“MY DEAR GOOD MAJOR: I am delighted to hear that you and Mrs. Pond are coming to the Isle of Refuge--you are quite safe here. If the Vigilance Committees of Chicago meditate a raid upon you at Ely, we will open the sluice at Denver and put the whole of Cambridgeshire outside the Isle twelve feet under sea water. But how sadly wanting in humor some of your journalists must be. I thought that was an English prerogative. The Chicagoans were really very kind, my hostess at the Twentieth Century Club quite charming, and I believe she was the sister of the mayor. How strange! And Mr. Newman was as kind as he could be and his wife was more so. But why must I praise an ugly street because I like a man who lives in it? I didn’t praise New Jersey; why Chicago? No. It is a hatefully unlovely place, but I admire greatly the men who, because they live there--poor things--are so loyal and patriotic. To be loyal for a noble city like New York is fine, but to be loyal to Chicago, that is sublime. Pray announce that I am coming over next spring to lecture in Chicago on ‘The Ideal City of the Poets,’ to be illustrated with ‘dinky second number’ lantern slides of the City of the Wind. “I have just had a pleasant visit from Mr. and Mrs. Thomas, my kind hosts in Philadelphia, and a continual stream of Americans who heard one or the other of my lectures are passing through here daily, and very pleasant it is to me to welcome them. We are suffering from an exceptionally torrid summer--93 degrees in the shade yesterday. I feel, to use one of your quaint Americanisms, as ’limp as a half-yard of chewed string.’ “Kindest regards to your wife and Bimbo and Miss Glass. “Ever sincerely yours, “CHARLES W. STUBBS.” * * * * * Evidently the good Dean retains the humorous pluck of his old Puritan ancestor, and if on his next visit the irate Chicagoans cut off the offending right hand which wrote the _Outlook_ article, the dean will good-humoredly wave the bleeding stump and cry--“Bravo Chicago!” WOMEN LECTURERS WOMEN LECTURERS.