trange that the corn
crop should be so superior to the people. I suppose it is because each
perfect stalk of corn turns its face to God and Heaven, and the people
are so busy gossiping they haven't the time to worship. When we pass
them on the street we feel like saying: "Our reputations are in your
hands. In God's name be merciful!"

I am keeping house now in my room--light housekeeping, you know. It's
positively airy sometimes. My landlady--bless her ignorant soul!--allows
my little ice-box to remain in her butler's pantry, which I have
christened "cockroach alley." They--the cockroaches--are so large and
educated that I have named them, and each one comes when it's called and
feeds from the hand.

She wears the most artistic skirts--always ball-room back and ballet
front. Her grandchild was sitting on the floor yesterday, reading the
Bible, when suddenly she looked up and said: "Grandma, there's a
grammatical error in this Bible," and my landlady said: "Well, kill it,
child, kill it!" She spends whole hours each day talking to her birds,
which, she claims, save the expense of a piano. I told the grandchild to
go out into the sunshine this morning and it would do her cold good. She
said, very saucily: "I won't go into the sunshine, my grandma told me to
go into the air." My grandma didn't tell me to go there, Lorna, but
someone must have ordered it, for in the "air" I am, and so high that I
no longer feel the earth beneath my feet.

Thank you so much for Mr. Fitch's article. So you think that Sioux Falls
is like his description of it. He came in one night and left the next
morning, then wrote an article which is a gross exaggeration in every
particular. In the first place there was never but one French maid here
and she was Irish. It is true that some scandalous people come here, but
there are also scandalous residents; however, there are many more
divorcees, quiet, charming and unseen, who do not fret away their six
months, but spend them profitably, writing, sewing, taking care of their
beloved children, _et cetera_.

The very idea of mentioning anything as incongruous as Sioux Falls and
luxury in the same breath--it's a slam on luxury! Big and luxurious
hotels--Mr. Fitch ought to be mobbed. Wonder if he got a whiff of the
lobby of the only thing that can be called an hotel here, or if he had a
cold during his prolonged stay of twelve hours, nine of which he slept
through. At the hotel yesterday I mentioned to t