"I sent mother a few lines the morning I got here, but that was before I had found out how beautiful it all is. It is just like the Southern plantations one reads about in stories, and everything is very interesting. There is even a dear old black mammy, who lives in a cabin, and has asked Beverly and me to come and have waffles some afternoon. All the servants are black, and the butler has lived in the family nearly forty years. Then the neighbors are just the kind one reads of, so kind and hospitable, and always having good times. I think I like Southerners better than New Yorkers; they make me feel much more at home. I have met a good many of them, for we went to a Christmas dance at the Pattersons', on Christmas Eve, and I had a perfectly gorgeous time. The Pattersons are cousins of the Randolphs', and Grace, the girl, is just my age, and awfully nice; but then everybody here is nice, and I am having the very best time that it is possible for a girl to have. "The riding is the greatest pleasure of all. Beverly and I have been out for a ride every day, and he enjoys it almost as much as I do. They have given me the dearest little chestnut to ride, and it is a great honor, because she belonged to Beverly's sister, who was killed in the San Francisco earthquake, and scarcely any one has ridden her since. She is very gentle, and so friendly that she will take sugar out of my pocket. Beverly says his sister taught her to do that. "But if I go on chattering like this, I shall never get to Christmas, which was the most interesting of all. The Virginians seem to think a great deal of Christmas, and nearly all the day before we were busy dressing a tree for the little negroes on the plantation. Mrs. Randolph had brought presents from New York for all of them, and for the fathers and mothers as well. Beverly says she has done the same thing every Christmas since her little girl died; it is a sort of memorial, I suppose. We all hung up our stockings, even Mrs. Randolph and the doctor, who is just as nice and jolly as he can be, though Grace Patterson says some people are afraid of him. It was late when we got back from the Pattersons' party on Christmas Eve, but after I was in bed I heard Mrs. Randolph going about softly, filling the stockings, which were all hung outside our doors.