Later....  I have been reading Yung Wing’s letter again.  It may be that he is over-wrought by his sympathies, but it may not be so.  There may be other reasons why the missionaries are silent about the Shensi-2-year famine and cannibalism.  It may be that there are so few Protestant converts there that the missionaries are able to take care of them.  That they are not likely to largely concern themselves about Catholic converts and the others, is quite natural, I think.

That crude way of appealing to this Government for help in a cause which has no money in it, and no politics, rises before me again in all its admirable innocence!  Doesn’t Yung Wing know us yet?  However, he has been absent since ’96 or ’97.  We have gone to hell since then.  Kossuth couldn’t raise 30 cents in Congress, now, if he were back with his moving Magyar-Tale.

I am on the front porch (lower one—­main deck) of our little bijou of a dwelling-house.  The lake-edge (Lower Saranac) is so nearly under me that I can’t see the shore, but only the water, small-pored with rain-splashes—­for there is a heavy down-pour.  It is charmingly like sitting snuggled up on a ship’s deck with the stretching sea all around —­but very much more satisfactory, for at sea a rain-storm is depressing, while here of course the effect engendered is just a deep sense of comfort and contentment.  The heavy forest shuts us solidly in on three sides there are no neighbors.  There are beautiful little tan-colored impudent squirrels about.  They take tea, 5 p. m., (not invited) at the table in the woods where Jean does my typewriting, and one of them has been brave enough to sit upon Jean’s knee with his tail curved over his back and munch his food.  They come to dinner, 7 p. m., on the front porch (not invited).  They all have the one name—­Blennerhasset, from Burr’s friend—­and none of them answers to it except when hungry.

We have been here since June 21st.  For a little while we had some warm days—­according to the family’s estimate; I was hardly discommoded myself.  Otherwise the weather has been of the sort you are familiar with in these regions:  cool days and cool nights.  We have heard of the hot wave every Wednesday, per the weekly paper—­we allow no dailies to intrude.  Last week through visitors also—­the only ones we have had —­Dr. Root and John Howells.

We have the daily lake-swim; and all the tribe, servants included (but not I) do a good deal of boating; sometimes with the guide, sometimes without him—­Jean and Clara are competent with the oars.  If we live another year, I hope we shall spend its summer in this house.

We have taken the Appleton country seat, overlooking the Hudson, at Riverdale, 25 minutes from the Grand Central Station, for a year, beginning Oct. 1, with option for another year.  We are obliged to be close to New York for a year or two.