and thin,
and the children are omnipresent and not thin, and their wants and
their joys and their quarrels are as numerous as the fishes in the
sea, and there you have the problem in a nutshell.

Now I must "hapse the door," and hie me to bed. As a matter of fact
the people here are far too honest for us to lock the doors. Such a
thing as theft is unheard of. Some may call it uncivilized. I call it
the millennium!

_August 31_

I believe that the writer who described the climate of this country as
being "nine months snow and three months winter" was not far from the
truth. In June the temperature of our rooms registered just above
freezing point, in July we were enveloped in continuous fog, and in
August we are having snow.

Such a tragic event has occurred. Our lettuce has been eaten by the
Mission cow! You know how hard it is to get anything to grow here.
Well, after having nearly killed ourselves in making a square inch of
ground into something resembling a bed, we had watched this lettuce
grow from day to day as the little green shoots struggled bravely
against the frost and cold. Then a few nights ago I was awakened by
the tinkle of a bell beneath my window. Hastily flinging on wrapper
and shoes I fled to save our one and only ewe lamb. But all the
morning light revealed was a desperate cold in the head, and an empty
bed from which the glory had departed.

Topsy has just been amusing herself by turning on the corridor taps to
watch the water run downstairs! Oh! Topsy,

"'Tis thine to teach us what dull hearts forget
How near of kin we are to springing flowers."

News has just reached us that the mail boat from St. Barbe to St.
Antoine has gone ashore on the rocks and is a total wreck. Happily no
lives were lost, but unhappily wrecks are of such frequent occurrence
on this dangerous coast as to excite little comment.

Drusilla, aged five, has been to my door to enquire if the children
may play with their dolls in the house. I believe in open-air
treatment, so I replied with kindness, but firmly withal, that "out of
doors" was the order of the day. I was a little electrified to hear
her return to the playroom and announce that "Teacher says you are to
go out, every darned one of you!" I was equally electrified the other
day to overhear Drusilla enquiring of her fellow philosophers which
they liked the best, "Teacher, the Doctor, or the Lord Jesus Christ."

In the midst of writing to y