You may like to know that I have just been translating some extracts from the Greek Anthology.  I send you a few specimens of my work, with a Dedication to the Shade of Sappho.  I hope you will find something of the Greek rhythm in my versions, and that I have caught a spark of inspiration from the impassioned Lesbian.  I have found great delight in this work, at any rate, and am never so happy as when I read from my manuscript or repeat from memory the lines into which I have transferred the thought of the men and women of two thousand years ago, or given rhythmical expression to my own rapturous feelings with regard to them.  I must read you my Dedication to the Shade of Sappho.  I cannot help thinking that you will like it better than either of my last two, The Song of the Roses, or The Wail of the Weeds.

How I do miss you, dearest!  I want you:  I want you to listen to what I have written; I want you to hear all about my plans for the future; I want to look at you, and think how grand it must be to feel one’s self to be such a noble and beautiful-creature; I want to wander in the woods with you, to float on the lake, to share your life and talk over every day’s doings with you.  Alas!  I feel that we have parted as two friends part at a port of embarkation:  they embrace, they kiss each other’s cheeks, they cover their faces and weep, they try to speak good-by to each other, they watch from the pier and from the deck; the two forms grow less and less, fainter and fainter in the distance, two white handkerchiefs flutter once and again, and yet once more, and the last visible link of the chain which binds them has parted.  Dear, dear, dearest Euthymia, my eyes are running over with tears when I think that we may never, never meet again.

Don’t you want some more items of village news?  We are threatened with an influx of stylish people:  “Buttons” to answer the door-bell, in place of the chamber-maid; “butler,” in place of the “hired man;” footman in top-boots and breeches, cockade on hat, arms folded a la Napoleon; tandems, “drags,” dogcarts, and go-carts of all sorts.  It is rather amusing to look at their ambitious displays, but it takes away the good old country flavor of the place.

I don’t believe you mean to try to astonish us when you come back to spend your summers here.  I suppose you must have a large house, and I am sure you will have a beautiful one.  I suppose you will have some fine horses, and who would n’t be glad to?  But I do not believe you will try to make your old Arrowhead Village friends stare their eyes out of their heads with a display meant to outshine everybody else that comes here.  You can have a yacht on the lake, if you like, but I hope you will pull a pair of oars in our old boat once in a while, with me to steer you.  I know you will be just the same dear-Euthymia you always were and always must be.  How happy you must make such a man as Maurice Kirkwood!  And how happy you ought to