he behaved like a brute. He did not, a bit, because it really was my
fault, principally; only it's all just as well, as I should never have
been allowed to come here if it had not happened, and I am enjoying
myself and seeing the world.

Good-bye, dearest Mamma. Best love from,

Your affectionate daughter,

ELIZABETH.

RINGWOOD, PHILADELPHIA

RINGWOOD, PHILADELPHIA, _Wednesday._

DEAREST MAMMA,--I think you would like this place better than New York
if you came to America. It is much quieter and less up-to-date, and
there is the most beautiful park; only you have to get at it by going
through the lowest slums of the town, which must rather put one off on
a summer day, and it is dominated by a cemetery on a high cliff above
it, so that as you drive you see the evidences of death always in front
of you; and one of the reporters who came to interview us said it made
"a cunning place to take your best girl on Sunday to do a bit of a
spoon!!" Are they not an astonishing people, Mamma? So devoid of
sentiment that they choose this, their best site, for a cemetery! and
then spend their gayest recreation hours there!! I couldn't have let
even Harry make love to me in a cemetery. Of course it must be only the
working class who go there, as a jaunt, not one's friends; but it
surprised me in any case.

Kitty's house is the sweetest place, rather in the country, and just
made of wood with a shingle roof; but so quaint, and people look at it
with the same sort of reverence we look at Aikin's Farm, which was
built in fourteen hundred, you remember? This one was put up before the
revolution, in Colonial days, and it has a veranda in front running up
with Ionic pillars all in wood like a portico. Inside it is just an
English home--do you hear, Mamma? I said _home!_ because it is the
first we have seen. And it came as some new thing, and to be
appreciated, to find the furniture a little shabby from having been in
the same place so long; and the pictures most of them rather bad, but
really ancestors; and the drawing-room and our bedrooms lovely and
bright with flowery chintzes, fresh and shiny, no tapestry and
wonderful brocade; and the table-cloths plain, and no lace on the
sheets, nor embroideries to scratch the ear. It shows what foolish
creatures of habit we are, because in the other houses there has been
every possible thing one could want, and masterpieces of art and riches
and often beauty; but just because Kitty