To Mrs. George Payson, Kauinfels, Aug. 1, 1878.

I am all alone in the house, this evening, and as this gives me room at the table, I am going to begin to answer your letter.  George is out of town, and all the rest, including the servants, have gone to see the Mistletoe Bough.  It is astonishing how slowly you get well; and yet with such heat and such smells as you have in Chicago, it is yet more astonishing that you live at all.  I thought it dreadful to have the thermometer stand at 90 deg. in my bedroom, three weeks running, and to sniff a bad sniff now and then from our pond, when the water got low, but I see I was wrong.  We have next to no flowers this summer; white flies destroyed the roses, frost killed other things, and then the three weeks of burning heat, with no rain, finished up others.  Portulacca is our rear-guard, on which we fall back, filling empty spaces with it, and I grow more fond of it every year.  A good many verbenas sowed themselves, but came up too late to be of any use.  We have a splendid bed of pansies, sown by a friend here.

I have not done much indoors but renovate the house, but that has been a great job.  I brought up a Japanese picture-book to use as a cornice in my den, but A. persuaded me to get some wall paper, and use the pictures as a dado for the dining-room.  The effect is very unique and pretty.  I expect George home to-morrow; he has been spending a delightful week at Monmouth Beach, visiting friends.  I wish I could send you some of our delicious ice-cream.  We have it twice a week, with the juices of what fruit is going; peaches being best.  We have not had much company yet.  Last Saturday a friend of A.’s came and goes with her to Prout’s Neck to-morrow.  We do not count Hatty K. as company, but as one of us.  She gets the brightest letters from Rob S., son of George.  I should burst and blow up if my boys wrote as well.  They have telephone and microphone on the brain, and such a bawling between the house and the mill you never heard.  It is nice for us when we want meal, or to have a horse harnessed.  Have you heard of the chair, with a fan each side, that fans you twenty-five minutes from just seating yourself in it.  It must be delightful, especially to invalids, and ought to prolong life for them....  The clock is striking nine, my hour for fleeing to get ready for bed, but none of the angels have come home from the Mistletoe Bough, and so I suppose I shall have to make haste slowly in undressing.  Love to all.

Aug. 3d.—­I am delighted that you enjoyed the serge so much; I knew you would.  I forgot to answer your question about books.  Have you read “Noblesse Oblige”?  We admire it extremely.  There are two works by this title; one poor.  I read “Les Miserables” last winter, and got greatly interested in it; whether there is a good English translation, I do not know.  “That Lass o’ Lowrie’s” you have probably read.  I saw a Russian novel highly praised the other day; “Dosea,” translated from the French by Mary Neal (Sherwood); “Victor Lascar” is said to be good.  I have, probably, praised “Misunderstood” to you.  “Strange Adventures of a Phaeton” we liked; also “The Maid of Sker” and “Off the Skelligs”; its sequel is “Fated to be Free.”