By the way, I am going to see a beautiful private car which is to be sold. I am thinking of buying it and taking aunt Madison and some delightful people whom I know on a trip to the Yellowstone Park and Puget Sound this summer. What do you say to joining us? By the time you have finished at the Annex you will be ready to drop, and will be quite unfit to think of getting up your trousseau. Tell that impatient young professor that he must wait for three months, and give you a chance to know how sweet it is to get a love-letter when it comes three thousand miles.... FIFTH AVENUE HOTEL, NEW YORK, _Apr. 10_. To CHAS. W. TURNER, ESQ., Boston, Mass. _Dear Sir_,—Your letter has come to hand with the inclosed deed for the eight lots on Huntington Avenue, each twenty-three by one hundred feet. I will now write you in detail about the buildings which I wish to put upon those lots. I want you to understand my plans exactly, together with my reasons for them, as I shall ask you to take the responsibility of carrying them out. I want to try an experiment that I have long had in mind. I hope to have it pay a fair per cent. and at the same time serve as a hint toward the solution of some of the difficulties in the problems of modern housekeeping. For the last twenty years we have been blundering our way toward better methods of meeting the exigencies of our modern city life, but with indifferent success. However, one thing is certain. In our great cities, where land is growing more and more expensive, and where people are swarming in constantly increasing numbers, building their houses higher and higher into the air, something must be done to readjust the methods of living, if life is to remain anything but drudgery to a large majority of wives and mothers. The modern system of “flats” is a step in the right direction, but thus far it has meant cramped quarters, great expense, and many disadvantages, and I am convinced that it is a long way from being the city home of the future. What I propose is to put up some houses where all the rooms in each suite of apartments shall be on the same floor, but which shall in no other particular resemble any “flats” that I have seen. I have found none where the rooms were spacious and all directly lighted and ventilated from the outer air, unless they were at a price quite beyond the income of a man who must live on three thousand dollars’ salary. Even the best I have seen, although they are elegantly frescoed and finished, are sure to have some small dark rooms, and give much less good space for living purposes than a house bearing the same rental. Now I think there is no reason for this,—that is to say, no necessary reason; nothing more in fact than that the demand for “flats” exceeds the supply, and landlords make more on an investment in that direction.