ing, "Indeed" (all she
could get in) rang out like the man on the Lusitania shouting orders down
the megaphone; and when we got outside we all felt deaf and had sore
throats.

The intense relief to come here out of all noise or hustle, to Valerie
Latour's for Sunday! But I am so tired now I will finish this to-morrow.

Your affectionate daughter,
ELIZABETH.

LATOUR COURT, LONG ISLAND,

_Sunday._

DEAREST MAMMA,--I am resting, so I can put another letter in with the
one I wrote last night. We came here, as I said, after the down town
luncheon, and it is so quaint going over on the ferry; we just sat in
the motor we have hired while we are in New York, and it rolled on to a
broad place on a huge flat steamer, with all the rest of the traffic,
and the boat quietly steamed across the water, and when it touched the
other side we drove off again. And presently as one gets past the
station it looks like going into the wilds, but along the edges of the
roads are small villas made of boards with shingle roofs; here the
clerks (they pronounce it just as it is spelt) and small business
people live, their little bits of land a few feet round each house not
railed or hedged off, but simply mown grass marking them from public
property.

Most of them are spruce and painted, and they can be moved if
necessary. We met one coming down the road, the lace curtains in the
windows and a cat looking out and brushing its whiskers. The house was
set on rollers and being pulled along. Isn't it a splendid idea, Mamma?
Fancy if I could have the east wing of Valmond, that was added in
eighteen hundred, cut off and just trotted round to the north
courtyard, where it would not show so much, how nice that would be; but
everything is so dreadfully stable and solid with us, and here
everything is transitory and can come and go in a night. All the
country we came through looks the wilds, uncultivated, almost as if
bears could live in the woods. Farms have been there, but now the land
is too valuable and is only sold for building purposes. But the effect
of wild is intense and makes the contrast of the over-cultivated avenue
borders greater. Once inside the gates, the winding avenue begins,
covered like all the avenues we have seen with fine granite gravel. But
even in the wildest wild it is lit with electric light, and here and
there a neat villa. This is typical of America, the contrivances of the
brain of man forced upon primitive na