Valerie’s set are practically the same as ours at home in their tone, and way of living, and amusements, so I have not told you anything special of them, the only difference being we never worry in the least about what people think of us, and when we talk seriously it is of politics, and they of Wall Street affairs, which shows, doesn’t it, that such things are more interesting to them than the making of laws.  We have not heard politics talked about in any class in New York.  Attacks on the President often, because he is said to have interfered with trusts by probing their methods, which gets back to the vital point of dollars and cents.  People will speak for and against him for hours, but not from a political point of view, and abstract political discussions we have never heard.

I have not yet grasped the difference between “Democrat” and “Republican,” and so I don’t know if it is just the same as at home, that whichever is Radical wants to snatch each one for his own hand and does not care a rush about the nation; while whichever is Conservative cares nothing for personal advancement—­having arrived there already—­so has time and experience to look ahead and think of the country.

If you had a delicate baby, Mamma, would not you rather give it into the hands of a thoroughly trained nurse than an ignorant aspiring nursery maid taking her first place, who was more likely to be thinking of the head nurse’s wages she was going to get than her duties to the child?  That is how I look upon the parties at home, but here I expect it is more as the Whigs and Tories were, each equal in class and experience, only holding different views.  I should like to have a peep about five hundred years ahead.  I am sure the ignorant nurse-maids will have killed our baby by then, and we shall be a wretched down-trodden commune, while they will be a splendidly governed aristocratic nation under one autocratic king!

I have not told you a thing about the Park, or the general aspect of the houses; we are rushed so it is hard to write.  But the Park is a perfectly charming place, as nice as the Bois, and much nicer than our attempt that way, and everyone who goes there seems to be out on a holiday.  Fifth Avenue runs beside it like our Park Lane, beginning at Fifty-ninth Street, and about every five years people have to move further up, because of the encroaching shops.  So it hardly seems worth while to spend millions on building white marble palaces which may be torn down or converted in so short a time.  Nothing is allowed to last.  Heaps of the mansions are perfectly beautiful in style, and many simple as well, which is always the prettiest; but you can meet Francois Premier Castles, and Gothic Halls, and all sorts of mixed freaks, too, in half an hour’s walk, and it seems to me a pity they can’t use their rollers and just cart these into the side streets.  But if I were rebuilding Valmond House I would get an American architect to do it for me, and on the American principle, that is, I should get him to study all the best they have done and then “go one better!”