I have, been so absorbed with anxiety about the children since we got back from our journey, that I have not felt like writing you a description of it.  George told you, I suppose, that the news awaiting us when we reached Vevay was of the baby’s having whooping-cough.  It was a great shock to us, for the weather was dismally cold, and it did not seem as if the little thing could get safely through the disease at so unfavorable a time of year.  Then there were the other two to have it also.  On Friday last baby’s cry had become a sad sort of wail, and he was so pale and weak, that I did not see how he was going to rally; but he is better to-day, so that I begin to take breath....  To go back to Chamouni, it seems a mercy that we went when we did.  We enjoyed the whole trip.  We made the excursion to the Mer de Glace in a pouring rain, without injury to any of us, and were well repaid for our trouble by the novelty of the whole expedition and the extraordinary sights we saw.  George intended taking us to the Oberland if we found the children well on our return, but all hope of accomplishing another journey was destroyed when we found what different business was before us.  It is a real disappointment, for the weather is now mild and very fine, just adapted to journeying, and so many things have conspired to confine me to this spot, that I have found it quite hard to be as patient and cheerful as I am sure I ought to be.  Alas and alas! what an insatiable thing human nature is!  How it craves every thing the world can offer, instead of contenting itself with what ought to content it.  However, I shall soon get over my fidgets, and as to George, of course he is only disappointed for me and A., as he has visited the Oberland, and was only going to give us pleasure.  And, if I must choose between the two, I’d rather have the littlest baby in the world than see all the biggest mountains in it.  We are thankful to hear that mother still continues to be so well.  We long to see her, and I think a look at her or a smile from her would do George good like a medicine.

October 17th.—­I went to church yesterday for the first time in ten months; we came out at half-past ten, so you see we have a tolerably long day before us when church is done.  It is not at all like going to church at home; you not only find it painful to listen with such strict attention as the foreign tongue requires, but you miss the neat, well-ordered sanctuary, the picture of family life (for there are no little children present!) and the agreeable array of dress.  The flapping, monstrous bloomers tire your eyes, and so do the grotesque, coarse clothes and the tokens of extreme poverty.  I grow more and more patriotic every day, and am astonished at what I see and hear of life in Europe.

I snatched one afternoon when the baby was better than usual to go to Villeneuve with George to call on Mr. and Mrs. H. and the sister of Mrs. H., who is one of our Mercer street young ladies.  They were at the Hotel Byron, where you stayed.  What a beautiful spot it is!  Mr. H. afterwards came and dined with us, and was so charmed with the place that he was tempted to take it when we leave; his wife, however, had set her heart on going home at that time, as she had left one child there.  The vintage is going on here at Genevrier to-day, and we are all invited to go and eat our fill.