“The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
    Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear. 
    Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead;
    They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit’s tread.”

In September, 1889, my daughter, Mrs. Stanton Lawrence, came East to attend a school of physical culture, and my other daughter, Mrs. Stanton Blatch, came from England to enjoy one of our bracing winters.  Unfortunately we had rain instead of snow, and fogs instead of frost.  However, we had a pleasant reunion at Hempstead.  After a few days in and about New York visiting friends, we went to Geneva and spent several weeks in the home of my cousin, the daughter of Gerrit Smith.

She and I have been most faithful, devoted friends all our lives, and regular correspondents for more than fifty years.  In the family circle we are ofttimes referred to as “Julius” and “Johnson.”  These euphonious names originated in this way:  When the Christy Minstrels first appeared, we went one evening to hear them.  On returning home we amused our seniors with, as they said, a capital rehearsal.  The wit and philosopher of the occasion were called, respectively, Julius and Johnson; so we took their parts and reproduced all the bright, humorous remarks they made.  The next morning as we appeared at the breakfast table, Cousin Gerrit Smith, in his deep, rich voice said:  “Good-morning, Julius and Johnson,” and he kept it up the few days we were in Albany together.  One after another our relatives adopted the pseudonyms, and Mrs. Miller has been “Julius” and I “Johnson” ever since.

From Geneva we went to Buffalo, but, as I had a bad cold and a general feeling of depression, I decided to go to the Dansville Sanatorium and see what Doctors James and Kate Jackson could do for me.  I was there six weeks and tried all the rubbings, pinchings, steamings; the Swedish movements of the arms, hands, legs, feet; dieting, massage, electricity, and, though I succeeded in throwing off only five pounds of flesh, yet I felt like a new being.  It is a charming place to be in—­the home is pleasantly situated and the scenery very fine.  The physicians are all genial, and a cheerful atmosphere pervades the whole establishment.

As Christmas was at hand, the women were all half crazy about presents, and while good Doctors James and Kate were doing all in their power to cure the nervous affections of their patients, they would thwart the treatment by sitting in the parlor with the thermometer at seventy-two degrees, embroidering all kinds of fancy patterns,—­some on muslin, some on satin, and some with colored worsteds on canvas,—­inhaling the poisonous dyes, straining the optic nerves, counting threads and stitches, hour after hour, until utterly exhausted.  I spoke to one poor victim of the fallacy of Christmas presents, and of her injuring her health in such useless employment.  “What