they do. I wouldn't object to this Direct Spiritual Evidence business if it were to form the object of psychological investigations. But to pick out those D.S.E.'s which suit the religious inclinations of Dr. St., to use them as the foundation of a whole cardhouse of deductions "in order to fill the gaps which science will never be able to fill" - this is really prostituting philosophy. We had a regular row about this topic last Friday, Elsie and I on one side, Mim on the other. But at the end it appeared, as usually, that we all three meant about the same, and that Mim mainly took exception to our lack of humility. - Elsie is on her holidays now. Last week she spent two days here. It was very nice and gemuetlich. We read, went for walks, plaid duets. We play the Bruckner already magnificently, I hope Rathausky will leave me the score until you are back. (By the way, I quite agree with you about Bruckner's choral works, they bore me.) Now Elsie is at Dromana with the Higginses, and the last week of her holiday she will spend somewhere else at the seaside with Molly. We'll miss her these two weeks, we have been used lately to see her several times a week. She looks much better now than in summer, and her health also seems to be much better. - Leila is in Melbourne

4

again. She likes her present job and the people with whom she is staying.
- Pierre and his wife are comfortably, nay luxuriously settled in a flat
in a rather swell mansion in Dandenong road. We had dinner there some
weeks ago, half a dozen courses served in the common diningroom by two
very distinguished looking elderly gentlemen in brown evening dress with
silver buttons. I think some months ago I compared her with Max in a let-
ter to you. Well, as far as musical taste goes, Max certainly stands high
above her. But when we began talking about you, it was funny to notice
that she had about the same notions about your work among the niggers as
Max and the "boys" had. It was very hard to convince her that your acti-
vities are not downright ridiculous and freakish. It was only when I told
her something about Spirit Children that she became a bit more interested.

To-morrow night they are coming here, her chauffeur has already brought
her music stand, so it will be a musical evening this time - Sarasate-
Paganini-Wieniawski with a sprinkling of Handel. What is in between, is
no good to her; she dislikes all the Beethoven Sonatas, Schumann, &c.
Jessie gave a fine two-piano recital with Mr. Hadley, an English pianist
who has been staying here a few months. The Schumann Variations for two
pianos, some Cesar Franck and Saint Saens. Hadley is a nice fellow, it
was quite a relief, after all those freakish Judaeo-Slavs, to meet an
artist who dresses, behaves and talks just like ordinary well-bred people,
and isn't quite innocent about everything in the world except his art.

"Artistic aloofness" I used to call it indulgently when speaking of Max.-
Olga (who sends you her love, or regards, or whatever it is) is going to
leave Melb. in about six weeks. If you pass Brisbane in Sept. or Oct.
you can meet her there. Just make enquiries whether the "Look Who's Here"
Company is there. She will return to Melb. with her husband towards the
end of the year.
- Mimi writes from America that he is very busy and has

6 Canberra Grove,
Malvern, Vic.,
29.7.18.

My dear Bronio,

There seem to be more mails to New Guinea now than be-
fore. I see again one advertised for the day after to-morrow, and I
think it is not quite three weeks since I wrote you last. - To con-
tinue chronicling local events:- Henry Paul Schapper, who made his first
appearance in this world about a week ago, is a healthy baby of 8&
pounds, a bit skinny, but apart from that, rather resembling his mo-
ther. I haven't seen him yet and rely on Hede's report who was in Gee-
long last Saturday. She is very happy, he takes it like a Briton. -
Elsie is back from her holiday. She looks much better, I hope the four
weeks night duty which will begin today will not wear off the effect of
the rest she had in the country. We went to see her for a day while she
was at Mount Martha. Molly was very nice to us (as she always is in
direct personal contact). But I am not sure whether she really enjoyed
the long walk over the cliffs and the rather jerky conversation with
Hede and myself alternately. We were at two Verbrugghen recitals with
Elsie and Leila last week. Among other things they played a string
quartet by Debussy, one of his earlier compositions. Very beautiful,
at the same time so different from any music I have ever heard, that it
sounds like a message from another world. One cannot retain any detail
at first hearing, one only has the dim impression of something
great and important that has not been expressed up to now. And to think
that the thing has been written probably before we were born. (Debussy
died some time ago at the age of over sixty.) - While Elsie was in the
country we had a nice evening here, Mim, Pitt & Alexander, whom I had

