Several weeks later young Mrs. Studdiford wrote to Barbara that New York was “a captured dream.”  “I seem to belong to it,” wrote Julia, “and it seems to belong to me!  I can’t tell you how it satisfies me; it is good just to look down from my window at Fifth Avenue, every morning, and say to myself, ‘I’m still in New York!’ For the first two weeks Jim and I did everything alone, like two children:  the new Hippodrome, and Coney Island, and the Liberty Statue, and the Bronx Zoo.  I never had such a good time!  We went to the theatres, and the museums, and had breakfast at the Casino, and lived on top of the green ’busses!  But now Jim has let some of his old college friends know we are here, and we are spinning like tops.  One is an artist, and has the most fascinating studio I ever saw, down on Washington Square, and another is an editor, and gave us a tea in his rooms, overlooking Stuyvesant Square, and Barbara, everybody there was a celebrity (except us) and all so sweet and friendly—­it was a hot spring day, and the trees in the square were all such a fresh, bright green.

“They make a great fuss about the spring here, and you can hardly blame them.  The whole city turns itself inside out; people simply stream to the parks, and the streets swarm with children.  Some of the poorer women go bareheaded or with shawls, even in the cars—­ did you ever see a bareheaded woman in a car at home?  But they are all much nearer the peasant here.  And after clean San Francisco, you wouldn’t believe how dirty this place is; all the smaller stores have shops in the basements, and enough dirt and old rags and wet paper lying around to send Doctor Blue into a convulsion!  And they use pennies here, which seems so petty, and paper dollars instead of silver, which I hate.  And you say ‘L’ or ‘sub’ for the trains, and always ‘surface cars’ for the regular cars—­it’s all so different and so interesting.

“Tell Richie Jim is going to assist the great Doctor Cassell in some demonstrations of bone transplanting, at Bellevue, next week--oh, and Barbara, did I write Aunt Sanna that we met the President!  My dear, we did.  We were at the theatre with the Cassells, and saw him in a box, and Doctor Cassell, the old darling, knows him, and went to the President’s box to ask if we might be brought in and presented, and, my dear, he got up and came back with Doctor Cassell to our box, and was simply sweet, and asked me if I wasn’t from the South, and I nearly said, ’Yes, south of Market Street,’ but refrained in time.  I had on the new apricot crepe, and a black hat, and felt very Lily-like-a-princess, as Jane says.

“But we’re both getting homesick; it will seem good to see the old ferry building again—­and Sausalito, and all of you.”