Nancy went to her second party last night—­a joyous thing in a new evening cloak of old rose, which made her feel that Cleopatra and the Queen of Sheba and Mrs. Galt and all other exalted ladies had nothing on her.  What a glorious thing life would be if we could remain children, with all the simple joys and none of the horrors that age brings on.  There is certainly a good fifty per cent chance that this fine spirit will marry some damn brute who will worry and harass the soul out of her.  For so the world goes.  I hope she’ll be as fortunate as you have been.

To-night we go to the Polks to see Mrs. Martin Egan who was on a torpedoed ship in the Mediterranean, and although she couldn’t swim floated forty-five minutes till rescued.  You must know the Polks well.  She has very real charm and your old Mormon of a husband will desert his other fairies for her.

Now I have gossiped and preached and prophesied and mourned and otherwise revealed what passes through a wandering mind in half an hour, so I send you, at the close of this screed, my blessing, which is a poor gift, and I would send you the parcel post limit of my love if it weren’t for Anne and Adolph, who are narrow-minded Dutch Calvinists.  May good fortune betide you and bring you back very soon to the many whose hearts are sympathetic.

FRANK

TO MRS. MAGNUS ANDERSEN

Washington, D.C., December 24, [1915]

My dear Maudie,—­It is Christmas eve, and while Nancy and Anne are filling the mysterious stockings, I am writing these letters to the best of brothers and sister.  It has been a long, a disgracefully long time since I wrote you, but I have kept in touch pretty well through George and Anne. ...  So you have now a philosophy—­something to hang to!  I am glad of it.  The standpoint is the valuable thing.  There are profound depths in the idea that lies under Christian Science, but like all other new things it goes to unreasonable lengths.  “Be Moderate,” were the words written over the Temple on the Acropolis, and this applies to all things.  This world is curiously complex, and no one knows how to answer all our puzzles.  Sometimes I think that God himself does not.  There is a fine poem by Emerson called, the Sphinx, which is the most hopeful thing that I have found, because it recognizes the dual world in which we live, for everything goes not singly but in pairs—­good and evil, matter and mind.  Then, too, you may be interested in his essay on fate.

Dear Fritz—­dear, dear boy, how I wish I could be there with him, though I could do no good. ...  Each night I pray for him, and I am so much of a Catholic that I pray to the only Saint I know or ever knew and ask her to help.  If she lives her mind can reach the minds of the doctors just as surely as there is such a thing as transmission of thought between us, or hypnotism.  I don’t