a millionaire.  Then I asked him what he would do with it, and he said, “I’ll just make those nearest to me happy and then those further off; and then I’ll set my brains to devise some scheme to benefit my country; and p’r’aps you’d help me,” he said.  “You great ladies in England think so much of the poor and suffering.  I don’t want just to put my name on big charities; p’r’aps you’d suggest something which could be of value?”

His whole face is so fine and open, Mamma, and his lithe, sinewy figure reminds me of the Ludovici Mars; not quite so slender as Harry and Tom, but just as strong, and those balanced lines of rugged strength are quite as beautiful.  I wonder what one of the meaty Easterners would look beside him, if they could both have nothing on and be made in bronze!

“I think I’d like to marry an English girl,” he said at last.  “Our women are very beautiful and very smart, but yours have a tenderness which appeals to me.  I could do with a mighty lot of love when once I took one for my own.”  Then he said he had always kept his ideal of a woman, and when he found her she should have him, “body and heart and soul.”  And think, Mamma, what a fortunate woman she would be, wouldn’t she?

He is quite different here to in France or on the boat; he has a quiet dignity and ease, and that perfect calm of a man of the world on his own ground.  I think there must be something Irish about him, too, for he has a strain of sentiment and melancholy which can come directly after his most brilliant burst of spirits.  We stayed there talking for about an hour undisturbed, and then the Senator opened the door and joined us.

“You are as quiet as mice, my children,” he said, “what have you been doing?”

And Nelson looked up at him, his eyes full of mist.

“Just dreamin’,” he said.  “All on a bright spring morning.”

And now I must stop, Mamma, for this must be posted at the next station to catch the mail.

Your affectionate daughter,

ELIZABETH.

OSAGES CITY

  THE GRAND HOTEL,
  OSAGES CITY,
  Wednesday.

Dearest Mamma,—­We arrived here last night and I am still enjoying myself more than I can say, and just after I wrote yesterday such an interesting thing happened.  At lunch the Senator told us about a strange character who abides in these parts—­an almost outlaw who has done such wild things and gets his money from heaven knows where.  He is supposed to have murdered several men, and every incredible story fit for pirates of the Spanish Main has been tacked on to him—­only of the land, not the sea.  He is called “Ruby Mine Bill;” isn’t that a nice name!  And no one cares to “run up against him,” because he is such a wonderful shot and does not hesitate to practise a little when things annoy him.