Spring in the air, and the quaint wild
flowers. It is their last Sunday down here; they go off to Europe next
week.

Shoals more visitors for tea, among them a little bride who had already
got her husband to heel. She talked all the time of what _she_ was
going to do and he did not speak a word. But it is only in that sort of
way they are very emancipated, it seems, for while they are actually
married they are as good as gold, as far as looking at anyone else is
concerned. It is when they come to Europe they have flirtations like
us. But as I said before, there would not be any zest, because you can
get a divorce and marry the man so easily it makes it always _une
affaire de jeune fille_.

Now I must dress for dinner, so good-bye, dear Mamma.

Kisses to my angels.

Your affectionate daughter,

ELIZABETH.

PLAZA HOTEL, NEW YORK

PLAZA HOTEL. NEW YORK, _Tuesday._

DEAREST MAMMA,--I have a theatre and dance to tell you of in this
letter. To begin with, the theatres themselves are far better built
than ours; everyone can see, and there is no pit, and the boxes are in
graduated heights so that you have not to crane your neck,--but the
decorations in every one we have yet been to are unspeakable. This one
last night had grouped around the proscenium what looked exactly like a
turkey's insides (I hope you aren't shocked, Mamma!). I once saw the
marmiton taken out at Arrachon, when I was a little girl and got into
the kitchen,--just those awful colours, and strange long, twisted,
curled-up tuby-looking things. They are massed on the boxes, too, and
were, I suppose, German "Art Nouveau."

I always think Art Nouveau must have been originated by a would-be
artist who got drunk on absinthe after eating too much pate de foie
gras in a batard-Louis XV. room, then slept, then woke, and in a fit of
D.T. conceived it. He saw impossible flowers and almost rats running up
the furniture, and every leg and line out of balance and twisted; and
fancy, if one could avoid it, putting it in a theatre! The play itself
was very well acted, but, as is nearly always the case here, unless it
is a lovely blood-and-shooting, far West play, the heroine is drawn to
be a selfish puny character, full of egotism and thinking of her own
feelings. The men were perfectly splendid actors, but they distracted
my eye so with their padded shoulders it quite worried me. The hero was
a small person, and when he appeared in tennis flannels hi