263 From a letter to the Houghton Mifflin Co. 

10 September 1964

I should like to offer criticism on one point, though I do not suppose that it is expected, or will be welcomed. I find the block on p. iii [of Tree and Leaf] very distasteful, and wonder if it could not perhaps be reconsidered, or omitted. The lettering is, to my taste, of a bad kind and ill-executed, and though no doubt this is deliberate, I do not like it any the better for that. The fat and apparently pollarded trunk, with no roots, and feeble branches, seems to me quite unfitting as a symbol of Tale-telling, or as a suggestion of anything that Niggle could possibly have drawn! My taste may be at fault. So may the views and sentiments expressed in the text. But if these are thought worthy of reproduction – and I am deeply gratified to find that they are – then I could wish that some design showing more sympathy with them might be produced.