As for his faults, those that I have not already noticed I prefer to find out for myself. I have never cared to discover any human being's failings through a third person. Instead of getting acquainted with the pardonable traits of the abused, I might really be introduced to the _abominable traits of the abuser_. _Once more_, you think you are going to marry Beverley! I shall reserve my congratulations for the _event itself_. Thank you for surrendering your claim on my friendship and society last night. Ben and I had a most satisfactory evening, and when not suffocating we murmured "I do" to our hearts' content. Next time, should your visits clash, I'll push _him_ out. Yet I feel in honour bound to say that this is only my present state of mind. I might weaken at the last moment--even in the Franklin Flats. As to some things in your letter, I have long since learned not to bestow too much attention upon anything you say. You court a kind of irresponsibility in language. With your inborn and over-indulged willfulness you love to break through the actual and to revel in the imaginary. I have become rather used to this as one of your growing traits and I am therefore not surprised that in this letter you say things which, if seriously spoken, would insult your sex and would make them recoil from you--or make them wish to burn you at the stake. When you march up Fifth Avenue with your company of girls in that kind of procession, there will not be any Fifth Avenue: you will be tramping through the slums where you belong. All this, I repeat, is merely your way--to take things out in talking. But we can make words our playthings in life's shallows until words wreck us as their playthings in life's deeps. Still, in return for your compliments to me, _which, of course, you really mean_, I paid you one the other night when thinking of you quite by myself. It was this: nature seems to leave something out of each of us, but we presently discover that she perversely put it where it does not belong. What she left out of you, my dear, was the domestic tea-kettle. There isn't even any place for one. But she made up for lack of the kettle _by rather overdoing the stove_! Your _discreet_ friend, POLLY BOLES. BEVERLEY SANDS TO PHILLIPS & FAULDS _Cathedral Heights, New York, June 7, 1900._ GENTLEMEN: A former customer of yours, Mr. Benjamin Doolittle, has suggested your firm as reliable agents to carry out an important commission, which I herewith describe: I enclose a list of Kentucky ferns. I desire you to make a collection of these ferns and to ship them, expenses prepaid, to Edward Blackthorne, Esquire, King Alfred's Wood, Warwickshire, England. The cost is not to exceed twenty-five dollars. To furnish you the needed guarantee, as well as to avoid unnecessary correspondence, I herewith enclose, payable to your order, my check for that amount.