not seen for many months. We really need you to bring some swing into
our life and to arrange things as in the good old time, which, I hope,
will return in October. I am simply too lazy to ring up people, and so
I haven't seen some of them for ages. But we see the girls regularly,
then Olga, Leila (who is now living in South Yarra) and Jessie. - Mim
is going to bring to our place this week a Miss MacConnell, a sister-
in-law of your friend Dr. Mayo. The girls describe her as quite nice,
but with an unbounded respect for herself because she has got a B.A.
degree in philosophy. - In writing to you I begin already to think
whether I might not as well wait till we can talk about things, con-
sidering that you will get this letter only a few weeks before your
departure from New Guinea. - I wonder whether you could fix up your
teeth somehow or other. I have been told that it is not advisable to
do entirely without them for any length of time. - I am reading Con-
rad's "Under Western Eyes". Mim told me that you don't like it. I won-
der why. I like it better than most of his other books, perhaps because
it is not so rambling in the way the plot is told - a special feature
of Conrad's which sometimes exasperates me in his other books. - Jessie
is going to the West in a few weeks, and perhaps to America towards the
end of the year. - Bob whom I tried to ring up some days ago, after a
long interval, is on a holiday. - Don't delay your return. Au revoir
and much love from both of us

6 Canberra Grove,
Malvern,

17.8.18.

My dear Bronio,

Your two letters of 13.6. and 2.7. arrived together this
morning. I can realize how terrible the news of your mother's death must
have been to you, and I am afraid you are right in saying that it will take
a long time until you fully realize what has happened. It seems to me that
you have developed few purely emotional attachments in your life, it probab-
ly was all centred on your mother. And only after a lengthy period of mar-
ried life (if one is lucky) something similarly ~~uninterested and secure can~~
develop. -- I am sorry to see from your last letter that you won't be here
until November. I was expecting you already for Sept. or Oct. Still, if
nothing unexpected interferes we'll meet again here in Melbourne, which
seemed very doubtful to me a year ago. Don't expect too much from my work in
Pol.Econ. You know my usual sloth. I have read a lot this year, but wrote
very little, though Elsie, in your absence, prods me on whenever there is
an opportunity. I fully acknowledge the value of writing in order to clear
one's own ideas, yet when I see my puny little thoughts neatly put on paper
I feel distinctly ashamed, especially as it happened already several times
that I found "original" ideas of mine much better expounded in books which I
had not read at the time of writing. It will still take me quite a long time
until I get acquainted only with the most important literature. Besides, as
I told you, I am lazy and sometimes pause for a week or two in my work. So
much about my doings. -- We don't see many people except the "girls", and I
don't miss the others. Mim brought "Ursula" (Miss McConnel) along a fortnight
ago, and we are going to her place to-morrow. Ursula is quite a nice girl,

12

but with a strong metapsysico-religious strain. We had a two hours' disputa-
tion that evening on - you won't believe it - God. Sometimes it was strictly
scholastic (only on her part, I flatter myself). She insists on subsuming
all that is inexplicable to us under the term God. I wouldn't object so much
as
to this terminology, though it is misleading to the outsider as if she were
to call hysterical women "witches", "because they have always been called
like that, and why should we invent a new name"; but I do object to calling
*(as a basis for further deductions)*
in *Direct Spiritual Evidence*, because this leads to nowhere, and would make
philosophy a sort of theosophy. It seems that Prof. Gibson and Dr. Stewart
look with scorn upon Pearson's *Grammar of Science*, at which I had a glance
some time ago and which seemed to me excellent in the way it defines the ob-
ject and limits of philosophy. Ursula is quite on Gibson's side. I really
long to have a philosophical talk to you and to hear something sane about it.
Mim is terribly shy and humble, and declares that she is not going to criti-
cize her teachers until she knows as much as they do, or at least until she
has finished her course. - I think you are too hard in your criticism of
American lack of culture. It is only natural that in a country where every-
body reads books, magazines, etc. the average level of the stuff that is
printed is far below that of a country like Poland where only the intelligent
classes read. And if you take into consideration Switzerland or the Scandi-
navian countries you cannot possibly blame democracy for that lack of cul-
ture. To me Americanisms are as distasteful as to you, but they seem to me
on a big scale what the characteristics of any individual person are on a
small scale. I sent you those samples of Americanisms because I found them
not only distasteful but also amusing. On the whole, I don't agree with the
new fashion of constantly abusing democracy. It certainly am not blind to its
shortcomings. But we have only the choice between democracy and a more or

3

less veiled autocracy, and the latter seems to me worse in every respect, even its much-vaunted greater efficiency is very doubtful. And those who have an emotional preference for autocracy must draw the lesson from Russian events that it doesn't work on the long run, and that it is by its nature exposed to eruptions which are much worse than the silliest pranks of any young and immature democracy. As to America, I think at present they represent politically what is best in the Allies, and if they can see it through things will really be better in Europe than they ever were before. - I suppose you like "The New Europe" as much as I do. They may sometimes be on the wrong track in details, but on the whole I think the spirit of the paper is finer than that of any Continental publication I ever came across. And such things, as also the American "New Republic" (an excellent weekly), can only grow in a democratic atmosphere. - I have no illusions about home. The longer I am away the stronger I feel how many things I dislike there. So there is no disappointment in store for me when I return. But I am afraid you will be disappointed if you really carry out your intention of settling in Poland after the war, though for equitable reasons I ought to wish it were to-day in England.

