Monday [January 1907]

My dear Nelly,

… But the fur is another matter. It is a very subtle and serious matter, wrapped round the most secret fibres of our consciousness; you don't know what a lot might be said and felt and thought – what reams, therefore might be written – about such a gift; and here am I going to squeeze all this in to the usual Thank you. I think I ought to be hurt, and then angry, and then apologetic, and then generous, and then sentimental and then philosophical, and then merely friendly. Whereas I am none of these things; only I think I am grateful – because, if I have none of the finer feelings, I am yet fitted with a marvelous simplicity of nature so that to buy a fur is impossible to me, but to accept a fur is quite easy and pleasant. O well – this is the way we writers write – when we wish not to say something. …