“Elliott is the leader of children’s sports and plays with the little Winthrop children all day. A short while ago Thee made up his mind suddenly that Teedie must play too, so hunted up the little fellow who was deeply enjoying a conversation with the only acquaintance he has made, a little man, whom we call the ‘one too many man,’ for he seems to go about with no acquaintances. His name is Mr. St. John and he is a quaint little well of knowledge,--very fond of natural history and fills Teedie’s heart with delight. Teedie brought him up and introduced him to me, his eyes dancing with delight and he constantly asks me, ‘Mamma, have you really conversed with Mr. St. John?’ I feel so tenderly to Teedie, that I actually stopped reading the ‘Heir of Redcliffe,’ and talked to the poor little man who has heart complaint so badly that his voice is even affected by it. “The two little boys were pretty seasick on Sunday and I do not know what I should have done without Robert, the bedroom steward, and an amiable deck steward, who waits on those who remain on deck at meals. He seems a wonderfully constructed creature, having amiable knobs all over his body, upon which he supports more bowls of soup and plates of eatables than you can imagine, all of which he serves out, panting over you while you take your plate, with such wide extended nostrils that they take in the Irish coast, and the draught from them cools the soup! “Anna,--the carpet in my stateroom is filled with organic matter which, if distilled, would make a kind of anchovy paste, only fit to be the appetizer before the famous ‘witches’ broth,’ the receipt for which Shakespeare gives in “Macbeth”,--but on the whole the _Scotia_ is well ordered and cleaner than I had expected. “On Sunday morning Thee was sick and while in bed, little Conie came into the room. He looked down from his upper berth, looking like a straw-colored Cockatoo, but Conie stopped in the middle of what she was saying and said, ‘Oh Papa! you have such a lovely little curl on your forehead’ with a note of great admiration in her voice and meaning it all, _really_, but her position looking up, and his looking down reminded me forcibly of the picture of the flattered crow who dropped his cheese when the fox complimented him!” This letter, perhaps, more than almost any other, gives the quaint humor and also the tenderness of my mother’s attitude toward her children and husband.