Ivy returned from her fortnight's holiday. She was up country on the farm of some relations of her boy's. She is nearly bursting with "news", and I can foresee how many hours of my valuable time these news will cost me during the next days. My people at home will be puzzled when I write them that our housemaid used to go hunting every morning during her holidays, on horseback, and that she brought us a few hares and rabbits which she shot in the country. - Jessie is going to Western Australia at the beginning of Sept. to give a few concerts. In Oct. or Nov. she will go to Honolulu. Max got her an engagement there for twenty weeks to play chamber music once a week, at a very good salary. She will probably make some extra money by giving lessons in music, and I am glad I know that the relationship between Jessie and Max will be one of a strictly businesslike basis.

4

sons and recitals of her own. She doesn't know yet when she will be back in Melbourne. When the Honolulu season is over she will go to California to see her brother. - Pierre's come over from time to time, and we play some rather indifferent music. Still better than a purely conversational evening.
- I see Bob sometimes at lunch in town. He always has lunch with Sm. at a small Italian restaurant in Exhibition St. Bob is a nice fellow because he is so eager and tries to be interested in everything. I can't understand how he can spend so much of his free time with a dullard like S.

I have not sent the flowers to Adelaide because, as I told you, your June letter arrived only to-day.

20.8.

I didn't post this letter yesterday because another mail to Papua is advertised for the 22nd, and I suppose both will arrive at the same time.

I saw Elsie in the meantime and she gave me the two letters for the Seligmans. I copied them, posted the originals, and shall post the copies by later mails. I am awfully sorry that you have to defend yourself against such dirty attacks just at a time like this. I know, in a small way, what that means, and I can fully sympathize with you. In merely defending one-self against a dirty fellow, one gets the feeling of getting dirty oneself allDAY over. But I hope you are already at that stage when one is quite in-different to what other people think, except those few for whom one cares. Seligman seems to be a decent chap, Elsie told me what he wrote to you. I couldn't help smiling when I recognized the old Jewish trait of **BRAUN** saying good-bye to one's family and giving instructions about the funeral when one has a bit of headache. Still, S. shows distinct signs of assimilation: his grandfather would only have thought of his family, surely not of an outsider. I hope you don't mind my cynicism, I was really touched

by S.'s kindness to you. - It was a quiet, unphilosophic evening at Ursula's on Sunday. Apart from her great surprise at the fact that she is "such an extraordinary person", she is quite nice and pleasant. There was only small talk nearly all the evening, except a short discussion of Catholicism and Catholic institutions. I am afraid you will accuse me of being prejudiced against Catholicism, as you wrote me about Brudo. But the more I watch them here, after having watched them in Europe, the more I am aware of their unscrupulous double-dealing, and the more I see in them one of the greatest dangers to intellectual and cultural progress. At home they are opposed to any social progress, their catchword is "the greed of the poorer classes" and their "disregard of spiritual values". In Australia, where the worker is in the ascendancy, they tell him that he is down trodden, and talk and write a lot about the "greed of the profiteer". Yet, I wouldn't mind so much that they are not particular in the choice of their means. But the end and aim of it all is to get into power and to use this power against intellect and reason in any shape and form. The University Magazine is full of letters from indignant Irish students, who protest against the neglect of the scholastic and neo-scholastic school in the philosophy course (this is the only occasion that they speak of that great philosopher Cardinal Mercier"; otherwise they don't bother about him and what he had to say about the Germans); others complain of the unfair treatment the inquisition gets in the history class, and maintain that in a country where the I.W.W.'s are treated so cruelly nobody has the right of critisizing the inquisition; then there are complaints of remarks of Osborne's about Catholic interference with science, etc. etc. It makes me positively sick to think of crowds of young students, defiantly referring to the Authority of the Church, going to mass every morning, living in Newman College under the authority of a Jesuit

6

Father who watches over their souls. I don't think that it is mere prejudice if I feel that that atmosphere is much more stifling, much more threatening to science and progress than that of Ormond or any other Protestant College. When I read every week the report on those cunning lectures on current topics given by Jesuits under Mannix' auspices, then I begin to feel quite indulgent, nearly sympathetic, towards the pathetic endeavours of Protestant Rev.'s to conciliate Reason and the Bible. I can see a pronounced kinship between Prussianism and Catholicism, but the latter is much more cunning and scarcely ever blunders, and therefore is more dangerous. - Well, this was an emotional outburst quite à la Bronio, and I am afraid I have lost the right of _asking_ you in the future to be less emotional in judging races, institutions, &c.

