ng of my life, and of the house
and of Cousin Patty.

The house has suffered from the years of poverty since the War. Yet it
has still about it something of the dignity of an ancient ruin. It is
a big frame structure with the Colonial pillars which belong to the
period of its building. Many of the rooms are closed. My own suite is
on the second floor--Cousin Patty's opposite, and adjoining her rooms
those of an old aunt who is a pensioner.

There is little of the old mahogany which once made the rooms stately,
and little of the old silver to grace the table. Cousin Patty's
poverty is combined, happily, with common sense. She has known the
full value of her antiques, and has preferred good food to family
traditions. Yet there are the old portraits and in her living-room a
few choice pieces. Here we have an open fire, and here we sit o'
nights.

Cousin Patty is small, rather white and thin, and she is fifty-five. I
tell you her age, because in a way it explains many things which would
otherwise puzzle you. She was born just before the war. She knew
nothing of the luxury of the days of slavery. She has twisted and
turned and economized all of her life. She has struggled with all the
problems which beset the South in Reconstruction times, and she has
come out if it all, sweet and shrewd, and with a point of view about
women which astonishes me, and which gives us a chance for many
sprightly arguments. Her black hair is untouched with gray, she wears
it parted and in a thick knot high on her head. Her gowns are
invariably of black silk, well cut and well made. She makes them
herself, and gets her patterns from New York! Can you see her now?

Our arguments are usually about women, and their position in the world
to-day. You know I am conservative, clinging much to old ideals, old
fashions, to the beliefs of gentler times--but Cousin Patty in this
backwater of civilization has gone far ahead of me. She believes that
the hope of the South is in its women. "They read more than the men,"
she says, "and they have responded more quickly to the new social
ideals."

But of our arguments more in another letter--this will serve, however,
to introduce you to some of the astonishing mental processes of this
little marooned cousin of mine.

For in a sense she is marooned. Once upon a time when Cotton was king,
and slave labor made all things possible, there was prosperity here,
but now the land is impoverished