We have been here four weeks, and ought to have been here six, for I can not bear heat; it takes all the life out of me.  Last night when I went up to my room to go to bed, the thermometer was 90 deg....  Are you not going to the Centennial?  George and I went on first and stayed at Dr. Kirkbride’s.  They were as kind as possible, and we all enjoyed a great deal.  What interested me most were wonderful life-like figures (some said wax, but they were no more wax than you are) of Laplanders, Swedes, and Norwegians, dressed in clothes that had been worn by real peasants, and done by an artistic hand.  Next to these came the Japanese department; amazing bronzes, amazing screens ($1,000 a pair, embroidered exquisitely), lovely flowers painted on lovely vases, etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum.  The Norwegian jewelry was also a surprise and delight; I don’t care for jewelry generally, but these silvery lace-like creations took me by storm.  Among other pretty things were lots of English bedrooms, exquisitely furnished and enormously expensive.  The horticultural department was very poor, except the rhododendrons, which drove me crazy.  I only took a chair twice.  You pay sixty cents an hour for one with a man to propel it, but can have one for three hours and make your husband (or wife!) wheel you.  You do not pay entrance fee for children going in your arms, and I saw boys of eight or nine lugged in by their fathers and mothers.  We think everybody should go who can afford it.  Several countries had not opened when we were there; Turkey and Spain, for instance; and if Switzerland was ready we did not see it.  The more I think of the groups I spoke of, the more I am lost in admiration.  A young mother kneeling over a little dead baby, and the stern grief of the strong old grandfather, brought a lump into my throat; the young father was not capable of such grief as theirs, and sat by, looking subdued and tender, but nothing more.  The artist must be a great student of human nature.  I went, every day, to study these domestic groups; at first they did not attract the crowd; but later it was next to impossible to get at them.  Every one was taken from life, and you see the grime on their knuckles.  Almost every face expressed strong and agreeable character.  There were very few good and a great many had pictures.  Of statuary “The Forced Prayer” was very popular; the child has his hands folded, but is in anything but a saintly temper, and two tears are on his cheeks.  I should like to own it.  If I had had any money to spare I should have bought something from Japan and something from Denmark.  I do not think any one can realise, who has not been there, what an education such an Exposition is.  China’s inferiority to Japan I knew nothing about.

A. goes out sketching every day.  The other day I found her painting a white flower which she said she got from the lawn; it was something like a white lockspur, only very much prettier, and was, of course, not a wild flower, as she supposed, or, at any rate, not indigenous to this soil.  She declared it had no leaves, but I made her go out and show me the plant; it grew about ten inches high, with leaves like a lily, and then came the pure, graceful flowers.