Frankie is here from Geelong with her baby, and wants me to send you her love. The baby is rather noisy, poor thing, and not yet very beautiful, but mine was still uglier at his age. - To-night we are going with her and Leila to a Coll recital; that disgusting comedian always tacks on some Liszt to his programme this year, so we'll have to leave before the end. Elsie, who has her day off, will also be there.

Well, my dear Bronio, I am really and sincerely longing for your return, also for Elsie's sake whom I grew very fond of during this year.

6 Canberra Grove,
Malvern, Vic.,
10./9./18.

My dear Bronio,

I suppose this will be my last letter to Papua. Elsie
told me that you intend to sail from Samarai on the 15th Oct., so this
is probably the last mail that will reach you there.

There is not much to report in the way of facts. Jessie left for
the West last week, she will return towards the end of the month, only
for a few days, and then go to Honolulu. It is very problematic
whether she will ever return to Australia. In any case, she will spend
a few months in California with her brother after the Honolulu engage-
ment, and then try her luck professionally in America. I am very sorry
to lose her, I felt quite melancholy when I helped her packing. I
by now
ought to have grown used to these scenes and the Stimmung connected
with them. Jessie is as artistic a nature as you and Juliette. There
were heaps of things I had to return for her to people who most pro-
bably have forgotten long ago that they ever lent them to Jessie. Then
we took charge of things she doesn't want to take with her. (Your
spirit heater, by the way, does splendid service in Geelong for the
Schapper baby, and it is doubtful whether they will ever return it to
you.) There is already a huge collection of our friends' rubbish
at Carinya, most of it in your room. - Ivy has left us about a week
ago. Her Willy has taken up farming near Wycheproof (about a days jour-
ney from here). They are going to marry in December, and she will stay
with his uncle at Wycheproof in the meantime, to be near him. It was
a very tearful farewell, she didn't like leaving Melbourne, but he had

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insisted on her going and asked her" to choose between the Khuners and him". Anyhow, here we are again spending half the day in cooking, washing up and doing general house work. But I think we'll soon get either Margot's sister (who will arrive in October) or a girl whom Olga recommended us. - Olga's husband returned from New Zealand last week, they both left for Adelaide, but they will be in Melbourne again in October.

I haven't done much work during the last few weeks, partly because I was lazy, then also because the Schappers were staying with us during his holidays. He seems to me much more on this earth since he is a proud father, though we are still very far from agreeing on most questions. She is nice in her childlike simplicity and egotism ("Hede, get out of the bathroom, didn't I tell you last night that I want to have the first bath in the morning!"). I really like her, and at the same time she is one of the few persons to whom I am habitually rude. Every little detail in her personality and in her ways provokes it. At the same time, there is something lovable, elementary in the way she behaves to the baby, or in the unquestioning submissiveness to M&M every one of his, sometimes rather peculiar, wishes, mixed with a sort of defiantly proprietary attitude ("Mein Mann !!"). They have acquired a few new fads since they are in the country. They don't wear hats, neither in Geelong nor in Collins Street; tobacco is more tabooed than ever, when somebody begins smoking they at once leave the room; and several similar things. Which rather jars on me. They could easily make me a hater of fresh air, a smoke fiend, drunkard and debauchee. Cranks and faddists make me wild. There is so much mental laziness in imagining that all the woes of humanity can be cured by Living The

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Natural Life, or by Recognizing That The Soul Is Superior To The Body.
Still, it doesn't matter very much if a man talks like that, but at the
same time recognizes the importance of worldly affairs by opening a
Savings Bank account and banking so and so much every week.

Elsie is looking well, and, as you probably know by now, she is going to do charge work from this week, which means much less physical work. We often go for afternoon walks, and play duets nearly every week in the evening when she has her day off. Mim has returned to Polly Conn, after being absorbed by Descartes, Spinoza and the problem of Direct Spiritual Evidence for several weeks. We are having nice evenings here, sometimes with both girls, in which case we neither make music nor talk shop. I hope you will find the atmosphere well preserved.

I gave Carmen your "Baloma" to read some time ago, with the amusing
passages marked. She told me that she found it very interesting and
wanted to know how it came about that you went to New Guinea. I told her
that you got a scholarship. "What does he need a scholarship for,
he cannot possibly spend any money among the niggers." I spoke of tinned
foodstuffs, and of the high cost of living in Melbourne where you
have to work out your material. "Why does he not work out over
there, then he wouldn't spend anything ?" Well, what can you do with
those plutocrats ? Good job that it isn't her father who acts the Maecenas
in your case.

Well, au revoir this time