We have had our heads full all summer, of building a little cottage here.  We are having a plan made, and have about fixed on a lot.  We are rather tired of boarding; George hates it, and Dorset suits us as well, I presume, as any village would.  It is a lovely spot, and the people are as intelligent as in other parts of New England.  The Professor is disappointed at our choosing this rather than Williamstown, but it would be no rest to us to go there.  We have not decided to build; it may turn out too expensive; but we have taken lots of comfort in talking about it.  We have been on several excursions, one of them to the top of Equinox.  It is a hard trip, fully six miles walking and climbing.  I have amused myself with writing some little books of the Susy sort:  four in less than a month, A.’s sickness taking a good piece of time out of that period.  They are to appear, or a part of them, in the Riverside next winter, and then to be issued in book-form by Hurd and Houghton.  This will a good deal more than furnish our cottage and what trees and shrubs we want, so that I feel justified in undertaking that expense.  We had two weeks at Newport before we came here, and Mr. and Mrs. McCurdy overwhelmed us with kindness, paying our traveling expenses, etc., and keeping up one steady stream of such favors the whole time.  I never saw such people.  How delightful it must be to be able to express such benevolence!  Well; you and I can be faithful in that which is least, at any rate.

We have all had plenty to read all summer, and have sat out of doors and read a good deal.  I am going now to carry a little wreath to a missionary’s wife who is spending the summer here; a nice little woman; this will give me a three miles walk and about use up the rest of the forenoon.  In the afternoon I have promised to go to the woods with the children, all of whom are as brown as Indians.  My room is all aflame with two great trees of maple; I never saw such a beautiful velvety color as they have.  We have just had a very pleasant excursion to a mountain called Haystack, and ate our dinner sitting round in the grass in view of a splendid prospect....  I have thus given you the history of our summer, as far as its history can be written.  Its ecstatic joys have not been wanting, nor its hours of shame and confusion of face; but these are things that can not be described.  What a mystery life is, and how we go up and down, glad to-day and sorrowful to-morrow!  I took real solid comfort thinking of you and praying for you this morning.  I love you dearly and always shall.  Good-bye, dear child.

The “four little books” afford a good illustration of the ease and rapidity with which she composed.  When once she had fixed upon a subject, her pen almost flew over the paper.  Scarcely ever did she hesitate for a thought or for the right words to express it.  Her manuscript rarely showed an erasure or any change whatever.  She generally wrote on a portfolio, holding it upon her knees.