a small dose of Christian Science before meals and
some of Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_, which I shook well after using.

You can imagine what disastrous effect Eleanor Glynn's book had on the
"Divorce Colony." We all bunched together and said "What's the use," and
if it hadn't been for the old man who eats his soup out loud, we would
have bolted in a mass to suggest "Free Love" to our respective
"Fiascos"--Dakota's past tense for "Fiance."

I long so to flash my calciums on a Fifth Ave. stroller that I'd flirt
with God if I met him.

I close dear with a sigh over my chin, which is getting triple (an
invention of the devil).

_Auf wiedersehen_,
MARIANNE.

October 25.

My Dear:

I've changed lodgings and before I took the new chambers, I inquired of
the landlady if there was any electricity in the house and she answered
"Yes," so today I asked here where it was, and she pointed to the
telephone. O, me! O, my! this life is wearing me to a fraz!

Last week the autumn leaves fell and in order to show Mrs. Judge how
simple and near to nature I live, I raked their lawn, and ours, clean,
and stood long after dark making huge bonfires on a line with the
sidewalk. But lo! the fleas that were of the earth became the fleas of
me and I have occupied most of my time since scratching. But anything
to pass the hours away.

Our hedges are cut for the last time this fall, and look as though they
are fresh from the barber. Isn't that phrase "for the last time" the
most desolate utterance that a human voice can make? It goes thundering
down the aisles of time only to be lost in the arcana of treacherous
memory. To dream for the last time--to love for the last time--bitter
contemplation--funereal introspection.

I am suffering from acute nostalgia--by this time you are standing in
the gun-room at Keith Lodge, drinking your first. I can hear Duncan ask:
"Scotch or Irish," and see you tip it off with Blake and the rest. No
bridge for you tonight--early to bed and tomorrow morning you'll all
start out in your natty knickers and short kilts to murder things that
will fall in bloody feathery heaps at your feet. Native woodcock, jack
snipe, black mallard, grouse, etc., the restless eager setters doing
their own retrieving; the soft dank ground daintily overspread with the
frond of marvelous fern like my window pane this morning