I do wish you could see the room I call my Christmas room. It used to be a sort of morning room, but no one sits in it any more, so I have a work table in there, and my sewing machine and embroidery frame and my pyrography outfit, and my photographic stuff, and I am working early and late. Of course I interrupt myself to do whatever Aunt Lorena or grandmother wish me to. And people call, and I return calls, and there are little parties. But I like best to be working. Outside the window are honey locust trees, and they are very lovely even when stripped of their leaves. In the distance, on a hill, is a group of dark hemlock, and now that the sky is gray, they look particularly solemn. I have a fireplace in my Christmas room, and young James keeps it so that I need never be without a blazing hearth. My wood box is simply heaped. There are apples on my table, and a funny old writing desk stands in the corner. It is a terribly messed up room, and I love it. Not that I’m really disorderly. You wouldn’t say I was disorderly, would you, Carin? Come, now! No, I believe I like it because I have made it myself. I have in it what I can use. I am _living_ in it. In the other rooms I only look on; and that, emphatically, is not living. _No more for the present_! _I mean it_! _Azalea_. * * * * * Glidden Siding, December 24th. Merry, merry Christmas, dear Carin. Dear old friend, _such_ a merry Christmas to you! I am sitting here in the station, having come from Bethal Springs on the queerest little train ever you saw, and I am waiting for the train that is to take me home. It is cold, and I think it is going to rain. Seeing that I do not expect to reach home till after dark, this sounds a bit dismal. Semmy is with me. I wrote you about Greenville Female Seminary Simms, didn’t I? I wanted to travel alone, of course, but neither Aunt Lorena nor grandmother would hear of it. I have just asked Semmy where she got her name, and she tells me that her mother was a “pore misfortunate so’t of a woman who nevah did git on in de worl’ nohow. An’ jes’ befo’ Ah was bo’n, she went fo’ to wuk in de Greenville Female Sem’nary. An’ theah dey was dat good to heh, dat she neveh did see! Yassum, dey jes’ cheered heh along and heartened heh up, an’ nussed heh, and when de baby come—that was me—dey gave heh a whole set of clo’s. An’ ma she jes’ had a change of heart. Yassum. She jes’ made up heh mind dat she wa’n’t goin’ to be downcas’ no moah. She might ’a’ been misfortunate, but dat didn’t keep de worl’ f’om havin’ any numbah o’ good, kind folk in it. No’um. So she named heh baby fo’ the Sem’nary, she did, sho’ ’nough, and she was glad of it to de las’ day of heh life. And Ah was glad of it too. Greenville Female Sem’nary Simms shore am a fine name.”