This is my first day (since my illness) of doing my work and having a guest, but it has gone superbly. The breakfast table was neatly elegant—all silver and glass except the plates and cups and saucers. We had soft boiled eggs, cooked on the table, corn flakes, and a delightful platter of cream toast, with grapes, apple sauce, Dutch cheese and thick cream, and two kinds of coffee. Mr. Brown went to town returning at 5 P. M., when we had supper (or dinner)—a nicely cooked steak and sausage, fine potatoes, rice pudding, bananas, cake and tea—fruit. I arranged the milk and cream, put the house in order, took care of lamps and room, and drafted a long letter to the Grand Duchess (from the medium), and Empress. Doctor got Uncle Silas to come at evening and I engaged one hundred bundles of fodder at .04 cents a bundle, to be bought and put in the stable next week. Have talked with Mr. Brown concerning Lucy. “A RATHER HARD DAY” Saturday, Oct. 26, 1907, Glen Echo. Another fine day. But an experience this morning was anything but that. As Mrs. Barker did not come I was “doing up” the breakfast dishes at the sink and had put a kettle of beans on the stove to parboil for baking, as Doctor had expressed a desire for them. A rather heavy coal fire was going for this purpose. Suddenly I was startled by a great rush at the stove. Supposing that my kettle of beans had boiled over, I turned to see a flame three feet high from a vehicle larger than my kettle, pouring a liquid out over the hot stove that blazed the moment it touched. The Doctor had wanted to use some tar about the roof, and brought in a two-gallon tin bucket partly full and set it on the stove to warm up, and left it without speaking or in any way calling my attention to it. It had gotten boiling hot, and my first notice of its presence was the burst of blaze. The bucket of boiling black tar running over all on fire, the flame streaming up some two feet high. I called the Doctor at the cellar steps, at the windows—no response. The blaze went higher and wider. The carpenters must be on the roof and to the top I rushed, to find no one there—down again. I saw I was the only person on the premises. The room was dark with smoke. I could see little but the blaze. Four feet to the left stood a five-gallon can of kerosene oil for the lamps. I could not remove it and, if I could, I must carry it directly past the flame—if a spark reached, we would be blown to atoms, house and all. The floor was bare, with one or two small _cotton_ mats. I dared not use even them. There was but one way; I must grapple the boiling, blazing mass, take it across the room and throw it from the window. I had no inflammable material on me, being dressed in entire black silk, waist and skirt. There was no time to lose. I tore away the curtain, raised the window to its fullest height, seized the bucket firmly with both hands and landed it on the ground.