By the way, our advice is that you drop the suit against Phillips & Faulds. They are engaged in a lawsuit and as we look over the distant Louisville battlefield, we can see only the wounded and the dying--and the poor. Would you squeeze a druggist's sponge for live tadpoles? Whatever you got, you wouldn't get tadpoles, not live ones. Our fee is $50; hadn't you better stop at $50 and think yourself lucky? _Monsieur a bien tombé_. Any more fern letters? Don't forget them. BEN DOOLITTLE. BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE _December 30._ DEAR BEN: I take your advice, of course, about dropping the suit against Phillips & Faulds, and I take pleasure in enclosing you my cheque for $50--damn them. That's $75--damn them. And if anybody else anywhere around hasn't received a cheque from me for nothing, let him or her rise, and him or her will get one. No more letters yet. But I feel a disturbance in the marrow of my bones and doubtless others are on the way, as one more spell of bad weather--another storm for me. BEVERLEY. CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS _Seminole, North Carolina, December 25._ SIR: This is Christmas Day, when every one is thinking of peace and good will on earth. It makes me think of you. I cannot forget you, my feeling is too bitter for oblivion, for it was you who were instrumental in bringing about my father's death. One damp night I heard him get up and then I heard him fall, and rushing to him to see what was the matter, I found that he had stumbled down the three steps which led from his bedroom to his library, and had rolled over on the floor, with his candle burning on the carpet beside him. I lifted him up and asked him what he was doing out of bed and he said he had some kind of recollection about a list of ferns; it worried him and he could not sleep. The fall was a great shock to his nervous system and to mine, and a few days after that he contracted pneumonia from the cold, being already troubled with lumbago. My father's life-work, which will never be finished now, was to be called "Approximations to Consciousness in Plants." He believed that bushes knew a great deal of what is going on around them, and that trees sometimes have queer notions which cause them to grow crooked, and that ferns are most intelligent beings. It was while thus engaged, in a weakened condition with this work on "Consciousness in Plants," that he suddenly lost consciousness himself and did not afterwards regain it as an earthly creature. I shall always remember you for having been instrumental in his death. This is the kind of Christmas Day you have presented to me. CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN. CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS _Seminole, North Carolina, January 7._ DEAR SIR: Necessity knows no law, and I have become a sad victim of necessity, hence this appeal to you.